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Ajaw
Ajaw or Ahau ('Lord') is a pre-Columbian Maya political title attested from epigraphic inscriptions. It is also the name of the 20th day of the '' tzolkʼin'', the Maya divinatory calendar, on which a ruler's ''kʼatun''-ending rituals would fall. Background The word is known from several Mayan languages both those in pre-Columbian use (such as in Classic Maya), as well as in their contemporary descendant languages (in which there may be observed some slight variations). "Ajaw" is the modernised orthography in the standard revision of Mayan orthography, put forward in 1994 by the Guatemalan ''Academia de Lenguas Mayas'', and now widely adopted by Mayanist scholars. Before this standardisation, it was more commonly written as "Ahau", following the orthography of 16th-century Yucatec Maya in Spanish transcriptions (now ''Yukatek'' in the modernised style). In the Maya hieroglyphics writing system, the representation of the word ''ajaw'' could be as either a logogram, or spe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Civilization
The Maya civilization () of the Mesoamerican people is known by its ancient temples and glyphs. Its Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. It is also noted for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. The Maya civilization developed in the Maya Region, an area that today comprises southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. It includes the northern lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula and the highlands of the Sierra Madre, the Mexican state of Chiapas, southern Guatemala, El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain. Today, their descendants, known collectively as the Maya, number well over 6 million individuals, speak more than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages, and reside in nearly the same area as their ancestors. The Archaic period, before 2000 BC, saw the first developments in a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Priesthood
Until the discovery that Maya stelae depicted kings instead of high priests, the Maya priesthood and their preoccupations had been a main scholarly concern. In the course of the 1960s and over the following decades, however, dynastic research came to dominate interest in the subject. A concept of royal ʼshamanismʼ, chiefly propounded by Linda Schele and Freidel, came to occupy the forefront instead. Yet, Classic Maya civilization, being highly ritualistic, would have been unthinkable without a developed priesthood. Like other Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican priesthoods, the early Maya priesthood consisted of a hierarchy of professional priests serving as intermediaries between the population and the deities. Their basic skill was the art of reading and writing. The priesthood as a whole was the keeper of knowledge concerning the deities and their cult, including calendrics, astrology, divination, and prophecy. In addition, they were experts in historiography and genealogy. Priests w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Hieroglyphics
Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs, is historically the native writing system of the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica and is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered. The earliest inscriptions found which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BCE in San Bartolo, Guatemala. Maya writing was in continuous use throughout Mesoamerica until the Spanish conquest of the Maya in the 16th and 17th centuries. Maya writing used logograms complemented with a set of syllabic glyphs, somewhat similar in function to modern Japanese writing. Maya writing was called "hieroglyphics" or hieroglyphs by early European explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries who found its general appearance reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphs, although the two systems are unrelated. Though modern Mayan languages are almost entirely written using the Latin alphabet rather than Maya script, there have been recent developments encouraging a revival of the Maya glyph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kʼo
Kʼo is one of several Mayan ceremonial center sites around and associated with the Classic Mayan city of Holmul located in modern-day Guatemala. Currently, the site boasts what may be the royal tomb of the earliest known Mayan ruler. Geography The site is located 15 kilometers west of the Belize border and 80 kilometers south of the Mexican border. It is one of several sites within a 6 km radius of Holmul and is southeast of Holmul across the Holmul River. The entire Holmul complex is located within Northeastern Guatemala in the central lowland Peten region. The area receives an average of 80 in. (2000 mm) of rainfall annually and temperatures generally range from 70-95 F (25-35 C) similar to the neighboring southern lowlands. The site of Kʼo sits at about 200–250 meters above sea level on the edge of the highland plateau. This placement allows the site easy access to wetlands and water sources. In fact, Kʼo elevation places it above several aguadas (water sources f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, the era covers the history of Indigenous cultures until significant influence by Europeans. This may have occurred decades or even centuries after Columbus for certain cultures. Many pre-Columbian civilizations were marked by permanent settlements, cities, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, major earthworks, and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first permanent European colonies (c. late 16th–early 17th centuries), and are known only through archaeological investigations and oral history. Other civilizations were contemporary with the colonial period and were described in European historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya civilization, had their own ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Inscriptions
Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a population native to the old Wej province in Ethiopia Places * Maya (river), a river in Yakutia, Russia * Maya (Uda), a river in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia * Maya, Uganda, a town * Maya, Western Australia, a town * Maya Karimata, an island in West Borneo, Indonesia * Maya Mountains, a mountain range in Guatemala and Belize ** Maya Biosphere Reserve, a nature reservation in Guatemala * Mount Maya, a mountain in Kobe, Japan ** Maya Station, a railway station in Kobe, Japan * La Maya (mountain), an alp in Switzerland * Al Maya or Maya, a town in Libya Religion and mythology * Maya religion, the religious practices of the Maya peoples of parts of Mexico and Central America ** Maya mythology, the myths and legends of the Maya civilization * Maya (re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Government Printing Office
The United States Government Publishing Office (USGPO or GPO; formerly the United States Government Printing Office) is an agency of the legislative branch of the United States Federal government. The office produces and distributes information products and services for all three branches of the Federal Government, including U.S. passports for the Department of State as well as the official publications of the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Executive Office of the President, executive departments, and independent agencies. An act of Congress changed the office's name to its current form in 2014. History The Government Printing Office was created by congressional joint resolution () on June 23, 1860. It began operations March 4, 1861, with 350 employees and reached a peak employment of 8,500 in 1972. The agency began transformation to computer technology in the 1980s; along with the gradual replacement of paper with electronic document distribution, this has led to a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded on August 10, 1846, it operates as a trust instrumentality and is not formally a part of any of the three branches of the federal government. The institution is named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson. It was originally organized as the United States National Museum, but that name ceased to exist administratively in 1967. Called "the nation's attic" for its eclectic holdings of 154 million items, the institution's 19 museums, 21 libraries, nine research centers, and zoo include historical and architectural landmarks, mostly located in the District of Columbia. Additional facilities are located in Maryland, New York, and Virginia. More than 200 institutions and museums in 45 states,States without Smithsonian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bureau Of American Ethnology
The Bureau of American Ethnology (or BAE, originally, Bureau of Ethnology) was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives, records and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Interior Department to the Smithsonian Institution. But from the start, the bureau's visionary founding director, John Wesley Powell, promoted a broader mission: "to organize anthropologic research in America." Under Powell, the bureau organized research-intensive multi-year projects; sponsored ethnographic, archaeological and linguistic field research; initiated publications series (most notably its Annual Reports and Bulletins); and promoted the fledgling discipline of anthropology. It prepared exhibits for expositions and collected anthropological artifacts for the Smithsonian United States National Museum. In addition, the BAE was the official repository of documents concerning American Indians collected by the various US geological surveys, espe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of books or individual stories in the public domain. All files can be accessed for free under an open format layout, available on almost any computer. , Project Gutenberg had reached 50,000 items in its collection of free eBooks. The releases are available in plain text as well as other formats, such as HTML, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and Plucker wherever possible. Most releases are in the English language, but many non-English works are also available. There are multiple affiliated projects that provide additional content, including region- and language-specific works. Project Gutenberg is closely affiliated with Distributed Proofreaders, an Internet-based community for proofread ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Halach Uinik
Halach uinik or halach uinic (Yucatec Maya:'real man') was the name given to the supreme ruler, overlord or chief, as they were called in the colonial period of a Maya ''kuchkabal''. Most ''kuchkabal'' were run by a halach uinik, who ruled on behalf of one of the gods of their pantheon, constituting a theocracy. The succession occurred in the same family, with power passing from parent to child, under the law of primogeniture. The halach uinik concentrated all religious, military and civil power in one person. They chose officials from among the members of the theocracy who helped in the administration of the ''kuchkabal''. They usually designated their family members as heads or ''batab'' of the ''batalib'' (municipalities) that formed the ''kuchkabal''. These ''batabob'' commanded their own soldiers, presided over the local council, implemented justice, and controlled the payment of taxes. In addition to these assignments, they also took care of the fields at the times indica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holmul
Holmul is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Maya civilization located in the northeastern Petén Basin region in Guatemala near the modern-day border with Belize. Location In spite of its relatively modest size, Holmul was important to both the Tikal and the Kaanul (Kan/"Snake") dynasties. According to archaeologist Francisco Estrada-Belli, Holmul occupied a strategic position for both these kingdoms. Holmul lay along the best east-west route between Tikal and the coast. And it also lay on the north-south route between the Kaanul capital Dzibanche and the Guatemalan Highlands. The latter route did not pass through Tikal territory, and was very important for trade, because of the strategic materials that could be imported from there. Archaeological research The site was first visited by an archaeological research team in 1911, led by Harvard University archaeologist Raymond Merwin. The initial work by Merwin at Holmul (later expanded by George Clapp Vaillant) produc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
