Comparing Civilizations

The Mayan civilization is a historical Mesoamerican civilization which extended across present-day Guatemala, the Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador. The Maya civilization lasted about 3,000 years and featured a written language, architecture, a well-ordered social class system, agriculture, art, the development of a calendar, mathematics, trade and a well-developed religious system. They were skilled as farmers, weavers, and potters. There are around thirty different indigenous Mayan languages although most people spoke …

…system of roads linking the cities to the empire. The roads covered 14,000 miles and included rope bridges and staircases down slopes. If someone stole, murdered, or had sex with a Sapa wife or a Sun Virgin, they were thrown off a cliff, hands cut off or eyes cut out, or hung up to starve to death. Prisons were of no use because punishment usually consisted of death. Their end came when the Spanish invaders arrived.