5. Then to Now

From afar, our civilization and the Mayan civilization way back when seem like too blatantly diametric societies. But from a closer look, you can see that they arent all that different. We share a lot of things with the Mayans (although they were not necessarily directly derived from there). For instance, their religion had a difinite leader, called the Hlach Unic, who ruled over that religion. This is just like the Pope to the Christian religion. They also believed in many Gods, as do many of the Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Shinto. There religion and their government were not seperate, instead they were the same thing, their religion was their government. This is not exactly the same today, but it is still true that religiong greatly influences government. For example, one of the big issues today is wether or not gay marriage should be legal. One could argue that this it is not currently legal heavily due to religious conflict. The similarities don't only lie with religion. In certain areas, you can definitley see the architecture influenced by that of the Mayans. One such place, as pointed out by one of the groups, is Alta Plaza Park. For instance, the large staircase, is very reminiscent of the staricase on the Mayan temple. I could sit here for hours and tell you about all the similarities between these two seemingly different societies; there are just that many!