What Life Was Like for the Mayas

You may have scrolled past one of their haunting, crumbling pyramids in the background of your well-traveled friend's Instagram post, but chances are you have no idea what everyday life was really like for the ancient Mayans. From ball games to body piercings to getting hopped up on chocolate, the ancient Mayan culture has a lot more in common with our world today than you'd probably ever think. Today, we're exploring what life was really like for the ancient Mayans. OK, time to get Mayan. The ancient Mayan empire was huge, spanning across most of Central America, including southern Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize, and Guatemala. The Mayans were an advanced, brilliant society. And if you could avoid getting sacrificed to one of the 165 gods that were worshipped, you could spend your days working, eating, and getting sick tattoos. The ancient Mayans may have spent a lot of time worshipping their gods. But they didn't do so without a few spiked beverages in their arsenal. One ceremonial drink, balché, came from fermented tree bark and was sweetened with honey. The Mayans considered this drink to be sent from the gods. So if you're ordering one, make it a double. They also got chocolate wasted, a cacao-based alcoholic drink that were often spiked with hallucinogens. If you're ever at a house party with an ancient Mayan, watch out for that punch bowl. The Mayans definitely took their drinking seriously. In fact, a lot of Mayans would get enemas in order to be as intoxicated as humanly possible. There is actual written documentation that depicts the act of Mayans getting bored and pouring wine up their bums through a tube, making them officially the world's first frat bros. Mayans were around thousands of years before gold teeth and grills defined a generation of hip hop style. But that doesn't mean that they weren't blinging way before it was on the trend. The Mayans had an advanced form of tooth care for their time, especially when it came to cosmetic dentistry. A trip to the dentist was more like a trip to the beauty salon than a sterile fluorescent lighting-filled hellscape we know it as today. In fact, it wasn't uncommon for Mayans to get gems drilled into their teeth through skillfully carved out holes. Miraculously, Mayan dentists were able to accomplish this without hitting any nerves, unlike my dentist. Lack of nerve damage notwithstanding, the Mayan dental practices were not without pain. But it was worth it to be able to show off a mouthful of gems. They may not have had Novocaine or laughing gas, but at least you'd leave your root canal looking like Lil Wayne. And if there's a chance you might get sacrificed to the gods in any moment, you might as well while you do it. Probably one of the most infamous aspects of the ancient Mayan polytheistic way of life was their tendency to sacrifice people to gods. Children were usually the ideal sacrifices because of their youth and innocence. But it was also common for slaves, prisoners of war, and even average Mayan adults to be killed in sacrificial ceremonies. And if that's not enough to keep you on your toes, their primary method of sacrificing involved cutting open the chest and removing the heart. If that's not dramatic enough, they'd do all of that on top of a pyramid and throw the lifeless body down the stairs afterward. If you had to climb up that many steps, you'd probably want to be sacrificed too. The Mayans knew how to drink, and they definitely knew how to eat. The three staples of the Mayan diet were maize, squash, and beans, an iconic basic food group trio otherwise known as the Three Sisters. Aside from the basics, Mayans also ate chili peppers, sweet potatoes, avocados, tomatoes, papayas, onions, and garlic. For meat, they ate turkey, venison, iguana, dog, wild pigs known as peccary, and fish. The Mayans were also the first civilization to make corn tortillas. So if you love chips and dip, better show some respect to the Mayan root of that guacamole scoop. They also invented tamales and were the first civilization to roast cacao seeds to make chocolate. Thank you, Mayans, for that. If you think tattoo-covered bikers are intimidating, be thankful you never ran into an ancient Mayan man or woman. Their process for getting inked up involved getting painted on and then cut into, culminating in another coat of paint over the open wound. That process sounds just a tad more horrifying than getting a peace sign tattoo gunned on your ankle. If you were Mayan and you got a tattoo, you were considered one of the bravest people to exist. Remember that the next time your workplace sends you home for showing off your infinity sign tattoo. You're just as brave as an ancient Mayan who got cut open and painted. Men would wait until after marriage to get their tattoos, and women would get tattoos as well, avoiding the breast area. Piercings were popular, too, and not just for looking cool, but also as bloodletting sacrifice to the gods. In a move more punk than any counterculture scene-ster could ever imagine, Mayans would pierce their ears, genitals, and tongues with thorns or stingray spines for both cosmetic and ceremonial reasons. The Mayans were partly so into piercing because they were master jewelry makers. Only men wore nose and lip plugs, though. Whether the piercing was for religious reasons or secular, you can definitely say the practice made all of their faces holy. If you were an ancient Mayan and you wanted to blow off some steam on the court, you'd probably play a game called Pok-ta-pok, the oldest team sport in the history of the world. Unlike a casual game of playground basketball, Pok-ta-pok was not for the faint of heart. Even LeBron James might have struggled with bouncing around a 10-pound rubber ball with only the use of his midsection and hips. The game was notoriously brutal, and players would die of internal bleeding just from the sheer force of getting hit with the ball. Often, prisoners would be forced to play each other in a game of Pok-ta-pok to determine who would get sacrificed to the gods. That is the epitome of a sudden death game. If you ever feel like your looks aren't measuring up to society's standards, be grateful you weren't alive during the ancient Mayan times, when the peak standard of beauty was being cross-eyed and having an elongated skull in the shape of an ear of corn. Mayans wanted so badly to look like a far-sighted yellow vegetable that they, in a practice similar to the Egyptians would bind their infants' malleable skull between two planks of wood for long periods of time in order to achieve the look du jour. But hey, it's still probably more natural than botox. Imagine a world where everyone was racing to get a receding hairline that resembled George Costanza. The five-head look was big amongst the ancient Mayans, to the point where men would shave or even burn their hairlines to create a more drastic receding hairline. The elite class also wore elaborate headdresses consisting of animal skins, jade, and other precious materials. Our elite class today isn't so different. Just look at the headdresses of the people who attended the Fyre Festival. The Mayans thought to treat asthma with tobacco, a salve that made about as much sense as curing alcoholism with a shot of vodka. They were also guilty of some other medical mistakes, like thinking the cure to an upset stomach was getting drunk on Balché or vomiting. Definitely sounds like a drunk person came up with that one. Various medical gaps aside, the Mayans were an incredibly hygienic people and consistently bathed. While other cultures were living in feces-covered castles, The Mayans had figured out the practice of washing their hands and mouths after eating and often took cold water or steam baths before religious ceremonies. With all the piercing tattoos, teeth jewelry, and crazy hairdos, the majority of ancient Mayans knew to keep it simple when it came to clothing. Men typically wore basic loincloths. And sometimes they added ponchos in colder weather. Women wore blouses and long skirts. But what would a society be if their elite didn't take their fashion up a notch? At ancient Mayan fashion week, you'd probably see wealthy men and women wearing elaborate get-ups bejeweled with shells and jade. Among commoners, women typically worked in the home, raising children, collecting honey, sewing, and making pottery. It may sound stale compared to our modern society, but hey, at least gender roles helped create clay bowls. While women worked domestically, men typically worked in the fields, known as milpas. And that was no easy task, considering ancient Mayans didn't use animals like horses or oxen to help them tend to crops. Farming was all done by the brute force of man's own hand. Talk about DIY. Most Mayans, regardless of economic class, lived in residential compounds that included extended family all under the same roof. Even if you were a rich Mayan, there was no escaping your in-laws. Their houses consisted of several buildings arranged around patios and terraces and were typically made from limestone with packed soil floors and adobe covered walls. The Mayans are often lauded for their advanced technological genius, but coming up with a floor made entirely of dirt sounds pretty smart. You never have to sweep. You'd probably get some blisters on your feet if you had to get around the way the ancient Mayans did. Cities were connected through a system of paved roads, or sacbeob, which were raised above ground, sometimes as high as eight feet. And since the Mayans didn't use animals to help move goods, slaves had to carry everything on foot, often in large slave chains. To get to more remote areas, the Mayans traveled by canoes that were sometimes 50 feet in length. In any case, if you wanted to travel long distances in ancient Mayan times, it was probably a lot easier to just stay at home and chill. Life for the ancient Mayans was intense. If you could survive walking a mile on their human-sacrificing, tattoo-bleeding, 10-pound basketball-playing shoes, then you'd probably also be jonesing for that funnel of anal wine. Bottoms up.