Comparison between Mayan values and our own

There are many different ways that you can interpret Mayan values in our current day society. For example you could look at religion and the influence of the Church. you could look at the extents people will go to make there body fit the quota of "beautiful." War was a value. But mostly to see Mayan values you could just look at the time.

In ancient Mayan civilizations religion played a big role. Religious sacrifices were not uncommon, in fact being scarifies was one of the few ways you could go to heaven. Losing something as simple as a ball game could lead to you being sacrificed. In our modern world religion plays just as big a part. Even though over the past years the amount of Atheists has increased there is still a large population of religious people. There is an international holiday that has a very powerful relation to religion, Halloween. Maybe we aren't sacrificing people anymore but there is definitely still some violent actions in the name of god.

Then there is the value of beauty. Mayans valued beauty. They went so far as to deform a child's head at birth so it would look beautifuler when the child grows up. Though the Maya's idea of beauty greatly differed from ours today there are still people who go to great extents to be "beautiful." Look at all the make up women put on, and all the hours spent lying in the sun to get tanner. Beauty still plays as big a part in our society as it did in the Mayan.

War was a huge value for the Mayans. They needed war to prove a cities superiority. Even ball games often resulted in the sacrifice or violence. In our world war is not so prominent as in the Mayans. But still we soldiers in Iraq. We fight for different reasons and we fight in different styles but the point is the same. Mayans went out and killed people, and so do we. And in some less urbanized tribes there are still brutal wars going on for the same reasons as the Mayans.

But perhaps the biggest Mayan value was time. The Mayans had an obsession with time keeping. Their calenders are probably the most accurate in the history of the world. They predicted eclipses and other solar events with enormous accuracy. In our modern world we have just as big an obsession with time. Maybe we don't spend hours at a time staring at the stars at night but if we had more time we probably might. And if you think about it where ever we go one of the easiest things to find is the time. Watches, cell phones, ipods, and even TVs all have watches built in. Not to mention that most people beyond the age of 5 have their own personal watch on their wrist.

I conclude that even though the Mayans lived more than a thousand years ago a lot of their values are still present in our society. Beauty, war, religion, and time all still exist and are ubiquitous in our societies.