Farming
Like all civilizations, the Maya farmed. They had long fields of crops and celebrated every night with their food. But they didn't start out farming. They first started out "hunting and gathering." They went out with a hunting stick and they would go find find food. They searched through the woods to hunt animals and gather plants. That was an easy job to some Maya, so they stay out all day to hunt and gather. Most of the time, the men hunted animals and the women gathered plants. Finally, at sunset, the Maya brought back home meat and plants. They baked the meat at their campfire while they ate their salad from the plants the women gathered. They learned farming from the From the "Olmec," an older civilization. So the Maya started farming and they absolutely loved it! They got seeds from the Olmec and started farming away! The Maya grew crops like watermelon, beans, avocado, chile, and corn. Corn was their most important crop, and it was so important they started thinking that corn had to do with something between the Maya and the gods. The Maya believe that they were made of corn, that the gods made them out of sand, water, and corn. From their whole farming field, corn is at least planted around half of the field out of the the other 4 crops. The Maya had acres and acres of fields. Not in just one city, but all the cities. They farmed all day and some of the night, until they got tired. They lit up their fields if they had late work. Then after a few years, the soil in their fields got thin and dry, so they had to say "farewell" to their fields and "slash and burn." They had to cut off their crops from the stem, and made fire and burnt up their fields. They put out the fire and let it sit for a few years. Eventually, grass grew back. They began to farm again, and started the whole farming cycle back up again.