The Complete Idiot's Guide to 2012 - Dr. Synthia Andrews Nd [4]
Chapter 1
The Mysterious Maya
In This Chapter
◆ The remnants of Mayan knowledge
◆ Origins of the ancient Maya
◆ The Mayan lifestyle
◆ Theories on why the Maya vanished
◆ Other people in the region
◆ The Maya among us
Prior to hearing about end-of-the-world predictions for 2012, how much did you know of the Mayan people? How much do you know now? Probably not a lot. You’ve almost certainly seen pictures of their pyramids and you might have heard something about their advanced mathematics and astronomy. However, for most of us, the Maya remain shrouded in romantic mystery.
There are many reasons for this mystique, not the least of which is our inability to entertain the advanced nature of their civilization. For example, it’s hard for us to consider an ancient culture having a sophisticated concept of time, where time wasn’t seen as an unchanging constant but was seen the same way modern-day quantum physics sees it—as a dimension whose properties can expand and contract. It was the Maya’s fascination with time that opened the door to the insights for the 2012 predictions.
Lost Knowledge
Although the ancient Maya had a sophisticated writing system and kept records of historical events, religious practices, calendar interpretations, and more, we have almost no original books to learn from. They were lost along with many sacred items of the Maya when the Spanish arrived in the 1500s. Spanish conquistadores invading South America destroyed as many of the Mayan sacred books as they could find. Only three complete books and a fragment of a fourth were saved from the fires and have been available for study by Western scholars. For many years it was believed these books, called codices, were the only remnants of preconquest Maya knowledge. The truth is that many books were saved by the Mayan people and hidden for centuries by the elders and holy people.
def•i•ni•tion
The Maya recorded their history in books of paper made from the inner bark of wild fig trees. Mayan paper was developed around the same time as papyrus paper was developed in Rome. The books are called codices (or codex, singular) or folding books because of the way they were folded, wrapped in hides, and stored in record rooms. Modern excavations occasionally turn up more books, ruined by humidity and weather.
The loss of such valuable documents to Western study has made it hard to decipher the hieroglyphic language of the Maya, a feat still not fully accomplished. In fact, significant breakthroughs didn’t occur until the 1970s, with major translations happening in the 1990s.
Also, Western scholars study ancient manuscripts with a biased eye. Everything we know is based on interpretation through the lens of our own culture. What the Maya mean and what we think they mean can be two very different things. It’s good to keep this in mind when you read about Mayan mythology. The traditional interpretations may be far from the true Mayan meaning. Until the Maya elders themselves come forward to share their knowledge in the future, you and I will never truly know their history and depth.
So what do we know about ancient Mayan civilization? Who are these mysterious people?
The Ancient Maya
The ancient Maya lived in Central America, south of the Tropic of Cancer and north of the equator. The region they occupied is referred to as the Maya Area and is still inhabited by the Mayan people today. The Maya Area is loosely divided into three zones:
◆ Southern Maya