Genius remembers in a second [Aishang Novel Network biquge.info] to provide you with wonderful novels to read.

3. Is this city for people to live in?

Of course, the Mayan civilization was somewhat more advanced than other Neolithic cultures - the Mayans built quite magnificent cities almost later than the time when the material conditions were extremely poor. Many of these megalithic structures can amaze travelers.

Take the most powerful city-state of the Mayan period, Tikal, for example, with a population of 50,000, more than a dozen large pyramids and more than 50 small pyramids. The largest pyramid is 72 meters tall and has a steep exterior with a slope of 7o degrees, making it a Stone Age skyscraper. These pyramids surround the ancient square, and next to them stand a beautiful royal palace with cameos and a thriving market surrounded by colonnades. In addition, several stone avenues were built that raised above the ground to connect the pyramid temples in the city...... Standing under the sapphire clear sky, looking at the pyramids rising from the ground, shining in the brilliant tropical sun, is truly amazing.

…… However, the exterior of Tikal City seems a bit quirky by the standards of its era...... Huh? How come there are no walls?

Indeed, the city of Tikal had no walls or moat, but was surrounded by a ditch that enclosed a full 125 square kilometers of land...... Obviously, with the backward productivity of the Stone Age, the Mayan city could never have been of such a large size, and the 50,000 inhabitants could not live in such a vast area - the city of Rome in Caesar's time occupied only 13 square kilometers of land!

As a result, the ditch, which encompasses almost all of the city's farmland, is a long way to reach the city center, and is more of a system of canals for drainage and boating than a moat-like fortification.

The city of Tikal in the general sense, that is, the megalithic pyramids, temples and palaces, was built on a hill surrounded by swamps, consisting of nine buildings and a large square, connected by bridges and causeways, covering an area of about 2. 6 square kilometers, but not protected by walls.

In fact, it wasn't just the city of Tikal that didn't have walls, it was the same with other Mayan cities at the time. It was only in the 13th century that the city-state of Mayapan was built, with a circular defensive stone wall – and by this time it was nearing the end of the Mayan civilization.

Moreover, the layout of Mayan cities is a bit strange - according to our general concept, cities are highly populated settlements, and you should see dense houses when you walk into the city. However, most of the Maya cities were empty, with the exception of a few megalithic palaces and trade bazaars, squares with monuments and pyramids one after another, and took up most of the urban area......

Obviously, the solid stone piles such as pyramids, while spectacular, are not like modern skyscrapers in that they are essentially inhabitable.

So, in the seemingly grand Mayan cities, there are not many places where people can actually live. Only a small number of Mayan nobles, priests, samurai, and servants who served them were allowed to live in the city. The vast majority of the remaining ordinary Mayans usually live in small villages on the outskirts of the city. It was only on certain festivals and market days, and when they were ordered to do labor to repair the pyramids, that they would enter the city and look for open space to set up temporary sheds to live in, or camp directly, so that the usually empty Mayan city ushered in a brief population peak.

This is a bit strange, why did the Mayans have to build these cumbersome pyramids in the center of the city, occupy the best prime locations, and even cause themselves to be squeezed into the suburbs instead? You know, even the Egyptians, who also liked to build pyramids, did not place the pyramids in the bustling downtown area, but built them in the desert far from the city!

The Mayans' answer was simple: their cities were not intended to accommodate mortals from the start, but were dedicated to gods and "demigods"!

-- Essentially, Mayan cities were formed by religious centers. As for the commercial and political functions, they can only be regarded as incidental.

Therefore, we should not think of the Mayan city-state as a "city" in the general image, but as a large temple, for example, the city of Tikal, with a population of 50,000, should actually be a "temple of Tikal". The Mayan king, who claimed to be a descendant of the sun god and a half-human half-god, was actually a religious leader similar to the abbot of the Shaolin Temple, the nobles at all levels were the elders of the temple, and the Mayan warriors were almost equivalent to monks.

The rest of the ordinary Mayans were equivalent to tenants under the temple control, who had to pay rent to the temple to support the monks, and were even forced to pay labor to build stone statues and halls, but they did not usually live in the temple, and only came to worship incense during festivals.

In this way, we can roughly understand why the Mayans built the majestic pyramids in the center of the city - in the Buddhist temples of China, the most magnificent houses are usually not the abbot's monk's ashram, but the Daxiong Treasure Hall where the Buddha statue is enshrined!

It's easier to understand why the Mayans set up their trade bazaars next to the pyramids – from ancient times to the present, outside any temple in China where incense is flourishing, aren't there a bunch of small vendors selling snacks and souvenirs? Once it is a festival where pilgrims gather, there are even more crowds of people outside the temple gate, and the sheds erected can form a commercial street...... Otherwise, where would there be a "temple fair"?

In short, the Mayan city was not inhabited from the beginning - the Mayan noble priests who were able to live here basically claimed to be "children of the sun", boasting that they had the blood of gods in their bodies, and considered themselves demigods!