Escatterbrained?

An acquaintance of ours in Antigua recently announced his intention to spend December 21, 2012 at Tikal, ground-zero for the apocalyptically-minded it would seem.

You'd think that when it comes to the end of the world, just about anywhere would do — though Tikal is pretty scenic.

It also struck me as odd that this particular pessimist is usually so ready in his criticism of the dangerous escatological tendencies within American protestantism.

Does Tikal Futura count?

Earthkeepers

I doubt whether there are many books stocked by Amazon more worthy of having the piss taken out of them than this one.

Lets have a mosey at the product description:

"The Four Insights are the wisdom teachings that have been protected by secret societies of Earthkeepers, the medicine men and women of the Americas. The Insights state that all creation—humans, whales, and even stars—is made from light manifest through the power of intention. The Earthkeepers mastered the Insights, and used them to heal disease, eliminate emotional suffering, and even grow new bodies that age and heal differently.

Mastery of the Insights allows you to reinform your DNA and participate consciously in your biological, emotional, and spiritual evolution. According to the prophecies of the Maya, Hopi, and Inka Earthkeepers, we’re at a turning point in human history, when a new species of human will give birth to itself. We’re going to take a quantum leap into what we’re becoming and will no longer be Homo sapiens but Homo luminouos. The Four Insights reveal ancient technologies we can practice for becoming beings of light with the ability to perceive the energy and vibration that make up the physical universe at a much higher level."

I spotted this revelatory tome in the clutches of a grinogo on a bus to Panama; the kind who has a disordered mane of greying hairs and a local girlfriend half his age. (No doubt tasked with helping him reinform his withering chromosomes.)

The notion that the native peoples of the Americas had a better idea of how to look after our planet isn't one that stands up to much scrutiny. And yet it somehow persists and helps float a not insubstantial publishing industry.

Here in Guatemala the ancient Maya have become one of the most salient case studies we have in poor environmental management. Perhaps they were too busy vibrating to notice all the deforestation and soil erosion they'd been causing?

Ask yourself why the indigenes were so amazed at seeing the Spanish conquistadors on top of horses, an animal which evolved in the Americas? Because they'd long ago eaten them all.

And as soon as the invaders had inadvertently provided them with a fresh supply, they hopped right on and started exterminating the buffalo and any other large mammals left over from earlier man-made extinction events.

The secret is out

This month Revue magazine has well and truly blown 'the best kept secret in Antigua'. Cheers mate! ....as we poms say (apparently). Now those mountain-spring pools will feature rows of mochiludos soaking their callos. Well, for a while at least.

In truth we haven't been going to El Pilar as regularly as we used to when old Germán was in charge. His passing was preceded by that of the amazingly loquacious parrot he kept in the gatehouse. He did always seem to say that he'd love it if more people could come and witness the beauty of his finca, but I think he had locals in mind predominantly.

There's also an interview with ever-effervescent eco-crusader Vida Amor de Paz. I had a brief encounter with Guatemala's polar explorer last year and found her a little keener then than she was in her conversation with Laura McNamara to sprinkle her commentary with references to 2012 and the Mayan cosmovision.

I remember wondering at the time whether she really believes in that bollocks or whether in fact it has become a useful hook for a) getting funding for her trip and wider campaign and b) inspiring impressionable young people to become eco-crusaders.

Could it be similar to the great E.O. Wilson's appeal to religious delusionals on his lecture circuit? For Wilson insists — and even Richard Dawkins grudgingly admits — that the godly are far more likely to save the planet than us die-hard cynics and atheists. Anyway, more on that when I get round to reviewing Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood in the next few days.

Next month we are going to be battered with Roland Emmerich's 2012. Tuesday's Guardian had a great piece on the underlying 'tosh' which featured fun soundbites from both Mayan archaeologists and local elders:

"Mayan leaders consider the fuss a ridiculous western obsession. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff," Apolinario Chile Pixtun, an elder from Guatemala, told the Associated Press."

Meanwhile, behind schedule, but still very scarily — there will be ice-free summers in the Arctic in 'as little as ten years time' — it was reported yesterday.

Mesoamerican Thingamajig of the Day

American archaeologist Richard Hansen revealed his latest find at El Mirador yesterday: a stucco sculpture dating back to 300BC depicting the 'hero' twins Ixbalanqué and Hunapú recovering the severed head of their father. The frieze is 4m long and 3m tall and decorates a wall which incorporates a series of basins served by a hydraulic system.

With this discovery Mayanists can have no further doubt now that the myths contained in the Popol Vuh are of ancient heritage.

Maya Deity of the Day: Ixchel

In modern representations Ixchel is usually sensualised. However, the Maya themselves liked to depict her as a hideous old crone crowned by a snake.

The confusion of identities persists to this day. It would seem that the classic Maya moon goddess was more often represented as a young and fertile woman, so Ixchel, as seen here, was probably associated principally with the waning moon, which the Maya like to describe as "our grandmother".

Diego de Landa referred to her as "the goddess of making babies," and we can today ascertain that Ixchel was venerated for her role in midwifery and other kinds of practical healthcare...and divination.

Las Casas relates a myth from Verapaz in which Ixchel and her hubbie Itzamná, have thirteen sons, two of which (corresponding to the Howler Monkey Gods) go on to create heaven and earth. In another she runs off with the king of the vultures and he has to enter his rival's palace in disguise in order to retrieve her.

In the 16th century Cortés discovered that Cozumel had become a major centre of goddess worship and the stack of feminine idols found on another nearby island by Hernández de Córdoba, led to it being christened Isla Mujeres.

Maya Deity of the Day: Chaac

This me, back in March 1988, sitting atop a carved mask of the god Chaac at Mayapan, political hub of the Yucatec Maya from the 1220s to the 1440s. 

Chaac or Chac - later to be known as Tlaloc by the Aztecs and Cocijo by the Zapotecs - is one of the most important deities in Mesoamerican culture as his remit covers agriculture and rainfall, with thunder and lightning as his call-signs. 

As with many other supernatural beings worshiped by the Maya, Chaac has both an individual identity and a manifold one (had to have helped the Maya get a grip on all that Holy Trinity claptrap) precipitating off into four distinct Chaacs, each with its own colour and cardinal direction. All share the same repitilian features with pronounced nose, curling fangs and tears streaming from spherical eyes. 

Over the centuries there have been many different rituals associated with Chaac, such as the rather bizarre Yucatec one where four young boys are tied up and made to croak like frogs. 

Chaac also features heavily in the twelfth century Dresden Codex and the walls of the Puuc city of Kabah are literally covered in impressive, protruding-snout Chaac masks, stacked one on top of another. 

It's not hard to see why Chaac has retained a significant role within the traditional religious practices of modern Maya communities. As Jared Diamond pointed out in Collapse, in spite of what the brochures say, the Petén jungle isn't technically a rainforest;  it's a tropical seasonal forest - which basically means that it doesn't rain there all the time. 

Worse still from the perspective of the various clumps of Classic Maya civilisation in the region, the ground underneath both it and the Yucatán peninsula to the north is made up of porous, limestone-based karst, which means that most of Chaac's bounty seeps away rather quickly. (To counteract this, the inhabitants of Tikal had plastered natural depressions in the karst to create reservoirs which could hold up enough water to meet the needs of around 10,000 people for 18 months.) 

The seasonal unpredictability of rainfall is compounded by a cyclical tendency towards truly desperate conditions: roughly once every 208 years -  apparently owing to variations in solar radiation - a severe drought settles on this region. We know that one such sequía from AD 125 to AD 250 can be associated with the pre-Classic collapse at cities like El Mirador in the north of Guatemala. And the one which began around AD 760 is thought to have been the worst in 7000 years. 

The great Maya centres in the forested lowlands seemed to have suffered the most severe brake on their cultural endeavours at this time, in part because the humidity there makes it that much harder to store corn for periods longer than twelve months. In comparison cities like Lamanai and Tulum, which could supplement their protein-starved corn diet with mariscos, and which were a little less ambitious in terms of ceremonial architecture, (plaster manufacture drove deforestation which in turn helped stifle rainfall), were able to keep up a more sophisticated way of life right up until the arrival of European pathogens. 

Maya Deity of the Day: Itzamná

Itzamná (or God D) was Maya civilisation's high priest and cultural czar, having provided it with both writing and calendrical science. He is also said to have taught them how to cultivate corn.

Most often depicted as a toothless old duffer with square eyes and squinty pupils, as well as sunken cheeks and a bulbous nose, Itzamná is sometimes said to be the child of the creator god Hunab Ku, and as such has inherited the latter's position as the paramount supernatural power.

He wears a petaled headband which holds a mirrored ornament and the akbal glyph for night and darkness.

His name means 'lizard house'.

Maya Deity of the Day: Ah Kin

Ah Kin, "He of the Sun" (aka Acan Chob; Chi Chac Chob, Kinich Ahau, and God G) is an ambivalently-natured deity whose remit includes the management of drought and disease.

If you've seen Apocalypto you might have acquired an exaggerated sense of the importance of the Mayan sun god within their pantheon, but his twin areas of expertise must have seemed comparatively important during the two great crisis moments for the Pre-Colombian Maya - the collapse of their Classic civilisation (due largely to unfavourable environmental conditions) followed a few centuries later by the arrival of the poxy Spaniards.

Ah Kin likes to spend his evenings in the murky Mayan underworld; Xibalba. He had a companion dog to help him find the eastern horizon and while he's down there he merges with the nocturnal jungle cat to become Balanke, the 'Jaguar Sun'.

In his youth he was something of a looker (presumably before he developed those t-shaped incisors and crossed eyes) and had a thing for Ix Chel, the future Moon goddess. The pair are said to have invented sexual union and became patrons of match-making and procreation until Ah Kin assumed his full responsibilities as sun god, a position which came with a fiercer, less approachable aspect and the requirement to act as the bringer of doubt.

His union with Ix Chel persisted, and together they also became associated with sorcery and medicine. After the conquest however, her identity was quickly blotted out by that of the Virgin Mary.

Maya Deity of the Day: Ah Puch

Ah Puch aka Hun Ahau or God A is the Maya God of Death and is said to reside in the ninth and frankly least pleasant level of Xibalba. The Aztecs later gave him the much less tongue-friendly name of Mictlantecuhtli.

He is seen here in perhaps his most popular get-up, that of a rotting corpse topped by a skull. Bells also dangle from his wrists and hair-bands.

One of his nicknames is 'The Flatulent One', just one of his many ways of demonstrating a doggedly malevolent nature.

The head of Ah Puch was also sometimes represented as that of an owl and some indigenous people in the region still believe that the screech of this bird portends an imminent fatality:

'Cuando el tecolote canta... el indio muere.'

As well as the owl, Ah Puch's constant companions are the dog and the Moán bird, also perceived as creatures of foul-omen.

He ranks ranks fourth in number of depictions in the codices, appearing 88 times in the three extant manuscripts.

See also ahhh puchis?!

Quote of the Day

"The reader is perhaps curious to know how old cities sell in Central America. Like other articles of trade, they are regulated by the quantity in the market, and the demand; but, not being staple articles, like cotton and indigo, they were held at fancy prices, and at the time were dull of sale. I paid fifty dollars for Copan. There was never any difficulty about price. I offered that sum, for which Don Jose Maria thought me only a fool; if I had offered more, he would probably have considered me something worse."
John Lloyd Stephens on acquiring the ruins of Copan in 1839

The Dresden Codex

An exact replica of the Dresden Codex has gone on display this week in Guatemala.

The Maya codex, one of only three in existence thanks to the pyrotechnic tendencies of early Spanish missionaries, was acquired by Royal Library of the court of Saxony in 1739.

It contains astronomical predictions of startling accuracy as well as texts on sickness and medicine. 12 of its 74 pages were damaged as a result of the Dresden bombing raid in 1945. (The hieroglyphs in the upper lefthand corners of the pages were erased.)

I've not seen it, but five years ago I did get a chance to view the Madrid Codex in its somewhat hidden location at the wonderful Museo de América.

Apocalypse 2012

Yesterday's New York Times magazine had an interesting piece on the assorted crazies that have combined the ancient ur-myth of Armageddon with the slightly less ancient Maya long count calendar in order to fixate on December 21, 2012 as the likely date for the end of the world. (13.0.0.0.0 in Maya notation.)

Polls apparently indicate that up to half of all Americans believe in the literal truth of the Book of Revelation, which fosters credence in the notion that a select few will survive a conflagration which will serve to usher in a flawless (i.e. not especially diverse and pluralistic) society.

Except that this Maya-inflected Armageddon is more in touch with its feminine side. More of a semi-colon than a full stop, it will signal, the New Age nutjobs tell us, a reconcilliation of infinity and finitude, time and eternity, a sudden downpour of new revelations, and a universal synchronisation with the wave harmonic of history.

Leading 2012 prophet John Major Jenkins insists that the end of the current world-age cycle is all about renewal through galactic alignment. "It's certainly nothing as simplistic [or as easy to disprove just by waiting and seeing through unsynchronised] as the end of the world," he adds.

Yet according to José Arguelles (a.k.a. Vultan Votan, Closer of the Cycle), organiser of the Harmonic Convergence event back in 1987, there will be a lot fewer of us post-2012,"with simpler lifestyles, solar technology, garden culture and lots of telepathic communication". The planet will be freed from the dissonance of Western scientific thinking. And those billions of people that don't get with the programme will be taken away in silver ships.

The connections between the thinking of the religious right and the spiritual, multi-dimensional left are obvious and fairly scary.

Perhaps the much-maligned London 2012 logo has some glyphic resonance that Lord Coe has neglected to tell us about?

Kukulkán

How many reviews of Apocalypto have I both read − and listened to − that refer to the Maya sacrificing people to their "sun god".

Watch the film maties; nowhere is a sun god mentioned. All these rolling heads are in fact accidental decapitations resulting from fully dignified, non-sectarian executions, dedicated in fact to Kukulkán, Maya God of the headless chicken. (Illustrated).

In seriousness, the Maya sun god was known as Ahau-Kin, "Lord of the Sun Face". Between sunset and sunrise he doubled up as the Jaguar god, a lord of the Underworld, for at those hours he journeyed from west to east through the lower regions of the world. Itzamna, the great god of knowledge was also associated with the sun, but not human sacrifice.

Kukulkán was the Toltec-Maya equivalent of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god. Human sacrifice to this deity, as depicted in Mel Gibson's movie did indeed occur, though animal sacrifice was more common. The great temple at Chichén Itzá, known to the Spanish as El Castillo, was a centre of quite visceral devotion to Kukulkán.

The Mexica ('Aztecs') sacrificed on a monumental scale to their gods of war, night, fire and rain. The tribal deity Huitzilopochtli did however have some associations with the sun.

One day someone will make the movie of the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlán . It's frankly amazing that it's never been done. I'd like to try to develop a script myself. It's actually really more mini-series material because there are distinct phases and the audience would need to appreciate the passage of time. There would be some amazing set pieces. The Pizarros in Peru would make a natural sequel! (I guess that the only way to include a significant female role would be through La Malinche, recently the subject of a novel by Mexican authoress Laura Esquivel.)

It strikes me that the late-classic Maya would have been more likely to sacrifice to their gods of corn or of rain (Chaac), than their sun god, whose prominence in the western re-imagination of pre-Colombian cultures owes a great deal to the Incas. Gibson's eclipse at the temple scene has antecedents in Tintin and the Picaros and several B movies before that.

As ever, Wikipedia has the low-down on Mayan mythology.

Cross Talking

I think I should shut up about Apocalypto until I have actually had a chance to see it. (Though I will be in the Yucatán myself when it is released here.)

Patrick from Guatemala Solidarity seems to share my caution about the race to write it off as "unbalanced" as its mad-eyed director.

I spotted this quote from the Guardian in his post:

"The percentage of Maya speakers in Yucatan state fell from 37 percent in 2000 to 33.9 percent by 2005. Paradoxically, for a state that advertises the glories of the Mayan culture for tourists, it is having a hard time keeping the present-day Maya there; many are migrating to the United States."

Hmmm. Playa del Carmen has been growing at a rate of 26% per annum for many years now; it's officially the world's fastest-growing town. I'd hazard a guess that the dilution of Yucatec speakers in the region has as much to do with immigration as emigration.

Now, if you really wanted to portray the Maya as a savage bunch you'd have to make a film about the Caste Wars in Yucatán in the 1840s. They seem more up Gibson's street anyway. There's even a talking cross and Maya members of its sect referred to their criollo enemies as "Jews".