Importance of the Mayans

The Mayans are an aboriginal ethnic group that lives mainly in Mexico. However, when this term is used, most people foreign to that country associate it with the pre-Columbian civilization that left great monuments of its complexity and development.. In this sense, it is worth mentioning that the Mayan culture has been lost to a great extent, although the indigenous people who descend from this prodigious past remain. The mayans they also inhabit Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador; their total number amounts to several million individuals. Many of them speak a particular language that receives the same name.

In pre-Columbian times, the mayans They inhabited the same region that their descendants occupy today. The moment of its historical apogee must be found approximately between the year 300 and 900 after Christ, at which time large centers for ceremonies developed. It is also at this time that the agriculture receives a great improvement and certainly in this sense the mayans They achieved a great development, practicing it both intensively and extensively, applying irrigation channels and even terraces. This type of activity was the cornerstone of the Mayan economy, serving as a

feeding for the population. The system by which the land was worked was through the concession made by a nobleman to his subjects; Thus, the latter cultivated the land for their own maintenance and that of their family, paying a tribute to said nobleman for the transfer of the land; in this sense, some similarities with the feudalism developed in Europe can be evidenced.

The religion was a fundamental element of the mayans. It was of a polytheistic nature and referred to divinities that personified different aspects of the nature. Associated with this were the priests, characters who were considered for a long time the highest elements of society, a thought that was later set aside. The beliefs mayans They were based on the idea of ​​a dual aspect in everything that exists, an aspect that related good and evil as two sides of the same coin, on the same level. On the other hand, the mayans they practiced human sacrifices as a way to please their divinities.

As we have said, the mayans They did not disappear with the arrival of the Spanish, but they certainly lost their control of the territory, being conquered by them. Today we have great testimonies of the importance they reached in their architectural constructions.