Maya Society: Did you mean...?

Although John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood are consistently credited with the `discovery' of the Maya Civilization, there were many who preceded them who sparked their interest in making their famous travels through Mesoamerica...

The Maya hieroglyphic writing system was a sophisticated combination of pictographs directly representing objects and ideograms (glyphs) expressing more abstract concepts such as actions, ideas and syllabic sounds. Maya writing has survived...

For over three centuries, the ancient Maya flourished in Mesoamerica. They built giant stone pyramids surrounded by dense jungle, used a calendrical system that made many believe that 2012 would be the end of the world, and created a writing...

Chacchoben (pronounced chac-CHO-bin) is a Maya site dated to c. 700 located in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. Once a large and significant urban religious center, the city was abandoned c. 900-950 CE at about the same time as the other...

For the Maya, reliable food production was so important to their well-being that they closely linked the agricultural cycle to astronomy and religion. Important rituals and ceremonies were held in honour of specialised workers; from beekeepers...

Joshua J. Mark goes looking for adventure while visiting the Maya site of Chichen Itza in Mexico and finds sprites, spirits and iguanas amongst the ruins. He tells of his journey to this magical ancient site that has become a symbol of the...

The names of John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood are forever linked to the Maya and Mayan studies as the two great explorers who documented the ruins from Copan in the south to Chichen Itza in the north. The stories told by Stephens...

The Maya sites of San Gervasio (on the island of Cozumel) and Tulum (on the mainland of Mexico in Quintana Roo) are often overlooked for the better-known Chichen Itza or other spectacular ruins further inland but both these locations have...

Mycenaean society was strictly hierarchical, valued family lineage, and awarded higher social status to those involved with religious or military activities and palatial administration. The lower classes contained craftsmen and artisans who...

The society of the Celts in Iron Age Europe was made up of several distinct hierarchical groups. At the top were rulers and elite warriors, then there were the religious leaders, the druids, and then specialised craftworkers, traders, farmers...