Concept

Sacbe

A sacbe, plural sacbeob (Yucatec Maya: singular sakbej, plural sakbejo'ob), or "white road", is a raised paved road built by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Most connect temples, plazas, and groups of structures within ceremonial centers or cities, but some longer roads between cities are also known. The term "sacbe" is Yucatec Maya for "white road"; white perhaps because there is evidence that they were originally coated with limestone stucco or plaster, which was over a stone and rubble fill. Although great progress has been made on determining the roles of sacbeob in Maya society, the decision to construct sacbeob as opposed to smaller, less complicated paths is puzzling to experts. Without a profound reliance on beasts of burden to transport goods, it remains partially unclear why the Maya decided to expend so much labor constructing these impressive roads. However it remains a very possible theory that the Sacbe held significant spiritual and religious value, in the sense that the actual trekking of the Sacbe itself seemed to be a spiritual journey of sorts. Sacbeob constructed of these materials are especially important to contemporary studies of Maya sites, as they preserve well, making them capable of providing invaluable evidence to archaeologists. Maya "Sacbeob varied greatly in construction, length, width, and function" according to a 2015 study done on the sacbeob of Ceren. It is possible that many non-stone sacbeob once existed throughout Maya territory, however evidence of these earthen roads are limited, as they do not preserve as well. The word Sacbe meaning the white jungle pathways used by the Maya comes from a combination of two Mayan words, "sac" meaning white and "be" or "beh" meaning way, road, or pathway. The word "Beh" operates as the root term for "Sacbe". Beh is spelled alternately as Be, bej, bey, be, bih, as well as "beel" in the possessive. It has many distinctions from English concepts of roads, pathways, or trails.

About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Graph Chatbot

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.