DESCENDANTS of the Mayans exist today, but what happened to the original Maya people?

Question

They did not kill one another and surely the Spaniards did not kill all of them. The surviviors, where could they have gone? They were very intelligent people ...I refuse to think that stupid europeans could have killed them all.

not living in atlantis ...stupid europeans. one day they will meet their match. perhaps in 2012?

Answer 1

Anthropologists refer to the decline of the Maya culture, in relation to its urban centers, as the "Collapse". Why it happened is still a matter of controversy, even among archeologists. What we do know is that Maya skeletal remains show signs of stress such as famine in the period of the decline. We also know that the golden age of the Maya ended before 1000 AD... thus making Spanish involvement nonconsequential, regardless of Apocalyto's final scene. That simply did not happen. The great Maya cities were abandoned long before Columbus and Cortez.

Peasant revolt against the elite may have played a part in the collapse. It was, after all, the king's and priest's jobs to keep the deities satisfied (with blood sacrifice) so that the people would have bountiful maize harvests. If the people were hungry, it would intensify public unrest as well as contribute to regional warfare and the breakdown of trade.

Abandonment of urban centers is not unknown in our own lifetimes, as much has been published concerning "white flight" from urban centers, and redistribution of population in the suburbs as the car and highway technology has enabled it.

It made good sense for the Maya to leave decaying urban centers and go out to make their living in the surrounding countryside. After all, one of the only benefits of living in the city was the physical protection offered by the municipality, and if that broke down, it would make no sense to stay in a place that might be attacked. Even the Athenians abandoned Athens once before the Persians.

All indigenous people suffered after European contact. Some estimate death by disease to have consumed over 90% of the indigenous population. There is liguistic and genetic evidence to show that the Maya did survive though, even though many intermarried with Europeans.

Surviving Maya continued to speak the dialects of their language, and preserved their mythology orally and eventually in written form. Their holy book is called the Popol Vuh. You can get a copy on Amazon.com.

Answer 2

Mayan Descendants

Answer 3

Recent discoveries suggest the following to be at least partly plausible:
Mayan culture was spread out across central america, in cities and villages, with a few regional rulers here and there. They dint't usually WAR in the sense that we might think of War. Usually once a year or every few months, a village's warriors would get a greivance about something from a neighboring territory, and they would have what might be considered a 'ritualistic War', where all the men would get dressed up in their war costumes and facepaint and whatnot, and march over to the other village. The other villages warriors would get their warrior faces on and come out to meet them. Then there would be ceremonial dancing, with name calling, spitting, cussing, a fistfight or two, and maybe a few (like2-4) exchanges of spears or arrows. Usually not too many casualties (1 or 2), and everyone would feel better, pack it up, and go home. Greivances Resolved...back to life in the village.
Around 1500, one of the regional leaders introduced a new form of warfare, in which villages were systematically slaughtered, eradicating much of the culture.

Answer 4

I don't understand your question. I don't know who the original Mayans were, but all of the Mayans who were alive when the Spanish arrived for the first time are obviously now dead. Most of them from disease, war, and starvation, but many from old age. Those who weren't killed by the Spanish had children, who had children, who had children and that's where you get their descendants. Because of all of the changes that have gone on over the past 500 years their culture has changed dramatically, but they are still Mayan people.

Answer 5

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
DESCENDANTS of the Mayans exist today, but what happened to the original Maya people?
They did not kill one another and surely the Spaniards did not kill all of them. The surviviors, where could they have gone? They were very intelligent people ...I refuse to think that stupid europeans could have killed them all.

Answer 6

They stayed in S America. Where could they have gone? They just stopped being "The Mayan People" and started being "natives" like all the other tribes in S America. How is this a mystery? The Europeans were killing Mayans, so people tried to avoid being killed and moved to areas where they could live. They couldn't hop a plane or sail across the ocean, so they must have stayed in S America. You can refuse to think that they were killed by the Europeans, but you have to admit that there is no secret society of "real" Mayans living in Atlantis...right?

Answer 7

Simply put, the Europeans killed many by violence and disease.

The rest were literally scattered to the four winds.

Unfortunate but at least they didn't meet the fate of the Guanche civilization (imposed by the Spaniards) in the Canary Islands...

Answer 8

One theory is that the majority of the Mayan people became so feed up with the human sacrifice and overbearing dominance by the religious leaders that they just scattered to other parts of the continent.

Answer 9

Why not pose your question to a Mayan descendant?
It seems to me, they could answer it better than anyone else.

Answer 10

the so-called survivors are still there. many had interbred with the invading spanish. others have moved more remote places in the jungles like the lacandon. there are hundreds of languages and dialects of the mayan stock still spoken today in mexico, guatemala, el salvador, nicaragua, etc.