MUSEUM OF MAYA CIVILIZATION IN CHETUMAL

Chetumal has a great Museum of the Maya Culture. I can show here only a few interesting highlights.

Teri and I had our FRS radios so we could separate, go at our own pace, but stay in contact in the big building.
The upper class Mayas tatooed and scarred their bodies, flattened the skulls of their babies, and made them cross-eyed all for the sake of their concept of personal beauty.
Hairdo and flattened forehead.
Ceremonial robes.
Evidently quite colorful judging from preserved mural paintings.

The culture had significant violence. Captured enemies were enslaved or scarificed. Torture was not unknown. Rulers were descended from the Gods and only their descendants had the right blood to rule. Only they had the knowledge of the books and the calendars, and from it they could predict the future and know how to rule.

The Maya had a glyph based writing system. Russian Yuri Knorozov made the the initial breakthroughs that allowed other scientists to fully decipher and eventually read the script. Each glyph can represent a full word as well as a sound - somewhat like Japanese Kanji.

The glyphs are read in pairs downward then to the right.

The Maya had a base 20 number system. We have a base 10 system with numbers 0-9. They needed 20 numbers. INCLUDING THE NUMBER ZERO! Here they are:
Numbers above 19 are written using this positional notation:
Here is a reproduction of a Maya book with writing full of numbers.
And another