The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012

3: What we know about the Maya and thier ideas about Creation

35 “And then when the destruction of the world was finished They settled this [land] so that Kan Xib Yui puts it in order Then the White Imix Tree stands in the North And stood as the pillar of the sky The sign of the destruction of the world . . .”1 The Maya thought a lot about the creation of the world, as this passage, one of many from the colonial Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, exemplifies. But who were they and where did they come from? The Maya lived—and still do—in the peninsula of Yucatan, which encompasses portions of Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador and all of Guatemala and Belize. They inhabit the southern end of Mesoamerica, a common culture area that exhibits a long tradition of a shared set of symbols and ideas, as well as social customs and material forms of expression. This larger cultural area stretches roughly from the Tropic of Cancer, just south of the U.S. border, all the way to the middle of Central America. The more W h a t W e K n o W a b o u t t h e M a y a a n d t h e i r i d e a s a b o u t C r e a t i o n 3 What We KnoW about the Maya and their ideas about Creation 36 we learn about expressions of Maya legitimacy—their art, architecture , and calendars—the more direct ties we find with the other cultures that made up ancient Mesoamerica, such as the Olmec, the Zapotec, the Aztec, and the people of Teotihuacan. Our own studies of ancient Mesoamerican calendars reveal specific attributes that cross over between the codices from the highlands of central Mexico and Maya Yucatan.2 Like all Native American people, the Maya descended from nomadic hunters following large game animals that crossed the Bering land bridge in successive waves of migration from Asia into Alaska 20,000 or more years ago. An alternative theory, which claims they came from the east across the north Atlantic, lacks sufficient proof, in my opinion. By the Early Formative period (2500–2000 BC) in Mesoamerica, people began the transition to agriculture with the production of maize and to the development of ceramic traditions. Around 1500 BC the Olmec center of San Lorenzo began its florescence, followed by La Venta, along the Gulf Coast west of the Yucatan peninsula. In the Middle Formative period (900–400 BC), settlements sprang up in the Valley of Mexico and Oaxaca in the mountainous regions to the west of the Yucatan. We can document the first concreteachievementsincalendarandastronomyfromaboutthistime . Carved stelae dated to the latter half of this period herald the beginnings of hieroglyphic writing, as well as use of the 365-day year and the unique 260-day cycle. (We will look at how these cycles operate in Chapter 4.) Great architecture and sculpture proliferated, accompanied by increasingly complex, hierarchically organized political and social systems—what cultural anthropologists call a state-level society. At about the same time a complex of cultures in the isthmian region of the Pacific Coast just south and southwest of Yucatan began to produce ceramic and architectural works. The city of Izapa rose to prominence as a regional capital on the periphery of this area during the late part of the Middle Preclassic period (300 BC–AD 200). All of these people and places contributed to the artistic styles; formats for laying out ceremonial centers with What We KnoW about the Maya and their ideas about Creation 37 their impressive plazas, pyramids, and temples; and various early forms of pictograms and rudimentary hieroglyphs that coalesced in the ancient Maya culture, and these achievements have come to fascinate our contemporary culture. As to astronomy, one of the earliest carved upright stones bearing information about a complex knowledge of the heavens comes from the Gulf Coast site of La Mojarra. Stela 1 contains hieroglyphs that highlight a pair of solar eclipses and first appearances of the planet Venus in its 584-day cycle; the monument dates to the second century AD. Periodic Venus sightings would have required at least a century or more of careful observation to yield a reliable pattern so that precise predictions could be made. So we know that sophisticated, precise calendar keepers were active at least as early as the beginning of the...