Most Mayas lived mainly on the Yucatan peninsula in what is now Mexico (Knopf 12). Some lived in southern Mexico, which is presently the states of Chipas, Tabasco, Campeche, and Quintana Roo. Other Mayas lived in Central America in the countries of Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. The Mayas were divided in

The Maya were an incredible civilization. Nobody knows exactly why the empire had fallen. Maybe it was when the peasants got sick of the priests telling them what to do and had abandoned villages, causing the collapse. There could have been many other reasons such as plague, natural disasters, soil exhaustion and other agricultural problems, internal warfare, foreign invasions or the rebelling of peasants. Whatever factors led to the collapse, their net result was a weakening of Maya social, economic, and political systems to the point where they could no longer support large populations. The Mayan people had accomplished many things that few other ancient civilizations have accomplished, including their ability to write, have a good comprehension of astronomy, and still survive the changing world for many years.

The history of the Maya is divided into three major time periods: preclassic (2000 BC - AD 300), classic (AD 300 - AD 900), and postclassic (AD 900 - AD 1500's). (Benson 27,31)

Whitlock, Ralph. Everyday Life of The Maya. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1976.

Cotterell, Maurice and Adrian Gilbert. The Mayan Prophecies. 1995.

The Mayas' central philosophy was a belief of time going cycles and the fear of the day the world would come to an end. The Mayans believed there had been four ages prior to our own. The Mayan believed that the sun, which they nourished with sacrifices, would one day no longer send its life force, therefore bringing an end to the fifth and last age of man (Cotterell). Mayans counted days by two calendars. The first calendar was called tzolkin and it had 260 days. The second calendar was called Haab and it had 365 days (Cotterell). That meant that the Mayans had two names for every day. Therefore, the same name combination would not recur for 52 years. Each 52 year time period was known as a century to the Mayan (Cotterell). Whenever a Mayan century came to an end the Mayan people would leave the cities and go up into the surrounding hills and watch the stars. The Mayas would look up into the sky and watch out for the Pleiades star group. "The sign they were looking for was the Pleiades star-group, symbolizing for them the heavens for them a cosmic snake's rattle, crossing the southern meridian at midnight". The Mayas believed the head of the serpent was the sun and that the sun was the source of all life on earth. The Mayan holy number was 1,366,560; known as the birth of Venus, which began in August 13, 3114 BC and was the basis of their calendar (Cotterell). The Mayan calendar was divided into uinals of 20 days, tuns of 360 days, longer periods of 7,200 days were called katun and 144,000 days were called baktun. The number 13 was significantly important to the Mayan because they believed that after 13 baktuns the world would come to an end. In our own date the Mayan prophecy points out to December 22, 2012 (Cotterell). In the 1886 Maurice Cotterell made a theory about the Mayas concerning astrology and sun cycles. He suspected that the sun's magnetic field had an effect on life on earth. The sun has a complicated field that loops and twist itself into knots. It is believed by scientists that these loops give rise to sunspots. The size, number, and location of sunspots are continually changing. Maurice Corttell believed that sunspots have an effect on the earth's magnetosphere (Cotterell). Maurice Corttell devised a program that would calculate the relationship between the earth and the sun's magnetic field. He predicted that the sunspot cycle took about eleven and half years. He also found evidence for longer cycles including a period of 1,366,040 days (Cotterell). He therefore, proposed that the Mayan Holy number was some how related. Corttell had evidence that the Mayan Calendar was based on knowledge of the effects of sunspots. He believed that this was the cause for the obsession the Mayas had for long cycles of time and for their belief of the rise and downfall of four p

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Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page double spaced)