10
Prisoners, slaves, and others were prepared for sacrifice by being painted blue and sometimes tortured. They were then led up to the top of one of the pyramids. There they were either shot with a volley of arrows or they had their still beating heart cut out of their chest by a temple priest. Sometimes the assistant priests would then skin the victim and the head priest would dress himself in the skin and perform a ritual dance.
9
Contrary to popular belief, the Mayans don't have just one calendar and none of their calendars predicted the world would end in 2012
8
They have three calendars that work in cycles. One of them, the Haab, has a 365 day cycle just like the modern Gregorian calendar. The Long Count calendar cycles roughly every 2,880,000 days and was said to reset in 2012. This led to the doomsday prophecies.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/64092100@N02/5837426374/
6
Unfortunately many of their writings were lost during the Spanish conquest. Through laborious study during the 20th and 21 centuries much of their remaining writings have been recovered and translated
5
Like the Aztecs, Mayans never used iron or steel. Their weapons were made of obsidian, or volcanic rock.
4
Besides having flattened foreheads and crossed eyes, Mayan nobleman had noses that were built up with putty giving them a beaked shape. Their teeth were also inlaid with jade.
3
Speaking of teeth, nobelwomen filed their teeth into points
2
Outside of the Babylonian systems, the Mayans were perhaps the first civilization to explicitly use the number 0 as a place holder. Indian mathematicians later became the first to use it as a mathematical value in computations.
1
Nobody knows how the Mayan Empire declined. Long before the Spanish came many of the great cities had already been long abandoned and lay in ruins. Scholars have hypothesized reasons ranging from drought and famine to overpopulation and climate change.
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