By the third millennium B.C., they occupied over 386,000 square miles of territory-much more than their better-known contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia-and accounted for an estimated 10 percent of the world’s population. The Indus began building settlements in present-day India and Pakistan as early as 8,000 years ago, making them one of the earliest civilizations. IndusĪ sculpture, possibly of a priest, from the ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro, now in the Karachi Museum in Pakistan. READ MORE: Why the Maya Abandoned Their Cities 2. Millions of their Mayan-speaking descendants continue to inhabit the region to this day. Though dispersed, the Maya never disappeared. Some historians, for instance, point to a major drought, exacerbated by deforestation and soil erosion, as the impetus for the societal collapse, while others put the blame on a disease epidemic, a peasant revolt against an increasingly corrupt ruling class, constant warfare among the various city-states, a breakdown of trade routes or some combination thereof. But at the end of the Classic Period, in one of history’s great enigmas, the populace suddenly deposed its kings, abandoned the cities and ceased with technological innovation.ĭozens of theories have been put forth to explain what happened. Known for their hieroglyphic writing, as well as their calendar-making, mathematics, astronomy and architecture skills, the Maya reached the peak of their influence during the so-called Classic Period, from around A.D. A section of the Mayan Troano Codex, one of three surviving pre-Columbian Maya books.Īrguably the New World’s most advanced pre-Columbian civilization, the Maya carved large stone cities into the jungles of southern Mexico and Central America, complete with elaborate plazas, palaces, pyramid-temples and ball courts.
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