Mayan Artifact Display at The San Diego Natural History Museum 12-1-2015

Sorry the photos are not better but the lighting in the museum was not real great; and I just did the hand held tourist thing.  Really nice display though, and we learned a lot by seeing it.  It is a lot to take in.  It would be interesting to go down to Mexico and see some of the ruins.  There are still a lot of Mayans in that area and a lot of them speak the language of their ancestors.  There are many dialects.
   That said, much of the knowledge of what all the glyphs and symbols used in the old writings and art work from the past was lost.  Modern researchers have been working on reading their writings.
The Mayans did some amazing work building pyramids and cities that worked.  Also they did great work observing the night sky and figuring out a time line from that.  How the heavens work. And they did this without much technology.  They recorded observations and passed them along to the generations that followed.
    All that said the Mayans lived in a rough neighborhood and evolved into city states.  They were at war off and on with other groups of Mayans or other local tribes. Not a pretty picture. Some researchers think this warring got out of control and brought down their civilization.  Even though there are remnants of it today.

This carving is made from a thin piece of wood that is about a foot long.

These little guys are about ten inches tall.  

They are all standing on the backs of turtles.

I believe these wall paintings are reproductions of the originals.

Captured warriors brought before the local king. It usually 

did not end well for these guys.

These are human teeth.  The Mayans would drill a pocket into

the tooth then somehow mount a gemstone in the tooth.

What kind of glue did they use?

The faces on these pots look like fat happy Europeans to me.