The Maya: cities, zero and chocolate
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What you will learn
By the end, you can read a Maya number made of dots and bars and describe three Maya achievements.
In a tomb at Río Azul in Guatemala, archaeologists found a lidded pot painted with Maya glyphs. When the writing was read, one word stood out: kakaw — cacao. Scientists tested the dried crust inside and found the same thing. It was a chocolate pot, about 1,500 years old, from a city deep in the rainforest.
Read the explanation
From about AD 250 to 900 the Maya built dozens of cities in the rainforests of Central America, each ruled by its own king. They raised stepped stone pyramids, carved glyphs (picture-signs) on stone and wrote books on bark paper. They tracked the sky with two calendars and counted in twenties, using a symbol for zero — one of the first in the world. And they drank cacao as a frothy, spicy drink.
- Cities: Tikal, Palenque, Copán and Chichén Itzá, with plazas, ball courts and pyramids up to about 70 m tall.
- Calendar: a 365-day year of 18 months of 20 days plus 5 extra days, and a separate 260-day cycle.
- Chocolate: cacao beans were so valuable that they were sometimes used to pay for goods.