Almost 10 years later, a ship from Panama to Santo Domingo was shipwrecked, and 12 survivors landed on Yucatan Peninsula. Two weeks later, they met the Mayans by chance, and five of them became victims on the Mayan altar. Survivors who escaped returned to Spanish-occupied areas and told their adventures with lingering fear. The first encounter between Europeans and Mayans was thus fixed as a historical picture.
15 19, the Spanish explorer (robber) Hernando Cortes led the Spanish army to sweep across Mexico and conquered the Aztec empire in the heyday of civilization, "uprooting a culture, just like a passerby casually breaking off a sunflower on the roadside". At this time, the Mayan civilization is coming to an end, but there are still some small Mayan countries on Yucatan Peninsula. 1526, a Spanish expedition (bandits) tried to establish a Spanish colony through violence and forced Christianity. The unyielding Maya fought guerrilla warfare for more than 100 years until 1697, when the last Mayan city-state was destroyed by Spanish gunfire. /kloc-Europeans in the 0 th and 6 th centuries were blinded by ignorance, prejudice and greed. They could see nothing but glittering gold. Driven by narrow religious feelings, the invaders searched everywhere for historical relics and then piled them up and burned them. In this barbaric way, the "pagan" culture was systematically eliminated. 1562 In July, in the central square of Manny, Father Diego de Landa, a Spanish priest, personally burned thousands of ancient Mayan manuscripts, story albums and writings. In addition, he smashed countless gods and altars. He proudly recorded: we searched a lot of books, all superstitious things, Satan's lies. All we have to do is light a torch and burn them. The local indigenous people watched helplessly, their hearts ached and they were very sad. It's not just "aborigines" who are heartbroken! Later, people who want to explore the truth of ancient culture and history all felt the pain of this cultural catastrophe!
The splendid and magical Mayan civilization sank into the dark depths of history, and the world lost a great civilization from then on. The Mayans had only three manuscripts, but they all escaped bad luck because they lived abroad. Perhaps this is the "keyhole" of ancient Maya, leaving the world with the last glimpse of its civilization hall. After the bonfire of colonial conquest gradually subsided in the16th century, the ancient Maya was completely forgotten by the world together with other Indian civilizations. After nearly 200 years, Europeans who claimed to be the new owners of America trumpeted the lie that "Indians were uncivilized" and called their colonial crime of destroying civilization "fulfilling the mission of spreading civilization". Until the end of 18, due to the development of the Enlightenment and the improvement of historical vision, western talents became interested in American civilization that they had ignored for 200 years. The footsteps of strangers echoed in the depths of Maya's sleeping forest. Travelers come here to look for the legendary magic and beauty, come here to pursue a lonely world, and archaeologists want to find a lost civilization.
"If human beings want to see their own smallness, they don't need to look up at the stars; It is enough to look at the ancient culture that has existed, prospered and disappeared in front of us. " -hiram
From south to north, the remains of great civilizations are constantly being discovered: palenque, Copan, Tikal ... the Millennium ancient cities that shocked the world are awakened; The 20-story pyramid, the stone altar decorated with exquisite relief, the observatory for observing the movement of celestial bodies ... the incredible magnificent building made the world hold its breath. Mayan archaeology has made great achievements in the past two centuries. Although there are still countless mysteries, a lost Mayan world has finally been recovered bit by bit. Now we know that Maya is a region, a nation and a civilization, distributed in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and the western part of El Salvador, with the northernmost latitude of 22 degrees and the southernmost latitude of 14 degrees, all belonging to tropical areas. The central and southern parts are dense tropical rainforests, while the Yucatan Peninsula in the north is very dry, with shrubs and almost no surface water.
The four ancient civilizations were all bred in the big river basin: Egypt has the Nile, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, India has the Huan River and the Indus River, and Babylon has the Euphrates River and the Tigris River; Mayan civilization did not originate from river plains, but rose in barren volcanic highlands and dense tropical rain forests. Nature is so harsh on the Mayans that in order to survive, they have to constantly compete with the wild tropical jungle for land and space. They have no metal tools, no horses, cows, pigs, sheep, and unicycle. Their productivity level only stays in the Stone Age, but they have cultivated such dazzling flowers in the garden of world civilization.
Maya never had a unified and powerful empire, and the whole Maya region was divided into hundreds of city-states. However, Mayan countries traditionally belong to the same cultural circle in terms of language, religion and customs. Generally speaking, Mayan civilization can be divided into three periods, with BC 1500- AD 300 as the pre-classical period or formation period, AD 300-900 as the classical period, and AD 900-16th century as the post-classical period.
People found that Maya civilization had many similarities with other ancient civilizations in Mexico, so scholars speculated that there might be an older civilization, which was the same origin of Maya and these Mexican civilizations.