Talk:Maya society

Editing

so... much... POV... phrases like "fantastic pyramids," "most beatiful art in the Americas".. working on taking it out -

Also, there is a lot of redundency between this article and Maya civilization - It obviously is expected, but there's a lot of work needed to make the two articles more distinct. Should this one be more explicitly focused on social structure? If so, then the politcal structure section needs a ton of editing - the "royal court" is not the only way to look at Maya political structure - I forgot who orginally called the system that, but its generally analogous to Sanders and Webster's (1988) use of Fox's (1977) "regal-ritual" model in contrast to "admistrative centers" (they didn't think that the Maya had the latter). Unfotuntely, not all Maya centers were stages for the rulers, consumption loci, and lacking any urban characteristics.

So, if we decide to remove/curtail some of the redundency and focus this more on Maya social structure, we'll have to include all of that - S&W urbanization arguement, Chase and Chase's rebuttal and arguement for adminstrative center status (not surpisingly, using Caracol, but also Tikal as the example), Demarest's Galactic polity model and theator state should be included - other stuff, can't remember now... oh yeah, and Marcus (1983) as well...

Peace -- Oaxaca dan 17:52, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I just noticed that the "Political structures" section here is identical to the "Political structure" section over at Maya civilization (at least before i changed this one around).... Did a side-by-side comparison of the two articles - I'd say that once you get past the "History" section of Maya civ, nearly 70-80% of the two articles are identical - verbatim. -- Oaxaca dan 17:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for those needed amendments, dan. Yup, I recall that this one was originally hived off from the Maya civilization article, and at, I think, my urging the text was also put back into the main Maya civ. article until such time as it could be rewritten as a summary of the to-be-expanded-in-more-detail Maya soc. one. Unhelpfully it hasn't been much changed since then, partially owing to indecisiveness over the subtopical breakdown.

While the scope of this article should probably include discussion on (theories of) Maya political structures alongside 'daily life' and social structure, etc, given the various models and actual regional and time differences it is probably deserving of an article in itself - say Maya polities or Maya political structures, or some such. --cjllw | TALK 03:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Orthography

Suggest changing things like "ajaw" to "ahaw" because while Spanish uses j for an h sound, English does not, and seeing as this is an English language encyclopedia, some users may be confused. As far as I know there is indeed one orthography that changes j to h, though I'm not an expert on Maya orthography. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.90.51.160 (talk) 10:21, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

ajaw is the modern Maya orthography for this word, used by the great majority of sources these days. I would prefer that we kept it as-is, to align with modern usage and so as not to confuse readers (who if they are looking it up are likely to be doing so because they read it in some source). Where appte we can also mention former spellings found in (generally) older texts, like ahaw, ahau. As far as pronunciation is concerned, perhaps at some point we could put in a guide at the ajaw article itself. --cjllw ʘ TALK 04:47, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Up to batab

This page calls them military officers. ("mayors"). This page calls them town chiefs. This page calls them geographical areas. Which is it...? TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 10:18, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Tactics in jungle terrain?

The assumption that the Classic Lowlands consisted of jungle terrain seems completely outdated.77.162.130.139 (talk) 21:47, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Reorganization of the article: feedback needed!

In view of its almost complete lack of references, this article should never have received a B-status. Moreover, as stated above by others, most of its sections double with those of 'Maya civilization', and are even identical, or nearly so. The 'Maya civilization' article has become the central text on all aspects of ancient Maya culture. If the continued existence of the 'Maya society' article is to be justified, it should be about what its title suggests, the social organization and social customs of Maya kingdoms, and not about script, art and mathematics and other aspects already covered by 'Maya civilization'. I therefore intend to rewrite it, with a focus on the political organization and social classes of Maya kingdoms. As a consequence, the article 'Maya social classes' will become superfluous. The section 'Maya warfare' should probably, as far as necessary, be merged with the main article 'Maya warfare'. I invite all Wikepedians to react to this intended reorganization of the article.77.162.130.139 (talk) 14:06, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Duplications and misplaced sections removed

As a first step towards improving this article, I removed sections duplicated from "Maya Civilization" and other articles. "Maya Warfare" should probably suffer the same fate.77.162.130.139 (talk) 20:16, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

While you seem to have a coherent plan, could you tell us what you intend to do with the material (including references) you deleted recently? Do you intend to re-insert it in better locations (including other articles), or are you just discarding prior work that you feel doesn't fit in here? I'm not necessarily objecting to what you're doing, just voicing a concern whether the good faith work of others will be used appropriately, or effectively lost. --Reify-tech (talk) 20:25, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. And why doesn't a section on body modifications belong in this article? Dougweller (talk) 20:36, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Dear Reify, I removed sections because they largely coincided with sections of the "Maya civilization" article, with literally the same wording, and without significant references and notes. I am not the first one to note this (see above on this page!). The remaining section about Kingdom and court is another illustration of this, but I left it standing because it is at least about Maya society. Nothing has really been lost, therefore, and reinserting the removed texts elsewhere would be pointless. What I would now like to do first is summarizing the political structure and social organization of the contact-period Maya states of Yucatan (Roys), Verapaz (Miles), and the Guatemalan Highlands (Carmack, Fox), and then turn to the Classic period (Marcus, Demarest, Grube, Martin, etc.). I must apologize for having removed the body modifications contribution, but wouldn't it be better to make that into a separate article? As it was, it only added to the lack of focus of the "Maya society" article.77.162.130.139 (talk) 19:38, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, there is a lot of duplicated material that isn't needed here. The body modifications section, while modest, does have some refs, although there's always room for improvement. Unless somebody can come up with a better location, I think that Maya society is a logical place for it. The coverage may be a little thin for spinoff as a standalone article, so it might be best to retain the material here and upgrade it in tandem with the rest of the article. I'm eager to see what you can do to improve the topics as you've proposed. --Reify-tech (talk) 00:43, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Subject of article

This article deals exclusively with the pre-Columbian Maya, and should perhaps be moved to Ancient Maya society. It would be more appropriate to discuss modern Maya society here, an interesting subject itself. Simon Burchell (talk) 13:26, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me, though I can't contribute much on contemporary Mayan culture. I'm interested in what you and other editors can come up with. Reify-tech (talk) 14:11, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Unverifiable material on modifications

@HLash24:, the material you have added has unverifiable sources, partially because you've used a citation style other than the one in use in this article. It needs to be removed or cited properly. Doug Weller talk 16:06, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

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Maya Empire?

This article makes a few references to a "Maya Empire." I'm not sure why, as Maya civilization was never unified, and there was no singular state referred to as the Maya empire. In the Kingdom, Court, and Royalty section of the article, the Maya social-political organization is described as being a number of small kingdoms or city-states. Though it gives two examples of states that expanded their power further than others, I still feel like this is a contradiction, especially when the use of "empire" is not specifically attributed to any one state. There is a source cited (https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-americas/maya) that refers to a Maya empire, but it gives no further information that supports the use of that word. Zablargs (talk) 04:52, 20 April 2021 (UTC)