Maya Indians are one of the most mysterious inhabitants ever inhabiting our Earth. The definition of "tribe" is not quite suitable for them, because it was a fairly advanced civilization that arose on the territory of central America, right down to Mexico.
And even the little that our contemporaries inherited from the culture and knowledge that the Maya Indians possessed amazes a high level of anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists. Scientists have discovered evidence that they were able to develop a special, very detailed time reference system, as well as an alphabet of hieroglyphs.
Maya Indians lived in the territories of modern Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, as well as Mexico. The exact date of their appearance remains unknown, it is only clear that ten centuries BC in these places settlements of a mysterious people already existed.
This civilization is known for its tombs and pyramidal temples, miraculously preserved after the Spaniards, who ruthlessly destroyed everything that they considered "pagan idols" or accessories of a pagan cult. Thus, most of the annals of which the Mayan script was composed were destroyed.
However, even such a barbaric attitude to the culture of this people could not completely destroy the traces of his residence on the continent. And even the very little that archaeologists found on the site of their ancient villages confirms the high level of their development.
Maya hunted a lot. Serbatans were considered their main and longest weapon - these are bamboo tubes from which hunters fired clay balls. Representatives of this people learned to shoot from a bow from their neighbors - the Aztecs.
Today it is already known that the representatives of this people were excellent farmers who developed agricultural technologies that were far ahead of time. The applied art, which the Maya Indians owned, is so interesting that the works created by their hands still amaze our imagination.
Less than a hundred and fifty years ago, in the territories where these Indians lived in antiquity, ruins were found - the ancient Mayan cities. For more than a thousand years, dense tropical forests have hidden their temples, palaces, and even huge pyramids from the human eye. And although these tombs are inferior in size to Egyptian, nevertheless, they are much richer decorated with stone carvings.
Representatives of the Mayan people worshiped numerous gods, while they believed that every occupation, every profession must have a patron deity. Even the world-famous Mayan calendar for each day determined its god.
Many of us have heard that 2012 is considered the year of the end of the world, but not everyone knows that this date of the apocalypse arose when decoding the famous Mayan calendar created thousands of years ago.
The chronology of this ancient people ends on December 21 of this year. Today they talk and write a lot about it. Some people believe in the inevitability of the end of the world, others only chuckle, considering the Mayan calendar nothing more than mysticism. And although many of us are not superstitious, we still feel some concern.
However, the Mayans, compiling their famous calendar and counting it for 5216 years, did not at all mean that with its end the world would end, on the contrary, they predicted a restoration of the balance between male and female principles.
And yet not even the calendar is the most mysterious in the history of this ancient civilization. About a thousand years ago, the Mayans suddenly disappeared from the face of the Earth, and no one can reliably say why this happened and what happened to this developed people - the Mayans.