Grim Details About The Mayan Empire That Definitely Weren't In The History Books

The Mayans feared their gods, so they attempted to please/feed the deities with sacrifices. Early on, only noble-born people were sacrificed due to their pure blood, but eventually, Mayans started using criminals and orphans. Most ritualistic sacrifices took place in caves.

Astonishingly, there are extensive records of Mayans being outrageous partiers. They used drugs and alcohol regularly, and even ingested these things rectally for increased intoxication at rapid rates. We don't have the evidence to back this statement but, but alcohol enemas probably ended terribly very often and must have been gruesome to witness.

Believe it or not, the Mayans invented chocolate! They used it along with other ingredients in a regular drink for rituals and ceremonies. There is also evidence that they figured out how to make chocolate very similar to what we eat today!

The Mayans were early pioneers of makeup and other beauty products. It was hard work being beautiful in Mayan society and often came with great physical sacrifice. Both men and women subjected their bodies to things like skull binding for social status.

The Mayans were strong believers in their gods and often used blood sacrifice as offerings. They sculpted Aluxes, small clay figures, and left them in the woods. It was said that, by offering up 9 drops of blood, an alux would come to life at night and protect the surrounding territory.

The Mayans believed that Earth was the midpoint between heaven and hell. For this reason, they performed most of their religious ceremonies and rituals in caves, which they believed to be gateways to the underworld. Scientists still find artifacts in caverns where the empire once stood.

The Mayan game of Pitz had high stakes: Teams battled back and forth to try and get a small ball through a ring jutting out from a curved wall. Losing a game made you next in line for a human sacrifice!

One of the largest cities of the Mayan Empire, Chichen Itza, was designed based on positions of the sun and the moon because city planners believed every building needed to possess symbolic meaning. Well preserved, Chichen Itza is considered a Wonder of the World.

Mayan doctors were called shamans, and they used herbal medicine and spiritual rituals involving fire to heal the sick and wounded. They were often hard to reach because they lived alone in caves in remote regions. This only added to their mystique.

Mayan gods called Tepeu and Gucematz were believed to be ominous blue and green feathered spirits surrounded by darkness. Mayans believed that these two created the universe, and that there were other universes with deities of their own.

Interestingly, a lot of the Mayans' beliefs about the origin of man mirrors that of Christianity. They believed the gods created the Earth and made people out of clay to populate it, but instead of creating a singular Adam and Eve, Mayans taught that the gods started out by making four men and four women.

The Mayans were one of the early pioneers of astronomy, and almost every aspect of their culture was based on their study of the heavens. The location of their temples and cities were chosen based on the movement of the moon, stars, and sun.

Maya's deep dive into astronomy made them quite good at keeping and studying time. It was the first ancient civilization to determine it took the Earth about 365 days to orbit the sun! Many of their predictions still come true today centuries later.

Maya's uncanny accuracy with predicting celestial events, coupled with their belief that every 52 years a cycle of destruction would happen, has generated many conspiracy theories and Hollywood movies about the end of the world. Their calendar was called the Haab.

A legendary Mayan tale went like this: a Dwarf King was born to an oracle via immaculate conception after she prayed to a turtle shell. A prophecy said he would be king, so the actual king got mad and tried to occupy the man with three impossible tasks — which he completed! The Dwarf King eventually fulfilled the prophecy.

The king was the most powerful person in the Mayan Empire. His role was to promote peace and build wealth. Ironically this sometimes led to some gruesome actions and warfare, but because the king was believed to be chosen by the gods and have special powers, citizens accepted the violence as part of life.

The Mayan priests were the next most powerful after the king. They were considered messengers of god, conducted religious ceremonies, and were the point of contact to explain the inexplicable, like weather patterns. Their class is believed to have evolved from the mysterious shamans.

The Mayans were not only great astronomers; they were one of the first civilizations with a complex writing system based on an alphabet, which was made up of various hieroglyphs. This was similar to the Egyptians, but Mayan writing was more complex.

The Mayans wrote many books on a durable paper made from the bark of fig trees. Today, only three remain due to the climate of the region and the destruction brought by the European invasion that led to the fall of the empire.

A lot of the legends of the Mayans border on the supernatural. Many people believe that the Mayans were contacted by aliens who helped them be such visionaries with science and technology. Some also believe aliens taught Mayans the savagery of human sacrifice!

As the Mayan Empire grew and developed, another society halfway across the world was going through growing pains of its own. Although Rome may have been the cradle of modern Western civilization, history shows us that the Roman way of life included some bizarre practices that we can't wrap our heads around today. 

One of ancient Rome’s equalizers was their public baths. Unlike other luxuries of the time, it was enjoyed by all, from slaves to emperors! Although you would see Romans from many different walks of life mingling in the nude, the bathhouses were usually strictly segregated by gender.

In ancient Rome, the patriarchy definitely had its way. The society was dominated by the male head of the household, otherwise known as the “father of the family.” On top of being the provider, the male was also a religious figure in ancient Rome, overseeing ceremonies and generally being the family’s main connection to God. And you thought your dad was full of himself!

Mothers had a different role. After being married off to her husband, her loyalty shifts from her father’s house to her husband’s, though she still kept up appearances with dad.

Having a son was crucial to restarting the family line. If a man didn’t have one of his own, however, it was legal for him to take the nephew of a distant family member!

It’s hard to believe that plumbing was so prevalent thousands of years ago, but it was! The only fallback was that there wasn't much privacy, as toilets often came in bench form. You had to do #2 right next to someone else.

Because of their traffic issues and the sound of horses clacking all day, Roman city streets were loud as heck! “The passing of wagons in the narrow curves of the streets, and the mutual reviles of the team drivers brought to a standstill, would banish sleep,” wrote the poet Juvenal.

Despite supposedly establishing a republic and universal citizenship, the wealthy still controlled the Roman Senate for a long while. In contrast to the poor, a single rich family could live in a house, known as a domus, that took up as much space as an entire city block.

After some reforms, you could totally be a nobody and still hold public office! It happened when something called tribunes became the norm. Tribunes were society's elected officials, and anyone could be one. The famously corrupt Emperor Caligula even tried to get his horse appointed to an honorary Senate position before his assassination.

Where there are big, important cities, there will be overpopulation. While the actual numbers are debatable, the projections are at 1 million Roman residents by the second century AD. This density led to a housing crisis, where families packed themselves into cheap tenements that were known to easily catch fire or collapse.

Just like modern-day governments, Rome seemed most efficient when collecting its taxes. To that end, Roman citizens had to register for their local census every five years. They reported possessions, property, and family counts to the Roman government.

You could never really escape religious deities in Rome. They acted as the messengers between humans and the divine and people were expected to worship them regularly. That also required making sacrifices that had the potential to send your family into poverty.

Just because there were public temples didn't mean you could skip worship at home. Household gods were famous back then, and they came in the form of penates, or worship statues left across the house. 

On some level, Roman society allowed women to work in the public. They were mostly nurses or agricultural laborers, but most were still subject to staying home and liking it! Most often, only wealthy girls received much in the way of education. But some found ways to branch out...

Just because most women stayed home didn't mean they couldn’t own property or a business. Even though this was something only the rich could pull off, it was still legal. Unfortunately, one common business matter handled by upper-class women was the management of slaves.

Roman citizens loved to partake in live entertainment, which culminated at the Colosseum. From gladiator matches to horse races to mock naval battles, the Romans loved to have fun. As long as that fun involved two sides fighting each other to the death, that is.

Social welfare looked a lot different in ancient Rome, but the government definitely provided for its people. In fact, the distribution of grain, known informally as “corn,” happened free of charge in the first century BC.

Many Roman sons grew up never going to school because their fathers were responsible for teaching them to read and write. Daughters, similarly, had their mothers as teachers. So if your parents didn't know much, chances are you wouldn't either.

While education was available, unfortunately, it related to your wealth in ancient Rome. If you could afford the most renowned tutors, you were set. Otherwise, best of luck!

It was pretty normal not to wash your clothes in ancient Rome, but when you did, urine was a common detergent. That’s because it contained ammonia, a perfect cleaning agent, and professional washers called fullers did the dirty deed! But people in the ancient world, from Rome and beyond, didn't flinch. Their routines often got much grosser.