Research Paper On Mayan Civilization

The Maya of Mexico and Central America are one of the ancient world's most captivating and secretive civilizations. The Maya Civilization—also called the Mayan civilization—is the general name archaeologists have given to several independent city states who shared a cultural heritage in their language, customs, dress, artistic style and material culture.
The Maya had 800 distinct hieroglyphs or symbols; the first evidence of their language was discovered written on walls of buildings beginning as early as 300 BC. Scholars today agree that the Mayan glyphs are one of only three writing systems in the ancient world and all others were probably influenced by existing scripts. Archaeologists reported on Jan 2006, that the script sample discovered is clear evidence that the Maya were writing more than 2,300 years ago.
The Classic period, A.D. 250-900, is the time of the civilization's greatest glory. During this time the Maya erected countless stone monuments engraved with portraits and hieroglyphs that recorded dynastic histories—the births, marriages, and takeovers of the ruling families.

This is the time when the Myan grasped the numerical idea of zero, invented agricultural timetables and impressive calendars to track the heavens. In addition to their writing system, they had three calendar systems. The first was the Long Count. The Long Count started in 3114 B.C., when the Maya thought time began, and was divided into five cycles; it included a 260 day ritual cycle and a 365 day solar calendar. They had a complete knowledge of naked-eye astronomy and charted the movements of the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter. In addition, they monitored the constellations through the night sky, and marked the position of the sun along the