The Maya civilization originated around 2600 BC and flourished in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. They were skilled farmers, builders, mathematicians and astronomers who constructed elaborate cities with temples, palaces and pyramids. Maya cities had strict social hierarchies led by a divine king and priests. They built structures like palaces and ball courts that incorporated symbolic elements reflecting their cosmology. The Maya left behind significant architectural achievements like the royal palace at Palenque before the civilization declined around the 10th century AD.

1. MAYAN
CIVILIZATION
V. Ravindra Reddy 1bq19at116
SP. Sharanya 1bq19at097
Shaik Mohammad Junaid 1bq19at084

2. INTRODUCTION

3. INTRODUCTION
⮚ The Maya civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization.
⮚ Maya civilization is well known for it’s Art, Architecture, Mathematics, Calendar and Astronomical
system.
⮚ Originating in the Yucatán around 2600 B.C to A.D. 250 in present-day southern Mexico,
Guatemala, northern Belize and western Honduras.
⮚ The Maya were noted as well for elaborate and highly decorated ceremonial architecture, including
temple-pyramids, palaces and observatories, all built without metal tools.
⮚ They were also skilled farmers, clearing
large sections of tropical rain forest and,
where groundwater was scarce, building
sizeable underground reservoirs for the
storage of rainwater.
⮚ The Maya were equally skilled as weavers and
potters, and cleared routes through jungles and
swamps to foster extensive trade networks with
distant peoples.
o The Archaic Period : 7000 – 2000 BCE
o The Olmec Period : 1500 – 200 BCE
o The zapotec period : 600 BCE – 800 CE
o The Teotihuacan period : 200 – 900 CE
o The El Tajin period (classic period) : 250 – 900 CE
o The post – Classic period : 950 – 1524 CE

7. GOVERNANCE
⮚ Maya cities were ruled by kings who had absolute power over their subjects
and established great dynasties.
⮚ The king was the commander-in-chief, head of the civil administration and
the high “priest”.
⮚ Government was an important part of the Maya civilization.
⮚ Priests seemed to be the most important person.
⮚ Many of them were rulers of the cities.
⮚ Rulers were seen as half gods and worshipped them in stone pyramid
structures.
⮚ Agriculture & Trade- Agriculture was the main occupation.
⮚ The Mayans traded with many nearby countries, which allowed the
exposure to different cultures and religions.
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
⮚ Merchants and Artisans
⮚ Commoners - farmers (peasants)
⮚ slaves
⮚ Warriors
⮚ Nobles and priests
⮚ Rulers

8. ⮚ Merchants and Artisans
⮚ Commoners - farmers
and slaves
⮚ Nobles and priests
⮚ King or high Priest
⮚ Council (nobles)

11. ⮚ The maya town were built along a predetermined axis, with a
group of wide-stepped plazas that were linked to plat forms on
which temples, palaces and pyramids were built.
⮚ The urban design did not always follow a plan, but often
corresponded to the earth’s topography, often in accordance
mathematical measurements and magical symbolism.
⮚ In Yucatan peninsula (Mexico) these cities were built near great
natural water wells called cenotes,
⮚ Religious ceremonies were held in urban centers
⮚ The upper classes—made up mostly of nobles and priests—lived
in elegant houses inside the walls that formed the ram parts.
⮚ The common people lived around the acropolis, occupying
rustic huts, living in nuclear families and maintaining their
cornfields.
⮚ The first Maya pyramid was built in Uaxactun, Guatemala,
just before the birth of Christ. For the next 1,500 years,
indigenous architecture matured in an almost continuous
evolution towards verticality, abstraction and refinement.
MAYAN CITY RE – CONSTRUCTED

12. TIKAL – ONE OF THE AUTHENTIC MAYAN CITIES
⮚ Tikal is located in the North
Eastern area of Guatemala in
Central America.
⮚ To its north lies Mexico and to
the west is Belize. Tikal was
the capital of a conquest state
that became one of the most
powerful kingdoms of the
ancient Maya.
⮚ The monumental architecture at
the site dates back as far as the
4th century BC. Tikal had no
water other than what was
collected from rainwater and
stored in ten reservoirs.
Archaeologists working in Tikal
during the 20th century
refurbished one of these ancient
reservoirs to store water for
their own use. There are
thousands of ancient structures
at Tikal and only a fraction of
these have been excavated,
⮚ Tikal’s over all area is 500 Sq.
Meters.

15. THE TRADITIONAL MAYAN HOUSE
⮚ Example of a Maya house in Quintana Roo, Mexico
⮚ Pre-Hispanic maya houses were made of perishable organic materials, Maya
houses were built on low platforms that delineated the space of nuclear family
plots, including family cemeteries.
⮚ Usually these solaris (lots) were delineated by albarradas (low walls made of
narrowly stacked stone). Each family’s lot included their hut, a well, a latrine, a
chicken coup, a garden and arustic-roofed batea (laundry room).
⮚ The house was rectangular with rounded corners.
⮚ No windows
⮚ Door faceseast
⮚ The floor made of sascab (gravel covered with packed soil)
⮚ Walls – wooden matrix covered with adobe and finished with lime.

16. PALACES
⮚ The palaces built during the Maya era were on a grand scale and were often
used as centers of administration.
⮚ These palaces were “corbelled” which is where a type of flat stone was
piled up with a slight overlap to form a narrow gap to ensure they could be
topped with a single capstone.
⮚ Wooden crosses were used to support these unbalanced vaults.
PALACE OF PALENQUE
⮚ The palace of the Maya king Pakal the Great
⮚ UNESCO World Heritage Site in Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico
⮚ Palace buildings, courtyards, sweat baths, Pakal's
throne room, reliefs, and painted stucco murals.
⮚ Palace was the royal residence of Palenque's rulers beginning in the Early
Classic period (250-–600 CE).
⮚ This royal complex was not only the residence of the king, provided with all
the comforts such as latrines and sweat baths, but also the political core of the
Maya capital, and was used to receive foreign visitors, organize sumptuous
feasts, and work as an efficient administrative center.

17. ⮚ The main entrance of the Royal Palace at Palenque is approached from the north and
east sides, both of which are flanked with monumental staircases.
⮚ The complex interior is a maze of 12 rooms or "houses," two courts (east and west)
and the tower, a unique four-level square structure dominating the site and providing
a stunning view of the countryside from its top level.
⮚ A small stream at the back was channeled into a vaulted aqueduct called the palace
aqueduct.
⮚ A row of narrow rooms along the southern side of the Tower Court may have been
sweat baths.
⮚ Buildings used the local soft limestone with lintels in wood, and bright colours of red,
blue, green, yellow, and white were used to decorate them on the outside and murals
inside.
⮚ Palenque is also famous for its decorative stucco sculpture and low-relief
carvings.
⮚ Palenque is also famous for its decorative stucco sculpture and low-relief carvings.
⮚ All of these rooms are organized around the two central open spaces, which acted as
patios or courtyards.

18. COMPONENTS AND SYMBOLISM
⮚ The Maya civilization expressed its cosmovision in architectural language.
⮚ The Maya designed buildings to be utilitarian as well as symbolic, and constructed them as giant machines meant to maintain
and focus divine energy.
⮚ The purpose for which the pyramids were made- much like the mandalas- was to serve as scale models of what they
believed to be the universe.
⮚ Further, the temples contained geodesic data.
⮚ For example, most of them had nine colonnades, exactly nine layers or levels, and nine steps, all of which represented the
nine planes of the celestial existence.
⮚ This numerology was meant to elevate the ceremonial habitats of the deities—the temples, that is—to their zenith.
⮚ The pyramid of Kukulcan (the Maya plumed serpent god) at ChichenItza, Mexico, symbolizes this.
⮚ It has the exact number of elements that correspond to calendric measurements.
⮚ The architecture of ChichenItza’s temples appears to have evolved from a peasant's house plan, and after conducting many
experiments with rock variations and the integration of sculpted architecture, it features both a pure, linear implicitly and an
exuberant, almost-baroque Maya style.

19. FACADE ELEMENTS
⮚ Even more elements from commoners were combined in
pyramid friezers.
⮚ For example, the buildings integrated the design so flattices
much like those found today in rural Maya homes.
⮚ Designers also integrated miniaturel attics riddled with
symbolic snakes, images of animals, flowers and humans.
⮚ Stone constructions were commonly covered with stucco,
which was generally painted red.
⮚ The temple's crests were constructed with relatively thin
walls, which gave the buildings more height, and therefore
more presence.
⮚ It is also thought that these crests may have served as
astral points for ancient astronomers.
⮚ To the ancient Maya, all of these elements —some of which
today might look only decorative—formed a mosaic of sacred
symbols.

25. BALL COURTS