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K’inich Janaab Pakal
K’inich Janaab’ Pakal (23 March 603 CE – 31 March 683 CE) was the Maya king of Palenque in the modern-day State of Chiapas, Mexico. Pacal assumed the throne of Palenque at the age of 12, in 615 CE, and ruled successfully until his death at the age of 80.
Placed over Pakal’s tomb was a massive sarcophagus stone, laboriously carved with an image of Pakal himself being reborn as a god. Pakal’s sarcophagus and its stone top are among the great all-time finds of archaeology.
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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. It’s likely that a complex combination of factors was behind the collapse.
Blood was viewed as a potent source of nourishment for the Maya deities, and the sacrifice of a living creature was a powerful blood offering. By extension, the sacrifice of a human life was the ultimate offering of blood to the gods, and the most important Maya rituals culminated in human sacrifice .
80 years (603 AD–683 AD)
K’inich Janaab’ Pakal the Great
The ancient Maya never used coins as money . Instead, like many early civilizations, they were thought to mostly barter, trading items such as tobacco, maize, and clothing.
Responsibilities . A Mayan king was expected to be an excellent military leader. He would often carry out raids against rival city-states. The Mayan kings also offered his own blood to the gods.
Pakal (also spelled Pacal ; meaning “shield” in several Maya languages) forms the (common) name or part of the full name of several pre-Columbian Maya personages identified in the monumental inscriptions of sites in the Maya region of Mesoamerica.
Alberto Ruz Lhuillier
The Maya today number about six million people, making them the largest single block of indigenous peoples north of Peru. Some of the largest Maya groups are found in Mexico, the most important of these being the Yucatecs (300,000), the Tzotzil (120,000) and the Tzeltal (80,000).
Mysterious Decline of the Maya From the late eighth through the end of the ninth century, something unknown happened to shake the Maya civilization to its foundations. One by one, the Classic cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned, and by A.D. 900, Maya civilization in that region had collapsed.
The Mayan religion was Polytheist, and they worshiped more than 165 Gods. The Gods were human-like. The Gods were born, grew up and died. Gods would do other human like activity that was deemed acceptable behavior.