pyramids in the background of your well-traveled friend's

Instagram posts.

But chances are, you have no idea

what everyday life was really like for the ancient Mayans.

From ballgames to body piercings to getting hopped up

on chocolate, the ancient Mayan culture

has a lot more in common with our world today

than you'd probably ever think.

Today, we're exploring what life was really

like for the ancient Mayans.

But before we get started, be sure to subscribe

to the Weird History Channel.

Oh, leave a comment too and let us know what historical era you

would like to hear about.

OK, time to get Mayan.

The ancient Mayan Empire was huge,

spanning across most of Central America,

including southern Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize,

and Guatemala.

The Mayans were an advanced, brilliant society,

and if you could avoid getting sacrificed to one of the 165

gods that were worshipped, you could

spend your days working eating and getting sick tattoos.

The ancient Mayans may have spent a lot of time worshipping

their gods, but they didn't do so

without a few spiked beverages in their arsenal.

One ceremonial drink, balche, came from fermented tree bark

and was sweetened with honey.

The Mayans considered this drink to be sent from the gods.

So if you're ordering one, make it a double.

They also got chocolate wasted on cacao-based alcoholic drinks

that were often spiked with hallucinogens.

If you're ever at a house party with an ancient Mayan,

watch out for that punch bowl.

The Mayans definitely took their drinking seriously.

In fact, a lot of Mayans would get enemas

in order to be as intoxicated as humanly possible.

There is actual written documentation

that depicts the act of Mayans getting bored and pouring wine

off their bums, through a tube making them officially

the world's first frat bros.

Mayans were around thousands of years

before gold teeth and grills defined a generation of hip hop

style, but that doesn't mean that they weren't blinging way

before it was on the trend.

The Mayans had an advanced form of tooth care for their time,

especially when it came to cosmetic dentistry.

A trip to the dentist was more like a trip to the beauty salon

than a sterile, fluorescent lighting-filled hell

scape we know it as today.

In fact, it wasn't uncommon for mines

to get gems drilled into their teeth

through skillfully carved out holes.

Miraculously, my dentists were able to accomplish this

without hitting any nerves, unlike my dentist.

Lack of nerve damage notwithstanding,

the Mayan dental practices were not without pain.

But it was worth it to be able to show off

a mouth full of gems.

They may not have had Novocaine or laughing gas,

but at least, you'd leave your root canal

looking like Lil Wayne.

And if there's a chance you might

get sacrificed to the gods in any moment,

you might as well look cool while you do it.

Probably one of the most infamous aspects

of the ancient Mayan polytheistic way of life

was their tendency to sacrifice people to gods.

Children were usually the ideal sacrifices

because of their youth and innocence,

but it is also common for slaves, prisoners of war,

and even average Mayan adults to be killed

in sacrificial ceremonies.

And if that's not enough to keep you on your toes,

their primary method of sacrificing

involves cutting open the chest and removing the heart.

If that's not dramatic enough, they

do all of that on top of a pyramid

and throw the lifeless body down the stairs afterward.

If you had to climb up that many steps,

you'd want to be sacrificed too.

The Mayans knew how to drink, and they definitely

knew how to eat.

The three staples of the Mayan diet

were maize, squash, and beans, an iconic basic food group

trio otherwise known as the three sisters.

Aside from the basics, Mayans also

chili peppers, sweet potatoes, avocados, tomatoes, papayas,

onions, and garlic.

For meat, they ate turkey, venison, iguana, dog, wild pigs

known as peccary, and fish.

The Mayans were also the first civilization

to make corn tortillas.

So if you love chips and dip, better

show some respect to the Mayan root of that guacamole scoop.

They also invented tamales and were the first civilization

to roast cacao seeds to make chocolate.

Thank you, Mayans, for that.

If you think tattoo-covered bikers are intimidating,

be thankful you never ran into an ancient Mayan man or woman.

Their process for getting inked up

involved getting painted on and then cut into,

culminating in another coat of paint over the open wound.

That process sounds just a tad more

horrifying than getting a peace sign

tattoo gunned on your ankle.

If you were Mayan and you got a tattoo,

you were considered one of the bravest people to exist.

Remember that the next time your workplace

sent you home for showing off your infinity sign tattoo.

You're just as brave as an ancient Mayan

who got cut open and painted.

Men would wait until after marriage to get their tattoos,

and women would get tattoos as well, avoiding the breast area.

Piercings were popular too, and not just for looking cool

but also as bloodletting sacrifice to the gods.

In a move more punk than any counterculture scenester

could ever imagine, minds would pierce their ears, genitals,

and tongues with thorns or stingray spines

for both cosmetic and ceremonial reasons.

The Mayans were partly so into piercing because they

were master jewelry makers.

Only men wore nose and lip plugs, though.

Whether the piercing was for religious reasons or secular,

you can definitely say the practice made all

of their faces, ahem, holey.

If you were an ancient Mayan and you

wanted to blow off some steam on the court,

you'd probably play a game called

pok-a-tok, the oldest team sport in the history of the world.

Unlike a casual game of playground basketball,

pok-a-tok was not for the faint of heart.

Even LeBron James might have struggled with bouncing around

a 10 pound rubber ball with only the use of his midsection

and hips.

The game was notoriously brutal, and players

would die of internal bleeding just from the shear force

of getting hit with the ball.

Often, prisoners would be forced to play each other

in a game of pok-a-tok to determine who would

get sacrificed to the gods.

That is the epitome of a sudden death game.

If you ever feel like your looks aren't measuring up

to society's standards, be grateful you weren't

alive during the ancient Mayan times

when the peak standard of beauty was being cross-eyed and having

an elongated skull in the shape of an ear of corn.

Mayans wanted so badly to look like a far sighted

yellow vegetable that they, in a practice

similar to the Egyptians, would bind

their infants malleable skull between two planks of wood

for long periods of time in order

to achieve the look du jour.

But hey, it's still probably more natural than botox.

Imagine a world where everyone was

racing to get a receding hairline that

resembled George Costanza.

The five head look was big amongst the ancient Mayans

to the point where men would shave or even

burn their hair lines to create a more

drastic receding hairline.

The elite class also wore elaborate headdresses

consisting of animal skins, jade,

and other precious materials.

Our elite class today isn't so different.

Just look at the headdresses of the people who

attended the Fyre Festival.

The Mayans thought to treat asthma

with tobacco, a sav that made about as much sense as curing

alcoholism with a shot of vodka.

They were also guilty of some other medical mistakes,

like thinking the cure to an upset stomach

was getting drunk on balche or vomiting.

Definitely sounds like a drunk person came up with that one.

Various medical gaffes aside, the Mayans

were an incredibly hygienic people and consistently bathed.

While other cultures were living in feces-covered castles,

the Mayans had figured out the practice of washing their hands

and mouths after eating and often took cold water or steam

baths before religious ceremonies.

With all the piercing, tattoos teeth jewelry,

and crazy hairdos, the majority of ancient Mayans

knew to keep it simple when it came to clothing.

Men typically wore basic loin cloth.

And sometimes, they added ponchos in colder weather.

Women wore blouses and long skirts.

But what would a society be if their elite didn't

take their fashion up a notch?

At ancient Mayan fashion week, you'd

probably see wealthy men and women

wearing elaborate getups, bejeweled with shells and jade.

Among commoners, women typically worked in the home,

raising children, collecting honey, sewing,

and making pottery.

It may sound stale compared to our modern society,

but hey, at least gender roles helped create clay bowls.

While women worked domestically, men typically

worked in the fields known as milpas.

And that was no easy task, considering

ancient Mayans didn't use animals like horses or oxen

to help them tend to crops.

Farming was all done by the brute force of man's own hand.

Talk about DIY.

Most minds, regardless of economic class,

lived in residential compounds that included extended family

all under the same roof.

Even if you were a rich Mayan, there

was no escaping your in-laws.

Their houses consisted of several buildings arranged

around patios and terraces and were typically

made from limestone with packed soil

floors and adobe-covered walls.

The Mayans are often lauded for their advanced technological

genius, but coming up with a floor made entirely of dirt

sounds pretty smart.

You never have to sweep.

You'd probably get some blisters on your feet

if you had to get around the way the ancient Mayans did.

Cities were connected through a system of paved roads,

or sacbeob, which were raised above ground, sometimes as

high as eight feet.

And since the Mayans didn't use animals to help move goods,

slaves had to carry everything on foot

often in large slave chains.

To get to more remote areas, the Mayans

traveled by canoes that were sometimes 50 feet in length.

In any case if you wanted to travel long distances

in ancient Mayan times, it was probably a lot easier

to just stay at home and chill.

Life for the ancient Mayans was intense.

If you could survive walking a mile

in their human sacrificing, tattoo bleeding, 10 pound

basketball playing shoes, then you'd

probably also be jonesing for that funnel of anal wine.

Bottoms up!

How would you like to live like the ancient Mayans?

Let us know in the comments below.

And while you're at it, check out

some of these other weird videos from our Weird History.