Maya Facts for Kids

The Maya had a super detailed timeline called the Long Count calendar. It was used to track huge stretches of time for history and myths.

The starting date, or "zero date," for this count is calculated by modern scholars to be way back on August 11, 3114 BC!

That means when they started counting, there were no phones, no cars, and humans hadn't even built the famous pyramids yet. It’s an ancient starting line!

This calendar was so complex that one cycle, the baktun, lasted 5,125.366 years.

You use '0' all the time in math, right? Well, the Maya figured out the powerful idea of zero as a placeholder for nothingness!

Their symbol for zero looked like a shell or a closed fist. They used it in their base-20 (vigesimal) number system.

This was super advanced-they were one of the first civilizations in the world to have a concept for zero!

Think about building something HUGE like a skyscraper-now imagine doing it without a single metal hammer or a wheel!

The Maya built incredible step-pyramids, like El Castillo at Chichen Itza, which stands about 24 meters (79 feet) tall.

They shaped and moved massive limestone blocks using only stone tools, sheer teamwork, and an amazing understanding of engineering.

Let's look closer at El Castillo at Chichen Itza. It's not just a cool pyramid; it's a giant, stone calendar!

Each of its four sides has 91 steps.

If you add those up (4 x 91 = 364) and then add the single top platform as the final step, you get 365—the exact number of days in our solar year!

While we use an alphabet with about 26 letters, the Maya used a logosyllabic system, which is a fancy way of saying they used both whole words and sound symbols together.

They had a huge library of signs, with over 800 different glyphs!

These signs were carved into stone monuments called stelae and painted in special books made from fig tree bark.

Forget coins or paper bills-the Maya used cacao beans (the seeds used to make chocolate) as money!

These weren't just treats; they were currency! You could buy a turkey for about 100 cacao beans.

They even buried jars of chocolate with their rulers so they could enjoy their favorite luxurious drink in the afterlife.

The Maya were brilliant astronomers who tracked the Sun, Moon, and planets without telescopes!

Their calculation for the length of a tropical solar year was more accurate than the one used by the Spanish when they arrived in the 1500s.

They built observatories, like El Caracol at Chichen Itza, to align perfectly with celestial events.

The Maya played a serious game called pitz, which involved hitting a ball with their hips, forearms, or rackets. No hands allowed!

These balls were made of solid natural rubber—the first of their kind—and could weigh as much as 9 pounds (about 4.1 kg)!

That's like trying to kick a bowling ball across the court! The game was part sport, part serious ritual.

The Maya weren't ruled by one king over a single country; they were organized into powerful, competing city-states, kind of like ancient Greece.

Archaeologists believe there were over 40 major cities during the Classic Period, with rivals like Tikal and Calakmul battling for power.

At its peak, the great city of Tikal may have held between 10,000 and 90,000 people in its core!

The peak time for many huge Maya cities, the Classic Period, ended around 900 AD with a massive mystery!

For reasons scientists are still debating, people abandoned enormous cities like Tikal, leaving their pyramids to be swallowed by the jungle.

The main guesses are long droughts, too much warfare between cities, or running out of farmland to feed everyone.