The ancient game of amalla was not mere sport. The ballcourt was a “middleworld” between gods and humans, a battleground for the cosmic tension between life and death, good and evil, sacrifice and rebirth. After all, the Maya Hero Twins — Hunahpu and Xbalanque — had outsmarted the Lords of Death on the ballcourt by replacing a […]
Continue ReadingFor an exotic place and a surprising destination, I strongly recommend The Instituto Cientifico de Na Bolom, the Scientific Institute of Na Bolom (House of the Tiger). It is located in the State of Chiapas, 8000 feet high in the breathtaking mountains. It was established in the ironically-named San Cristobal de Las Casas, the fastest growing […]
Continue ReadingMexico is a country of color, diversity, grand differences in geography, climate and perspective. The same is true of her people. From the mysterious origins and fates of her earliest inhabitants; the current indigenous peoples; to the history and influence of immigrants from Spain and other areas of the world, Mexico has developed an intricate […]
Continue ReadingThe Maya, Aztecs, and other peoples of ancient Mexico had a very strong sense of their own history, which they went to great lengths to preserve. But in some ways, their concept of history differed radically from that of the invading Spaniards and later historians who wrote the history of Mexico from the European viewpoint. […]
Continue ReadingControversy is a fact of life. Complete agreement on any subject is hardly to be expected. The study of Maya hieroglyphs is no exception. In fact, scholarly differences of opinion can be just as vicious as political infighting. While most Maya scholars and researchers acknowledge the importance of the breakthrough in the decipherment of the […]
Continue ReadingIn the last column we looked briefly at the history of the decipherment of the Maya hieroglyphic writing system and some of the modern myths about the ancient Maya propagated by certain popular writers, such as J. M. Jenkins ( Galactic Alignment theory) and J. Argüelles ( Dreamspell Calendar). My purpose was not simply to discredit these popular […]
Continue ReadingFour major cultural areas provide us with the most extensive documentation in Mesoamerica: the Valley of Mexico (Aztec), Northern Yucatan (Lowland Maya), Western Oaxaca (Mixtec), and Guatemala (Highland Maya and Cakchiquel). In previous articles we looked at the first two of these primary sources of native historical tradition. Most of the pre-Hispanic historical codices come […]
Continue ReadingDecipherment of the Maya hieroglyphic system of writing represents perhaps the greatest breakthrough in unravelling the history of the ancient Maya. Estimates vary on the actual percentage of the glyphs that have been successfully interpreted so far, but enough progress has been made to enable researchers to piece together much of the early dynastic histories […]
Continue ReadingThroughout history twins have exerted a strange fascination over people’s minds and imaginations. On the average one set of twins is born out of 80 pregnancies in different proportions, according to various hereditary factors. For example, certain women, in particular black women, have a strong tendency toward the birth of twins. Identical twins with the […]
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In writing of the Persian Wars, Herodotus, our earliest Greek historian of note, declared that his purpose in writing of the attempts by the Persian kings Darius and Xerxes to invade Greece was to ensure that the great deeds – whether of Greeks or barbarians – should not be forgotten in ages to come. He […]
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