Question

how is maya diffrent from
Mesopotamia

Answer 1

Answer:

Mesopotamia is a complex example of a river valley civilization — complex because it consists of not one river, but two, the Tigris and the Euphrates, but still I think we can call this a paradigm case of a river valley civilization.

The origins of Mayan civilization are as yet not sufficiently known to determine whether Mayan civilization was completely autonomous in its origins, or if the idea of civilization came to Mesoamerica by way of idea diffusion from the earliest sources of settled neolithic agriculture in the Rio Balsas valley (where corn originated in what is now southern Mexico). Whether or not a civilization emerged autonomously is not always a central question, but in the case of Mayan civilization it should be a central question, because one of the most distinctive things about Mayan civilization is that it is a civilization of a tropical rainforest.

Due to the very different climates and ecologies of Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, the two civilizations had very different staple crops, and very different methods of farming. In Mesopotamia we find cereal grain agriculture, irrigation, and eventually a plow pulled by oxen.

The religious development of the two civilizations is quite distinct.

The two civilizations can be compared in so far as the basic template of civilizational development is concerned, but almost every detail is different.