Meet The Maya - 6th Grade Social Studies

Suggested levels for Guided Reading, DRA, Lexile, and Reading Recovery are providedin the Pearson Scott Foresman Leveling Guide.GenreExpositorynonfictionComprehensionSkills and Strategy Compare andContrast Draw Conclusions VisualizeText Features CaptionsGlossaryMapSidebarsScott Foresman Reading Street 4.5.2Meetthe MayaISBN 0-328-13477-5ì (sk m) bdeh p -Ä-U-Ä-Uby Adam McClellan

Reader ResponseMeee t the MayMeMaya1. How were the Maya and Roman civilizationssimilar? How were they different? Make aVenn diagram like the one below to show theirlikenesses and . On page 11, what words does the author use tohelp the reader visualize how early astronomersstudied the planets?3. The word astronomy contains the combining formastro- which means “stars” or “space.” Make a listby Adam McClellanof other words that contain this combining form.Explain how each relates to stars or space.4. Review the headings used to organize thebook. Do they present the story of the Maya inchronological order or by topic? Explain youranswer.Editorial Offices: Glenview, Illinois Parsippany, New Jersey New York, New YorkSales Offices: Needham, Massachusetts Duluth, Georgia Glenview, IllinoisCoppell, Texas Ontario, California Mesa, Arizona

Every effort has been made to secure permission and provide appropriate credit forphotographic material. The publisher deeply regrets any omission and pledges tocorrect errors called to its attention in subsequent editions.Unless otherwise acknowledged, all photographs are the property of Scott Foresman,a division of Pearson Education.Photo locators denoted as follows: Top (T), Center (C), Bottom (B), Left (L), Right (R),Background (Bkgd)Opener Digital Vision; 1 Charles & Josette Lenars/Corbis; 3 Royalty-Free/Corbis;5 José Fuste Raga/zefa/Corbis; 6 (T) Digital Vision; 6 (B) Sandro Vannini/ Corbis;7 Yann Arthus-Bertrand/Corbis; 8 Historical Picture Archive/Corbis; 9 RicErgenbright/Corbis; 10 Macduff Everton/Corbis; 12 (Bkgd) Bettmann/Corbis,12 (Inset) Kevin Schafer/Corbis; 14 Charles & Josette Lenars/Corbis; 17 DannyLehman/Corbis; 18 Macduff Everton/Corbis; 19 Michael Freeman/Corbis; 20 Charles & Josette Lenars/Corbis; 21 ML Sinibaldi/CorbisISBN: 0-328-13477-5Copyright Pearson Education, Inc.All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication isprotected by Copyright, and permission should be obtained from the publisherprior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmissionin any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, orlikewise. For information regarding permission(s), write to: Permissions Department,Scott Foresman, 1900 East Lake Avenue, Glenview, Illinois 60025.2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 V0G1 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05Maya King Bird-JaguarLong Ago in Central AmericaBy the third and fourth centuries, the oncegreat Roman Empire had begun to decline. Onthe other side of the world, another civilizationwas on the rise.In the jungles and highlands of CentralAmerica, the Maya people were just beginningtheir golden age. Like the Romans, the Mayacontrolled a vast empire and had their owncalendar, writing, and mathematics systems.3

Maya landsThe Maya lived in a large area ranging fromCentral America into southern Mexico. The areais known as Mesoamerica. Ancient Maya landsare now part of the countries of Mexico, Belize,Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.Evidence of Maya life in Mesoamerica dates allthe way back to 2000 B.C. In their early days, theMaya lived simply; their culture was dependenton small-scale farming.But by the first century B.C., the Mayaculture had developed. It peaked from A.D. 300to A.D. 900. During that time, the Maya builthundreds of cities out of stone, with glorioustemples in their ceremonial centers. The Mayaalso created their own mathematics system,calendars, and system for understanding the stars.4Ruins of Maya temple in GuatemalaThe World of the MayaHow do we know about the Maya? Like theancient Romans and Greeks, the Maya left behindremarkable examples of their life and culture.From their art, writing, and architecture, we cantell that the Maya were an amazing civilization.The ancient Maya lived in three main regionsof Mesoamerica. In the north, there was dry,scrubby land, with soil that was not particularlyarable, or good for farming. In the south,bordering the Pacific Ocean, there were highmountains with soil that was rich and good forfarming. In the eastern and central regions therewas a tropical rain forest. This was the heart ofMaya civilization.5

Maya pyramidPyramid of KukulcanEgyptian pyramidMagnificent TemplesAt its height, the Maya civilization was themost powerful civilization in its part of the world.The Maya built large structures out oflimestone. The biggest of these were the templepyramids, which were usually situated at thecenter of a city. The largest rising as high as 212feet, the pyramids were centers for the Mayareligion. Traveling Maya also used these templesas landmarks, since their tops rose high abovethe trees.6Maya MasterpiecesToday, people flock to the Maya ruins to seethese remarkable buildings firsthand. How theMaya built them is still a mystery. Unlike othercivilizations, such as that of the ancient Romans,the Maya didn’t use pack animals to carrymaterials and supplies.The pyramids of ancient Egypt were designedso that their sides rose from base to peak in onesmooth line. In contrast, many Maya pyramidsare terraced, rising in smaller and smaller levels,much like steps. Up each side was a steep flightof stairs. At the top were altars used for religiousceremonies.The Maya also built ceremonial platforms,with mythological figures carved into their sides.They built ball courts and tall buildings that wenow know were observatories.7

The Maya believed thatthey were created out ofcorn flour by the gods.Most Maya meals involvedcorn. Tortillas were madefrom corn meal. Mashedcorn wrapped in corn husksmade tamales. Groundcorn mixed with hot watermade a drink, atole.Maya LifeThe Maya were successful farmers. They grewmaize, or corn; squash; beans; and peppers. Theydeveloped expert farming techniques, includingways to irrigate their crops with fresh water fromthe mountains. Cities and villages had cenotes, ornatural freshwater wells.To farm the dense rain forests, the Mayapracticed a method of clearing land called slashand burn, in which they cut and burned all wildplants in the area. They also rotated crops tokeep the soil from being drained of all nutrients.And after two years of planting, a field was leftalone and uncultivated for ten years.The Maya also fished and hunted turkey, deer,and armadillo. They picked wild fruit and evenenjoyed a form of chocolate.Yet despite their magnificent temples andsophisticated farming methods, most Maya livedin small, simple houses. These were built withmud walls and thatched roofs supported bypoles. A one-room house held a whole family.A modern mud-and-thatch house in Ecuador89

The ruins of an ancient Mayaobservatory at Chichen Itza, Mexico10Early AstronomersThe Maya had a fascination with, and acuriosity about, the movements of the moon,the stars, the planets, and the sun. They believedthe sky had a major influence on life on Earth. Insome ways, they were right.Without computers or telescopes, Maya priestsstudied astronomy. They used simple tools, suchas forked sticks placed in the ground, to helpthem observe the positions of Venus, the sun,the moon, and the constellations as they movedacross the background of the sky. Windowsor doors might be placed so that sunlight ormoonlight would hit them directly, and somebuildings were aligned to mark the movement ofplanets, such as Venus.The Maya based some religious ceremonieson important events in the solar year, such asthe spring and fall equinoxes (when day andnight are the same length). In addition, the Mayacreated not one, but three, entire calendarsbased on their understanding of the sky.11

The Maya CalendarsThe Maya used their three different calendarsat the same time. The 260-day Tzolkin (divine)calendar was used in the Maya religion. Ineveryday life, or civil life, the Maya followed theHaab calendar.Maya astronomers tracked the sun’s positionand discovered that a year was a bit more than365 days. The Haab divided that year into 18months of 20 days each, followed by a five-dayperiod at the end of the year. This end period,the Uayeb, was considered a time of bad luck.The third Maya calendar is known as the LongCount. Like the Tzolkin, the Long Count wasused in Maya religion. It was used to count thetime that had passed from the start of the Mayaera. According to the Long Count, the Maya erabegan in 3114 B.C.The basic unit of the Long Count was the kin(day). A Long Count date was a complicatedseries that included fivedifferent units of time.20 x 18 5?Multiply 20 days by 18 months and add five moredays. What do you get? 365. That’s the same numberof days as in a standard calendar year. (Our year isdivided into 12 months, however.) The Maya valuedaccuracy. They calculated that a year was 365.242036days long.From Kin to BaktunThe Long Count calendar dividedtime into five different units: kin (one day) uinal (20 kin) tun (18 uinal—or about one year) katun (20 tun—about 20 years) baktun (20 katun—just under 400 years)1213

Maya writing looked like pictures,but every picture had a meaning.The Mystery of Maya WritingWe know a lot about the Maya because theyinvented their own system of writing.Most Maya didn’t know how to read andwrite. Instead, the Maya rulers and priests keptthis knowledge to themselves. Because of this,most of the surviving Maya writing is aboutgovernment or religion.Maya writing looks like pictures or symbolson a page. These symbols are called glyphs. LikeEgyptian hieroglyphs, which are also pictures,many of the Maya glyphs are drawings of objectsfrom the Maya world. Some glyphs are harder tounderstand than others.14Reading GlyphsSometimes a single glyph stands for a wholeword. There are 600 of these single glyphs calledlogograms. Another set of 150 glyphs calledsyllabograms stands for the different syllables ofthe Maya language.What does Maya writing look like? If youwere using syllabograms to make a word, youmight organize them into one block. Theseshapes would be stacked on top of one anotheror placed side by side. To read them, you wouldstart at the top left and work down to thebottom right.In the 1950s, researchers began unraveling themystery of Maya writing. Today, we know themeaning of more than three-fourths of all glyphs!SASAMMAorSAM15