Bantu, Maya, Cyrus the Great, and Confucius Explained

The Bantu People: Origins, Migration, and Identity

The term "Bantu" can be applied to two different contexts: the Bantu people, found mostly in South Africa but spread across the entire African continent, and the Bantu language, composed of some 400 various dialects and currently spoken by well over 60 million people. In general terms, the Bantu people are not simply a single group of Africans, but are part of a much larger cultural group. Historically, the Bantu people originated somewhere in the northern regions of Africa around 4,000 years ago and then slowly migrated southward, creating along the way various cultural identities and communities based on agriculture, metalworking, and trading with other tribes. Around 500 A.D., the Bantu people had migrated as far south as the Congo River basin, and due to an intermingling of different tribes, the Bantu language evolved into other dialects and tongues, such as Basaa, Tsonga, and especially Swahili, currently the main language of most native Africans.

As a result of this southward migration, the Bantu people created a number of important African kingdoms. With the arrival of white Europeans in the 1600s, however, these kingdoms slowly began to disappear, due in part to domination by Europeans from countries such as the Netherlands, Great Britain, and France. By the early decades of the 20th century, white Europeans had taken complete control of South Africa and forced millions of the Bantu people to either leave or convert to Christianity. During this era, the system known as apartheid was widespread in South Africa, making the term "Bantu" racially and ethnically offensive to most native Africans.

Maya Civilization: Society, Religion, and Culture

As one of the most important and influential civilizations in the Americas, the Maya occupied the moist lowlands of what is now Guatemala, Honduras, and the Yucatan Peninsula. As a cultural group, they reached a stage of development unequaled by any other civilization in what is known as Meso-America — the regions situated between Mexico and South America. Like all Meso-American cultures, the Maya possessed only tools of stone, wood, and bone, even during the Classical Period (circa 250 to 600 A.D.), when they erected huge limestone structures with richly carved decorations at urban centers such as Copan, Tikal, Uaxactun, Yaxchilan, and Palenque. The social rulers of Maya civilization, composed of priests, astronomer-priests, and nobles, constituted a theocratic government that dominated its people, most of whom were farmers and artisans. Agricultural activities were likely regulated by religious tenets, and Mayans from across the empire traveled to visit ceremonial centers — such as Tikal and Palenque — for festivals and markets.

Although a large assemblage of Mayan buildings and temples survives, such as at Chichen Itza and Palenque, the intricacies of Mayan culture remain largely unknown, due in part to the scarcity of written documentation and records. Scholars and archaeologists have nonetheless discovered that social divisions in Mayan culture placed priests and nobles at the top and the peasantry at the bottom. There was also a Mayan king who generally ruled through heredity, and a religious hierarchy headed by a high priest. As shown by recent archaeological evidence, the Maya practiced human sacrifice, perhaps as part of religious ceremonies aimed at pleasing the gods or ensuring a good harvest.