Hypertext Webster Gateway: "Mayan"
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)
Mayan \Ma"yan\, a.
1. Designating, or pertaining to, an American Indian
linguistic stock occupying the Mexican States of Veracruz,
Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, and Yucatan, together with a
part of Guatemala and a part of Salvador. The Mayan
peoples are dark, short, and brachycephallic, and at the
time of the discovery had attained a higher grade of
culture than any other American people. They cultivated a
variety of crops, were expert in the manufacture and
dyeing of cotton fabrics, used cacao as a medium of
exchange, and were workers of gold, silver, and copper.
Their architecture comprised elaborately carved temples
and places, and they possessed a superior calendar, and a
developed system of hieroglyphic writing, with records
said to go back to about 700 a. d.
2. Of or pertaining to the Mayas.
From WordNet (r) 1.7 (wn)
Mayan
n 1: a member of an American Indian people of Yucatan and Belize
and Guatemala who once had a culture characterized by
outstanding architecture and pottery and astronomy [syn:
{Mayan}, {Maya}]
2: a family of American Indian languages spoken by Mayan
peoples [syn: {Maya}, {Mayan}, {Mayan language}]
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