Mayan Religion

We also learned a lot about the Mayan religion while we were at Tikal. The first thing our guide told us is that they believed there were 13 levels above the earth which reprsented different levels of heaven. There were 9 levels below the earth which comprised the underworld. Their religion seems most similar to Buddism, but instead of reincarnation, they believed a bit differently. Once a person dies, their soul would go to one of the levels of the underworld or one of the levels in heaven, depending on how they lived their life. If they went to the underworld they may be able to suffer a punishment then be sent to heaven or their soul may come back in an animal. If the soul went to the heavens, it would become recycled and eventually enter Earth as a whole and the the cycle would start over again. Everything that they believed was very cyclical. Their heaven was in the constellation of Orion and the 13 levels basically made their way up to Orion. Much of their beliefs revolved around the suns and the earths. One interesting thing here is that they believed that the sun was turning and not the Earth. They had some of their buildings and temples set up, such that they could read the equinoxes from the way the sun shone on these structures. At the days of the equinoxes, in December, March and June, the sun would shine perfectly to cast a shadow from one structure onto another. They used this to be able to tell what time of the year it was so that they would know when to plant their crops. It took a lot of time for them to build the structures just perfectly, but over many years they were able to do this. Ingenious!

This was part of the Southern Acropolis. We walked around all inside of these structures and were able to see all sorts of rooms and podiums, etc. Scott laughed at me when I made a comment about how small the rooms were. :D



In the Northern Acropolis, there were a few different faces, but this one was in the best condition. I was amazed at how long this detail has lasted in time! The next pictures show some more amazing detail on the side of a couple of the temples.

This is a good example of how many of the temples are still completely covered with the forest that they have lived amongst for so many generations. The top of this one has been uncovered, but some of them have nothing but trees on the top and look like hills in the middle of a forest.