MAYAN ART
The earliest Mayan artists were primarily focused on religious themes. At this time, the Mayans depicted such activities as human sacrifice, warfare, daily life, and religious rituals with startling realism. All of the great Mayan cities created great sculptures. Sculpturing embellished Mayan temples, stela(e), monuments, and buildings. Sculptors produced amazing images of mythological creatures, decreased rulers, deities, and supernatural animals. Lords and rulers were attired in elaborate headdresses, costumes, and jewelry. Mayan sculptors preferred to work with limestone. However, they also worked with trachyte, sandstone, wood, and clay. They did this with nothing more than stone tools and wooden mallets.
Ceramics were equally important to the Maya. They used a crude device that rotated between the potters feet called a kabal. One of the first ceramic styles was called Amyan. Amyan style ceramics were believed to have been developed in the Guatemalan highlands around 1,000 BC. These first designs were very simple and one color. They made whistles the shape of animals as well as cooking pots and drinking vessels. Then between 300 and 700AD the Mayans excelled in ceramic development during what is now called the Early and Late Classic periods. These ceramic styles were called Tzakol and Tepeu. They are characterized by a variety of jar, bowl, plate, and vase styles. During this period the Mayans mastered a variety of decorative techniques including polychrome painting. The Tzakol and Tepeu ceramics are considered to be the most beautiful pottery made in ancient Mesoamerica. They were primarily decorated in animal deities, grotesque monsters, nobles and priests, and scenes of human sacrifice, in the colors of orange, yellow, and red.
The narrative quality of Mayan ceramics carried over into the murals that once covered the interior walls of Mayan palaces and temples. Murals have been found in a multitude of locations. The most dramatic of these are the fabulous frescoes at Bonampak in Chiapas, Mexico. Murals treated a wide array of subjects in very realistic terms. From this great detail archaeologists have been able to learn a great deal about costumes, musical instruments, religious rituals, warfare, and methods of human sacrifice.
Mayans also excelled in the working with jade. Jade was highly prized in Mayan world. The excavation of tombs has yielded large amounts of jade jewelry, effigies, plaques, and mosaics. Mayan craftsmen also carved in bone, shell, and wood. We have little information about the Mayan perishable arts of feather work and weaving because little has survived. Metal work did not become important until the Post classic period after 900 AD. From the evidence that we have we know that the Mayans mostly worked in copper and gold. Palenque is on of the most famous Mayan ruins,
SOURCE:
http://mayaincaaztec.com/maarthi.html
MAYAN CULTURE
The height of the Maya Civilization in the Classic Period produced the incredible cultural advances for which they are well known. The Maya believed deeply in the cyclical nature of life – nothing was ever `born’ and nothing ever `died’ – and this belief inspired their view of the gods and the cosmos. Their cosmological views, in turn, encouraged their imaginative efforts in architecture, mathematics, and astronomy. Beneath the earth was the dark realm of Xibalba (pronounced `shee-Bal-ba’ and translated as `place of fear’) from whence grew the great Tree of Life which came up through the earth and towered into the heavens, through thirteen levels, to reach the paradise of Tamoanchan (`place of the misty sky’) where beautiful flowers bloomed. In Mayan belief, however, one did not die and go to a `heaven’ or a `hell’ but, rather, embarked on a journey toward Tamoanchan. This journey began in the dark and treacherous underworld of Xibalba where the Xibalbans who lived there were more apt to trick and destroy a soul than help one.
If one could navigate through Xibalba, however, one could then find the way to ascend through the nine levels of the underworld, and the thirteen levels of the higher world, to paradise. The only ways in which a soul could by-pass Xibalba and travel instantly to Tamoanchan were through death in childbirth, as a sacrificial victim, in warfare, on the ball court, or by suicide (the Maya had a special goddess of suicide named Ixtab who was depicted as the rotting corpse of a woman hanging by a noose in the heavens). Once one reached Tamoanchan there was eternal happiness but, it must be noted, this paradise was not thought to actually exist in the sky but on the earth. After ascending through the thirteen levels, one did not live in the air but, rather, on a mystical mountain back on the planet. It was because of this cyclical view that the Maya did not believe there was anything wrong with human sacrifice. Those people who were offered to the gods did not `die' but simply moved on. This cosmological belief influenced every aspect of the Mayan civilization and rituals were performed regularly in caves, evoking the darkness of Xibalba, and on hills or high temples which symbolized the heights of Tamoanchan.
SOURCE: http://www.ancient.eu/Maya_Civilization/
The earliest Mayan artists were primarily focused on religious themes. At this time, the Mayans depicted such activities as human sacrifice, warfare, daily life, and religious rituals with startling realism. All of the great Mayan cities created great sculptures. Sculpturing embellished Mayan temples, stela(e), monuments, and buildings. Sculptors produced amazing images of mythological creatures, decreased rulers, deities, and supernatural animals. Lords and rulers were attired in elaborate headdresses, costumes, and jewelry. Mayan sculptors preferred to work with limestone. However, they also worked with trachyte, sandstone, wood, and clay. They did this with nothing more than stone tools and wooden mallets.
Ceramics were equally important to the Maya. They used a crude device that rotated between the potters feet called a kabal. One of the first ceramic styles was called Amyan. Amyan style ceramics were believed to have been developed in the Guatemalan highlands around 1,000 BC. These first designs were very simple and one color. They made whistles the shape of animals as well as cooking pots and drinking vessels. Then between 300 and 700AD the Mayans excelled in ceramic development during what is now called the Early and Late Classic periods. These ceramic styles were called Tzakol and Tepeu. They are characterized by a variety of jar, bowl, plate, and vase styles. During this period the Mayans mastered a variety of decorative techniques including polychrome painting. The Tzakol and Tepeu ceramics are considered to be the most beautiful pottery made in ancient Mesoamerica. They were primarily decorated in animal deities, grotesque monsters, nobles and priests, and scenes of human sacrifice, in the colors of orange, yellow, and red.
The narrative quality of Mayan ceramics carried over into the murals that once covered the interior walls of Mayan palaces and temples. Murals have been found in a multitude of locations. The most dramatic of these are the fabulous frescoes at Bonampak in Chiapas, Mexico. Murals treated a wide array of subjects in very realistic terms. From this great detail archaeologists have been able to learn a great deal about costumes, musical instruments, religious rituals, warfare, and methods of human sacrifice.
Mayans also excelled in the working with jade. Jade was highly prized in Mayan world. The excavation of tombs has yielded large amounts of jade jewelry, effigies, plaques, and mosaics. Mayan craftsmen also carved in bone, shell, and wood. We have little information about the Mayan perishable arts of feather work and weaving because little has survived. Metal work did not become important until the Post classic period after 900 AD. From the evidence that we have we know that the Mayans mostly worked in copper and gold. Palenque is on of the most famous Mayan ruins,
SOURCE:
http://mayaincaaztec.com/maarthi.html
MAYAN CULTURE
The height of the Maya Civilization in the Classic Period produced the incredible cultural advances for which they are well known. The Maya believed deeply in the cyclical nature of life – nothing was ever `born’ and nothing ever `died’ – and this belief inspired their view of the gods and the cosmos. Their cosmological views, in turn, encouraged their imaginative efforts in architecture, mathematics, and astronomy. Beneath the earth was the dark realm of Xibalba (pronounced `shee-Bal-ba’ and translated as `place of fear’) from whence grew the great Tree of Life which came up through the earth and towered into the heavens, through thirteen levels, to reach the paradise of Tamoanchan (`place of the misty sky’) where beautiful flowers bloomed. In Mayan belief, however, one did not die and go to a `heaven’ or a `hell’ but, rather, embarked on a journey toward Tamoanchan. This journey began in the dark and treacherous underworld of Xibalba where the Xibalbans who lived there were more apt to trick and destroy a soul than help one.
If one could navigate through Xibalba, however, one could then find the way to ascend through the nine levels of the underworld, and the thirteen levels of the higher world, to paradise. The only ways in which a soul could by-pass Xibalba and travel instantly to Tamoanchan were through death in childbirth, as a sacrificial victim, in warfare, on the ball court, or by suicide (the Maya had a special goddess of suicide named Ixtab who was depicted as the rotting corpse of a woman hanging by a noose in the heavens). Once one reached Tamoanchan there was eternal happiness but, it must be noted, this paradise was not thought to actually exist in the sky but on the earth. After ascending through the thirteen levels, one did not live in the air but, rather, on a mystical mountain back on the planet. It was because of this cyclical view that the Maya did not believe there was anything wrong with human sacrifice. Those people who were offered to the gods did not `die' but simply moved on. This cosmological belief influenced every aspect of the Mayan civilization and rituals were performed regularly in caves, evoking the darkness of Xibalba, and on hills or high temples which symbolized the heights of Tamoanchan.
SOURCE: http://www.ancient.eu/Maya_Civilization/