The Ancient Maya

Mayans: a Y chromosome perspective

“…9 The City-State system incited rivalries and warfare in the quest for control over trade routes between the lowlands and the highlands. 10 At the start of the Classic period (around 1800 ya), the Mayan empire had become a complex and dynamic entity, undergoing a series of population expansions and contractions. 5 The Classic Period also experienced an intensification of trade and commerce among Mayan City-States and other civilizations including the Aztecs.…”

"The Only True People": Linking Maya Identities Past and Present

“…notes 1. In contemporary discourse, the cultural designation "Maya" is generally used to describe the indigenous peoples (and their ancestors) of the Yucatán Peninsula, encompassing the modern nations of Guatemala and Belize; the states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Chiapas, and Tabasco in Mexico; and the western portions of El Salvador and Honduras (e.g., Sharer and Traxler 2006). While many members of these groups may speak a Mayan language, this is not always a necessary prerequisite, especially when government or academic authorities are the designators.…”

“…Cocom's (2007) article for, after all, he is a Cocom. Earlier in the semester they had read the history of the Cocom lineage in Sharer's (1994) massive textbook.…”

“…Sharer and Traxler 2006). While forming the initial basis to define ancient class divisions, quantitative measures of social status are more easily simplified analytically than are interpretations of differential access to cultural capital (table 8.1).…”

An easy non-invasive X-ray diffraction method to determine the composition of Na-pyroxenes from high-density `greenstone' implements

“…The relative abundance of AGS implements led to the supposition that these had an exotic origin, since analogous materials were reported both in the Mayan (Lange, 1993;Sharer & Morley, 1995) and Chinese (Laufer, 1946) cultures but were unknown in the Alpine geological context. Gastaldi (1871) first hypothesized their autochthon provenance and Damour (1881) and Franchi (1900) reported the existence of analogous lithic material in very limited outcrops from the Piemonte zone, Western Alps.…”