H MAYA WARRIORS

Information on the Maya military is currently derived primarily from archaeological excavations, and to a lesser extent - from written sources, especially in Spanish. It must also be honestly added that many information about them is unclear and uncertain. Especially since the history of the Maya and their city-states stretches from around AD 250 and continues until the mid-15th century! It therefore covers about 1,200 years. In trying to draw conclusions for this long period, it can be assumed that the Maya waged wars not only for plunder or conquest, but also - perhaps - to win captives who would later be sacrificed to the gods. So it would be a motivation similar to that of the Aztecs. We have very little certain information about the tactics or strategy of the Mayan warfare. The wars were probably frequent, but were conducted on a relatively small scale, by armies composed of perhaps several thousand warriors. A great obstacle in the conduct of wars were the topographic conditions of the development of the Maya civilization - primarily the Yucatan, covered with jungle. The Mayan warriors had relatively light defensive weapons, mainly consisting of a shield. The offensive weapons used were spears, javelins, but most of all, various types of melee weapons - most of all macuahuitl , which is a kind of short sword with an obsidian blade.