Mari's Blog!

Mari had a very interesting post about the Mayans:

"Almost all the urban centers were built in tropical rain forest. This is theprobably the biggest reason why the Mayans never developed a fully urbanculture. Topical rain forest is difficult to live in. and can only support smallgroups of humans. While plant and animal growth seems almost out of control andthe rains never stop, tropical rain forest makes very poor farming land. Agreater amount of area is required to support each person—and people tend tospread out rather than form cities.Priests and noblemen would willingly piercebody parts, usually their tongue, ears or lips and "give" blood to the gods.Themore important a person was in their society, the more blood they were expectedto give to the GodsThe feathered serpent is the god of civilization, andconnected to the planet Venus and the wind. He represented the forces of goodagainst those of evil. According to one legend, Quetzalcoatl was driven from thecity of Tula, the Toltec capital, and wandered for many years until he reachedhis homeland, the east coast of Mexico."


This post answered some small questions that had been rotating in the back of my head about these very subjects like why didn't they become a booming example of civilization. The answer to that was that the Mayan civilizations were mainly centered in or around rain forests. This made it extremely difficult expand and become a thriving city. Another cool fact was that despite the rain forests' non-stop rain, it is incredibly hard to produce agriculture. I never would have guessed!