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The Maya: Astronomy, Blood Ritual, and Sudden Collapse
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 16 2026
Pages: 158
Weight: 0.48
Height: 0.37 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The Maya created one of the most sophisticated civilizations of the ancient Americas, developing monumental cities, advanced systems of writing, complex calendars, and remarkable knowledge of astronomy. Their temples and inscriptions still offer clues about a civilization whose history stretches across more than two thousand years.
The Maya: Astronomy, Blood Ritual, and Sudden Collapse explores the origins, achievements, beliefs, and transformations of Maya civilization, while examining the evidence behind some of the most enduring questions about their history.
Readers will discover how Maya astronomers observed the movements of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars, and how celestial knowledge influenced calendars, ceremonies, architecture, and political life. The book also examines Maya writing, mathematics, cities, kingship, warfare, trade, agriculture, and religious traditions.
Particular attention is given to bloodletting and sacrifice, practices that played important roles within Maya religious and political traditions. Rather than presenting them only as sensational rituals, this book places them within the wider Maya understanding of gods, ancestors, rulership, and the relationship between humans and the supernatural world.
The book also investigates the so-called collapse of the Classic Maya cities. Instead of describing a single mysterious disappearance, it explores the evidence for drought, environmental pressure, warfare, political fragmentation, economic change, and migration, as well as the fact that Maya peoples and communities continued to exist long after many Classic-period cities declined.
From astronomy and monumental architecture to inscriptions and archaeological discoveries, The Maya offers an accessible introduction to one of the most fascinating civilizations in ancient American history.
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