Why mayans build pyramids




















Remind students to consider their audience for example, what should readers learn about the two subjects ; and, the thesis should come at the end of the introduction. A graphic organizer could help students finalize their draft you can find one on page 12 of this handout. Now, students are ready to write their first draft! Their essays should include an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. After students make necessary changes, have them exchange their essays with their classmates for peer review.

Using the same questions each student used when revising their work, classmates should identify the parts of the drafts that need reworking. Finally, the last step is for students to edit their essays for spelling, grammar, clarity, and punctuation errors. By writing a compare and contrast essay about the Mayan and Egyptian pyramids, your students will have the chance to sharpen their writing skills in the social studies classroom. This downloadable PDF handout for students goes more in-depth on this subject while providing essential organizing, writing, and editing tips.

Give a lesson on the significance of National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day with these Pearl Harbor activities for elementary and middle school students. How do we reframe our pedagogy to incorporate multiple narratives within our classrooms?

We can start with three building blocks: reading, content integration, and scaffolding of information.

Sign In. Cart 0. My Account. Shaped Staff. Tweet Tweet Share. Compare and Contrast Mayan and Egyptian Pyramids Essay In this writing activity, your students will compare and contrast the Mayan and Egyptian pyramids!

Have your students follow these five steps to write their compare and contrast essays: 1. Gather Details from Sources Your students should gather relevant details from their sources. Pyramids and their temples often housed burial chambers for influential Mayan citizens, and leaders sometimes constructed separate temples for their spouses, as well. Some researchers believe the Mayans rebuilt their pyramids and temples every 52 years, in accordance with the length of the Maya Long Count Calendar.

However, new rulers also rebuilt religious and government structures to exemplify their own power. Corbelled arches made Mayan architecture unique among Mesoamerican cultures. The stones that make up a corbelled arch are stacked in such a way that they move closer to the center of the arch as they ascend. These stones meet at the top of the arch and are often capped with flat stones.

The corbelled arches come in a variety of shapes, from rounded to triangular ones. Mayans were not the only civilization to use corbelled vaults, but they were the only ones in Mesoamerica to do so during the timespan of their civilization. Other societies that used corbelled arches include the Java civilization from Indonesia. There's also evidence that corbelled arches were used in Mediterranean and Mesopotamian cultures.

The Mayan religion included over gods, and some pyramids functioned as sacred spaces for priests to perform sacrificial rituals to these deities.

Human sacrifice was common among the Mayans, and was seen as a means of escaping a bleak post-mortal existence.

The Mayan afterlife encompassed a complex hierarch y of worlds, roughly divided into an underworld, middle world, upper world, and paradise. It was believed that someone who perished during childbirth or ritual sacrifice was spared the underworld. Other pyramids were merely symbolic of the Mayans' connection to the gods, and were not meant to be used at all. The latter pyramids had symbolic but essentially functionless structures, such as stairs that were too steep to use comfortably.

If they were ever used, it was the responsibility of the priests to climb these perilous steps. Mayan temples that served a religious purpose were similar to Egyptian temples.

One primary difference, however, is that Mayan pyramids had flat tops so workers could build temples inside. More temples have been discovered there than in any other Mesoamerican city.

Like many Mesoamerican pyramids, each was constructed around a core of rubble held in place by retaining walls. The walls were then faced with adobe bricks, and then covered with limestone. The base of the Pyramid of the Sun measures feet per side, with five stepped terraces reaching a height of some feet. Its massive size rivals that of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza.

Within the current pyramid is another, earlier pyramid structure of almost the same size. In , archaeologists discovered a cave underneath the Pyramid of the Sun, leading to a chamber in the shape of a four-leaf clover.

It was dedicated around A. The Maya , another dominant civilization of Mesoamerica, made temple-pyramids the glorious centers of their great stone cities. One of the most famous, the magnificently carved Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque Mexico , was a funerary monument to the seventh century king Hanab Pakal.

The tallest Maya pyramid, located in Tikal, Guatemala, dates to the eighth century A. Another Maya monument, built in the ninth and 10th centuries A. Constructed around A. Its four stairways have 91 steps each, which combined with the single step at the entrance to the temple adds up to stairs exactly—the number of days in the Mayan year. The Maya had a complex astronomical and cosmological system, and often angled their ceremonial buildings, like pyramids, so that they would face sunrise or sunset at particular times of the year.

The Aztecs , who lived in the Mexican valley between the 12th and 16th centuries, also built pyramids in order to house and honor their deities. Tenochtitlan, the great Aztec capital, housed the Great Pyramid, a four-stepped structure some 60 meters high. At its top, two shrines honored Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of sun and war, and Tlaloc, god of rain and fertility.

Egyptian pyramids are much older than American ones; the earliest Egyptian pyramid, the Pyramid of Djoser, was built in the 27 century BC. Mayan temples. Like the Mayan pyramids, their temples were important because of their ritual value.

Mayan temples, similar to those of the Aztecs, normally housed altars or stone platforms where the priests would perform thier sacrificial rituals to their god. Like many Maya buildings, Maya temples were built of stone, with platforms on the top where wooden and thatch structures could be built.

Temples tended to be pyramids, with steep stone steps leading to the top, where important ceremonies and sacrifices took place. Scholars have suggested a number of potential reasons for the downfall of Maya civilization in the southern lowlands, including overpopulation, environmental degradation, warfare, shifting trade routes and extended drought. One by one, the Classic cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned, and by A.

Finally, some catastrophic environmental change—like an extremely long, intense period of drought—may have wiped out the Classic Maya civilization. Many travelers have likely heard of their major cities, like Chichen Itza and Tulum. Yucatec Maya Phrases. Most Maya today observe a religion composed of ancient Maya ideas, animism and Catholicism.

Some Maya still believe, for example, that their village is the ceremonial centre of a world supported at its four corners by gods. The Maya writing system is considered by archaeologists to be the most sophisticated system ever developed in Mesoamerica.



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