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Mexico & Central American Civilizations: Mayas - Websites

Aztecs, Mayas, Mixtec Indians, Zapotec Indians; also called Mesoamericans.

Websites

Ancient Mesoamerican Civilizations
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/humanorigins/

Subtitled Maya, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Aztec, this site includes information about these ancient civilizations' writing systems, governments, and religions.  There is also information about the Mayan calendar, Maya and Zapotec political organization, definitions, and related links.

The Classic Maya Calendar and Day Numbering System
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/maya.html

This site, an article by Dr. David L. Mills, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Delaware, provides readable yet technical information about the Mayan calendar, includes charts and a link to Dr. Mills' table for correlating our present day (Gregorian) calendar and the Mayan calendar, and offers a short list of references. 

Collapse : Why Do Civilizations Fall?
http://www.learner.org/exhibits/collapse/

Developed by Annenberg/CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) Exhibits, this intriguing site investigates the decline of four ancient civilizations: Maya, Mesopotamia, Chaco Canyon, and Mali & Songhai, and links to useful items on Mayan art and archaeology.

Law in Mexico Before the Conquest
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/rare/aztec.html

This site explores Aztec and Mayan law through images and brief overviews of topics such as warfare, courts, attorneys and  judges, property law, family law, punishment, drunkenness, and slavery.  It includes a small collection of annotated links on Aztec, Mayan, and other Mesoamerican civilizations.  From the Jamail Center for Legal Research, University of Texas School of Law.

Merle Greene Robertson's Rubbings of Maya Sculpture
http://www.mesoweb.com/rubbings/index.html

Features photographs of the paper rubbings of ancient Mayan relief sculpture -- these rubbings all the painstaking work of famous Mayan scholar Dr. Merle Greene Robertson, "The doyenne of Mayanists."  Clink on "Rubbings" to begin viewing the many photographs, all with brief descriptions of the sculpture featured in respective rubbings, along with detailed biographical narrative about Dr. Robertson's work in Guatemala. 

Mesoweb
http://www.mesoweb.com/

Subtitled An Exploration of Mesoamerican Cultures, this site is "devoted to ancient Mesoamerica and its cultures: the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Teotihuacano, Toltec, Mixtec, Zapotec and others," yet specializes in Mayan history and presents information about an archeological dig and restoration project at Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico.  Photos, map, animations, videos (requiring QuickTime), rubbings of Maya sculptures, and an illustrated encyclopedia are available as well as the text of the first Palenque roundtable: a conference on art, iconography, and dynastic history of Palenque.  There are related links.  A joint venture of the Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute (PARI) and Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Antropologia y Historia (INAH).

Voice of the Shuttle (VoS)
http://vos.ucsb.edu/

The Voice of the Shuttle (VoS) began in late 1994 as an introduction to the Web for humanists at the University of California, Santa Barbara and became publicly accessible on March 21, 1995.  VoS is woven by Alan Liu and a development team in the University of California Santa Barbara, English Department.

Worldviews : Maya Ceramics From the Palmer Collection
http://www.umaine.edu/hudsonmuseum/Online%20Exhibits/Worldviews/WorldViewHome.htm

Virtual exhibit of the Palmer Collection from the Hudson Museum at the University of Maine.  Includes a clickable display of over forty pre-Columbian objects collected by William P. Palmer, III during the 1960s and early 1970s.  It also has a map of where the items were found and discussions related to Maya civilization, writing and symbolism, and iconographer and epigrapher observations regarding the Maya beliefs about the underworld, the cosmos, the natural world and palace of life.