The Magnificent Maya

G and I went to a wonderful Arts Society talk today by Dr Diane Davies entitled The Magnificent Maya. She bought some replica items found in excavations including this wonderful 'book' which needed 3 people to hold it up as it must have been 6 metres long and it was double sided! I loved the patterns in and colours of their fabrics. Dr Davies was so passionate about her subject and had great slides, which always leads to an excellent talk.



For those interested in finding out more, here's some key points.

Achievements include:
- chocolate (only for Royalty though)
- architecture ('pyramids' and carved standing stones, nearly all built from limestone cut by flint tools and moved using only manpower)
- maths (one of the rare civilisations to have the number zero, also used the base of 20)
- calendars (they used 3 types. Their 'prediction' of the end of the world as rumoured a few years ago was just the end of one of their long calendar cycles)
- writing (including paper books as per the photo)
- astronomy (thought Venus being prominent was a good time to wage war i.e. Star Wars - George Lucas was a Maya fan!)
- Art (painted vessels. tombs and murals)

They didn't die out as is often thought after a major drought in 900AD, but moved from the rain forest to new sites and adopted different styles. 8 million Maya still live in Guatemala, but unfortunately they are very discriminated against.