The Ancient Mayans Essay -- History Historical Essays

The Ancient Mayans "The Maya" in Across the Centuries gives a good overview of the Maya. However, the text fails to expand and several key issues such as the influence of the Olmecs, social structure, the relevance of sacrifices, Spain's influence on the history of the Maya, and how the Mayan civilization fell. By leaving out the aforementioned issues the Maya are given less recognition than they deserve. By glossing over the Maya the authors of Across the Centuries essentially teach children that the Maya ar not of crucial importance. Across the Centuries' inadequate "The Maya" not only teaches students to not care about other cultures, it denies them the knowledge of an ancient culture more than worthy of recognition. "The Maya" begins with a quote from John Lloyd Stephens, one of the first Europeans to come across the remnants of the Mayan civilization. The chapter then explains where the Maya lived and the conditions of their environment. The agricultural methods are then elaborated on, followed by a section devoted to priests and kings. Finally "the Maya" ends with Mayan achievements. The whole chapter consists of only six pages, a rather small amount of information for a culture of such importance. According to The Maya "whether or not one thinks of the Olmecs as the "mother culture" of Mesoamerica, the fact is that many other civilizations, including the Maya, were ultimately dependent on the Olmec achievement"(Coe 50). It is believed that the Olmec, a civilization that inhabited the Yucatan Peninsula before the Maya, is responsible for many of the Mayan achievements in mathematics, architecture, and astrology. Unfortunately, Across the Centuries only mentions the Olmecs in "the Maya" when referring to the... ...tory pertaining to dominant versus minority cultural history, a sad fact especially in this day and age. Unequal proportioning is clearly scene in Across the Centuries' "The Maya", which is only six pages long. Hopefully one day our children will have textbooks with the latest objective information, until then teachers will continue to modify their lessons to prevent this unequal historical proportioning. Works Cited Armento, Beverly and Nash, Gary and Salter, Chistopher and Wixon, Karen. Across the Centuries. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991. Bently, Jerry and Ziegler, Herber. Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past.Boston: McGrawHill, 2000. Coe, Michael. The Maya. 6th edition. London: Thames and Hudson, 1999. Culbert, T. Patrick. The Lost Civilization: The Story of the Classic Maya. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.