Their lack of many advanced technologies, Maya architecture required abundant manpower, the remaining materials seem to have been readily available, they most often used limestone which remained pliable enough to be worked with stone tools, much of their mortar consisted of crushed, burnt and mixed limestone that mimicked the properties of cement and was used as widely for stucco finishing as it was for mortar.
Codex-style writing was usually done in black ink with red highlights, giving rise to the Aztec name for the Maya territory as the "land of red and black".
The rituals and ceremonies were very closely associated with celestial and terrestrial cycles which they observed and inscribed as separate calendars,
The preclassic Maya and their neighbors independently developed the concept of zero by 36 BC.
A cycle which recorded lunation periods of the Moon, and a cycle which tracked the synodic period of Venus.
