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History Essay

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CJ Mamalias

History – Essay 1

Professor Hopkins

February 21, 2015

Olmec and Maya

Complex Societies confer to a set of factors that contain an agricultural surplus, urban settlements, specialized labor and trade, government, a stratified society, and sophisticated ritual traditions. Ever since the beginning of time, humans formed through generations and generations of species. It took quite a while for humans to fully develop their brains to start thinking out of the box and creating new ideas for their own. Nevertheless, complex societies arose independently during the centuries 3500 to 500 B.C.E. in several regions of the world. Out of all the other complex societies, the Olmec and Maya societies have some comparisons and differences that meet within the lines of the complex societies set of factors. The Olmec society appeared near the Gulf of Mexico during 1200 to 100 B.C.E., located near the modern Mexican City of Veracruz. When people refer to the first complex society of the Americas, they refer to them as the “Rubber People” because of the rubber trees that flourish in the region they inhabited. Their proper name is still unknown, so people labeled them Olmec, which means rubber people. There were many mysteries concerning the downfall of the Olmec’s around 400 B.C.E. when archaeologists studying the area found statues broken and buried. Although the Olmec’s declined, they influenced many other societies with astronomical observations, which helped create the first calendar to help keep track of the seasons. They also invented another system of writing, but only little survives because of calendrical inscriptions. The Olmec’s made a ball game for rituals involving human sacrifice. Later Mesoamerican societies adopted these Olmec traditions as well as their construction of ceremonial centers with temple pyramids. Other societies became better because theirs stood on Olmec foundations. The Maya society came around 300 to 1100 C.E. near the Yucatan Peninsula and was organized into small city-kingdoms. Within this society, there was a lot of warfare among the city-kingdoms to see who would rule over the other kingdoms. With warfare, there were always captives and in some kingdoms, they would kill the captives to sacrifice them to their gods in return of good fortune. The society was centered on a religious temple. That being said, they used a form of offering call bloodletting, which is the flow of blood, in return the gods would flow water. When a kingdom had captives, they would use the captives for bloodletting, but also use their own blood when needed. The ball game was also held and was played with captives as well. Some inventions of this society were a form of writing, ideographic elements with symbols for syllables, and mathematics. Their form of writing is the most flexible and sophisticated of all early American systems of writing. They also had two calendars; one is a solar year, which is 365 days a year, and the other is a ritual year having 260 days a year. Every 52-year cycle, the two calendars will be the same and complete a cycle. Using mathematics, they invented the concept of zero and also calculated the length of the solar year at 365.242, 17 seconds shorter than modern astronomers. As you can tell, some of the ideas from the Maya society coincide with that of the Olmec’s. From the two societies, there is a distinct similarity between them. They both use human sacrifice, a calendar, and a system of writing. The Olmec and Maya society both created different systems of writing but created them to communicate with their people. The Olmec made astronomical observations to start and create a calendar that led to the Mayans completing where they left off. Although their calendars aren’t the same, they both started and finished with the help of each other’s society. Who knows where the calendar would have been without one or the other societies. In many societies, one of the most famous similarities between all of them is human sacrifice. Many societies used human sacrifice to please their gods in return of good fortune for whatever the need at the time is, whether it is for water flow, victory in battle, or just good fortune. In this case, both societies use the ball game to see who would be sacrificed. The differences between the two societies are the governments. The Maya took their society further by using mathematics to develop the calendar more. In the Olmec society, everyone was united and worked together. There was no warfare going on between their government. Unlike the Olmec, the Maya society split up into city-kingdoms. One tried to dominate the other and become the top of the pyramid. They always fought for power and used captives to sacrifice for their gods. Between the two societies, I can see more similarities than differences. One society split up and tried dominating the other, fighting for power, while the other society remained peaceful and worked as one united society for the better. In the Olmec society, they developed fundamental structures that the Maya society carried out and developed more thoroughly in their era. The Olmec seemed to influence many other societies especially the Maya with the calendar and especially the ball game. The Maya society just took what the Olmec’s left off and improved it, for example the calendar and calculating the days in a solar year at 365.242 days. Between the Olmec and the Maya societies, there were comparisons and differences that met within the lines of the complex societies set of factors.

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