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- lived in three separate sub-areas:
-northern Maya lowlands: on the Yucatán Peninsula
-southern lowlands: in the Peter district of northern Guatemala & parts of Mexico, Belize & western Honduras
-southern Maya highlands: in the mountainous region of southern Guatemala
- each community ja their own language & culture
- majority of population consisted of farmers
- only started to settle down around 1800 BC.
- learned to build a civilisation in a tropical forest climate
- the Maya took advantage of the areas natural resources
- limestone (construction)
- volcanic rock obsidian (tools & weapons)
- salt
- jade
- quetzal feathers (decorate costumes of Maya nobility)
- marine shells (trumpets in ceremonies and warfare

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~Today:
- nominal Roman Catholics
- late 20th Century started to convert to Evangelical Protestantism
- Religion is mixed with traditional beliefs
~Back in the day:
- deeply religious
- worshipped gods related to nature (eg. god of sun, rain or corn)
- had at least 166 named gods
- believed that even inanimate objects had a soul
- Mayan people underwent ritual bloodletting and self-torture for gods
- losers of a game (forerunner of soccer) were sacrificed to gods
- sacrifices were thought to guarantee fertility, demonstrate piety and make peace with the gods
-drawing of blood was thought to nourish gods and achieve contact with them

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- various combinations of around 1000 signs
- made up of logograms (represent words e.g. @) & syllabograms (represent single syllables)
- Maya writing is phonetic
- developed in the 3rd centuries B.C.
- fell out of use in 17th century
- can be found on different mediums e.g. vases or wood
- Maya books made from bark-paper (Codices)
- screen fold books bound with jaguar skin -> we only know about four that survived
- glyph-blocks -> group of signs that form a word
- largest sign -> main sign
- attached smaller ones-> affixes
- read from left to right and top to bottom in double-columns
- texts usually begin with a date
- sentence structure: Date-Verb-Suject
- dates take up to 80% of the text
- verbs are often just one or two glyph blocks
- 3rd person singular pronoun is the most common
- most ancient texts we know come from public monuments
- nearly 85% of the known hieroglyphs have been decoded
- only a small group of people could write and read

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- majority began to collapse during ninth and tenth centuries A.D.
- Intercity relations soured
- Warfare increased
- Trade declined
- Death rate rose
-real reason is unknown
- hypothesis:
- climate simulations (drought) combined with slash-and-burn farming techniques -> destroyed forests
- wealth city centres became deserted wastelands (some died some scattered to other more fertile land)
- constant warfare among competing city-states
- European colonisation-> Indigenous people were forced to convert to Christianity

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- more than six million descendants live in Central America (Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, parts of Mexico)
- roughly 40% of Guatemalans are of Mayan descent
- keep traditions alive e.g. clothing style
- more than 30 languages are still spoken today which originated from the Mayan language
- live in communities -> farm homesteads