Today, as a world civilization, Maya civilization actually has many similarities with Chinese civilization. If we unveil its mysterious veil, we will find that it is so much, and it is not as good as the civilization created by our ancestors in many ways.
Maya civilization can be traced back to BC18th century, reached the peak of its political culture in 250-900 AD, and then suddenly withdrew from the historical stage. In contrast, the earliest civilization in China was formed in the 20th century BC, and it has resisted numerous foreign invasions for thousands of years and continues to this day. I have to say that Chinese civilization is superior to Mayan civilization in this respect.
Maya region has always maintained the political form of Emirates. The leader of a big tribe rules an area in name, but in fact he only collects sacrifices from other smaller tribes on a regular basis, and occasionally calls the laborers of these tribes to engage in large-scale engineering construction, and has no right to rule the local tribes. It can be said that Maya never had a real country. What about Chinese civilization? As early as the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, we had the qualification to establish a country. In 22 1 year BC, the first centralized dynasty-Qin was born.
People often admire Maya's magnificent pyramid architecture, but the large-scale building facilities built in the history of China are not inferior to Maya in both quantity and scale. The Great Wall is the best example. Recently, 400,000 square meters of Qin and Han city sites and 600,000 square meters of Tang and Song city sites were discovered in Shaanxi. Although many Mayan city sites have not been completely excavated, it is probably difficult to reach such a scale. And if it weren't for the fact that the traditional buildings in China are easily damaged brick and wood structures, we would see more and larger historical buildings today.
On the other hand, China and Maya have striking similarities in culture. Needless to say, China and Maya are both Mongols, which has been proved by western scholars with DNA. Both of them make jade articles and painted pottery decorated with contrasting black and red, and both believe that ancestors will become gods to protect their families after death, and so on.
What has to be mentioned is the orientation view that both cultures attach great importance to. China has the theory of East Qinglong, West White Tiger, South Suzaku and North Xuanwu. Whether building a city or a hospital, it follows the principle of symmetrical distribution in four directions. Coincidentally, the Mayans also attached great importance to these four directions. Careful observation of the plan of Mayan city ruins will reveal that their buildings are also built symmetrically in four directions! In the excavated Mayan ruins, many craters were also found, and four stone heads were placed around them to mark the four directions. The Aztecs, who are closely related to the Mayans, gave four directions the same color as China! In addition, there is evidence that the Mayans will certainly offer tributes in all directions when they pray for rain.
What is more obvious is that the Mayans seem to have a strong concept of "Yin and Yang" like China people. Although archaeologists and anthropologists have not found that they use specific words to describe this concept (like "Yin" and "Yang" in Chinese), they divide everything into two relative aspects. This situation is particularly evident in Aztec culture. For example, the sky and the earth, the sun and the moon all correspond to each other. In their minds, men belong to the sun/sky and women to the moon/earth. In religious worship, male sun gods are always the same as male soldiers' protectors, while women usually worship and pray to the goddess of the earth. This is similar to China's idea that men dominate Yang and women dominate Yin, the sky is Yang, the ground is Yin, the day is Yang and the month is Yin! What's more, the Aztecs believe that women will go to heaven in the west and men will go to heaven in the east after death, which has to be reminiscent of the concept of the Queen Mother of China with Dong.
In a word, China and Maya civilizations are one of the few great civilizations with a long history in the world. When we admire other civilizations, don't forget to be proud of the civilization created by our ancestors.