1. Who Were The Mayans?

2. The Maya Were Not One Unified Group of People.
Each city had it’s own ruler.
Pakal Ukit Took

3. They were more like City-states
They were more like City-states. These rulers formed alliances, traded and they also fought each other.

4. The Mayans were similar though because they all shared the same culture.
They had the same language.
They had the same class system.
They had the same calendar.
They had the same religion.
Quetzalcoatl

5. Mayan rulers filled their cities with sky high pyramids and ornate (decorated) palaces in order to show their great power and their connections to the gods.

7. But where did they live? They lived in Meso America.

8. We need to know about the land they lived on.
There were many different types of terrain (land).
They call the
Land :
Highlands
Lowlands
Topographical
Map

9. This is a map that shows elevation (How high the land is).

10. They ate foods we are all familiar with.
Beans
Corn
Peppers
Squash
Turkey
Fish (along the coast)
Chocolate

11. But what does it take to grow enough food to feed a whole city?
Beans
Seeds
Pre-Columbian food

12. They had to learn to grow a lot of food on what ever land they lived on.
In marshy
Swamps
On steep
hillsides

13. In thick Rainforests where the sun never shows through the thick canopy. (The top of the trees.)

14. Grasslands Peten Jungle

15. Some of these practices were wise and some were destructive.
They had developed many different agricultural techniques to deal with the challenges of:
Limited sunlight
Erosion which led the nutrients to run off with the rain
Swampy, wet land
Some of these practices were wise and some were destructive.

16. Agricultural challenges: 1.The Maya depended on Rain .
Chac-The Mayan Rain God

17. And most of the rainwater flowed into the lowlands and created swamps
And most of the rainwater flowed into the lowlands and created swamps. (They called them Bajos.)

18. So how did they grow crops on this land?

19. Maya farmers dug canals through the swamps……
Man made canals

20. …..piling the excess soil on to man made fields (platforms) in between the canals.
This was called
Raised-Field Farming.

21. 2. They had another technique when they needed to farm on hillsides.
It was called
Terraced Farming.

22. They cut wide steps or “benches” into the side of the mountain.

23. These steps were supported by either sod or stone walls.
Sod Stone Walls

24. Each level slows the flow of water runing off, slowing the erosion process.

25. A few times each season the Maya harvested water plants from the canals and spread them on the fields to further enrich the soil.

26. 3.Lastly, they had to come up with a way to grow food in the forests and Rainforests.
This type of farming is called Slash and Burn.

27. First, the farmer cut down all the trees in the area he wanted to plant crops in. Cutting down the trees was the “slash part” of the slash and burn farming method.

28. Next, he burned the tree stumps, and the trees he had cut down.

29. The ashes from the fires mixed with the soil
The ashes from the fires mixed with the soil. The ashes made the soil rich, or fertile.

30. But this was unproductive in the long run!
They get 100 percent productivity (100% of what they planted) the first year
60 percent the
next year
And less than
that in the years
to come.

31. So in three to five years, the land is basically useless, and they have to move on.”
We now call this deforestation.

32. Summary of how they adapted to their environment:
Hillsides  Terraced Farming
Jungles and Rainforests  Slash and Burn
Swamps  Raised field Farming