Spyin on the Mayan

SPYIN ON THE MAYAN

 

Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.

                                           The last words of Pancho Villa

 

 The Mayan empire flourished from 600 BC to the 1500s. In that 2000 years, this civilization attained heights of artistic & intelectual   levels unparalleled in history at the time. As astronomers, the Mayans could predict eclipses of the sun & moon. They invented a sun calender more precise than the Gregorian calender used today. We, of course, invented the Sports Illistratted Swimsuit Calender.

As mathimaticians The Mayans invented the idea of zero. Their system of numerical position enabled them to caculate in numbers exceeding one million. There wasnt 2 million of anything back then.

 As builders the Mayan invented cement, built structures 30 stories high, & roads that still exist. They built huge cities, one site Coba, covers 81 sq miles. Coba is only 10% unearthed at this point. The Mayans had plumbing, steambaths, libraries, soccer fields....well not really soccer but a game much like it. A rubber ball was kept in play by two teams of 7 men each. No hands could be used to bat this ball through a stone hoop 26 feet off the ground. The game became very heated & often the king himself would be called to quell such arguments. The reason for such passion in play was probably this...the losing team was beheaded, a real builder of competative spirit, no doubt.

 The Mayans were magnificent sculpters, but their only tools seem to have been polished stones. They built mammoth pyramids without the wheel or beasts of burden, or Als Backhoe. They cultivated huge tracts of row crops, kept bees & fowl, & used huge storage warehouses for lean times.

 These people had a strange sence of beauty, deforming their children at birth with two boards pressed firmly against forehead & back of head, they created that desired flat-head look. The male babies had their faces scalded to prevent beard growth. Most babies were forced to wear a dangling rock between their eyes to cross them. Huge holes were cut in ear lobe & lip for decoration. In rights of passage, holes were cut in the tounge & male organ, whereupon a 'rope of thorns' was passed through. No thank you, very much.

 The Mayans were big on human sacrifice & had it down pat. The priest, using an obsidean knife would make a long insicion under the last rib, reach in & tear the still beating heart from his horrified victim. The body was then cut up & passed around the faithful for dining purposes. A sort of communion I suppose. There were other strange similarities to Christianity. The Mayans believed in a creator, an enity that first created plants then animals. The animals however could not express thanks to God so humans were created. The humans however, eventually became so immoral that the creator sent a huge flood to wipe them out. Then the first man, Balam-Quitze, was born from virgin birth. A miracle it was called. It seems odd that the first Catholic priest of the Yacatan, Father Diego Landa, would deem these beliefs barberic & have all Mayan records destroyed. Thousands of books were burned, libraries destroyed. Only 3 Mayan books survived, & from these our entire knowledge of the Mayan world is learned. Father Landa singlehandedly destroyed 2000 years

of knowledge, & set the world back the same amount of years....good work, dude.

 

                 

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 Even if you really dont care, the story of just how so few Spaniards could conquer so many Mayan is strange in itself. It seems from 947 to 999 there reined a most popular king-priest by the name of 'Quetzalcoatl, 'Bob', for short. This was a man of great passion & intellect. He believed human sacrifice was wrong & sought to abolish it, an act however, that did not sit well with the military chiefs. It also seems that this good king Quetzalcoatl was an extremly ugly man, compleate with wrinkles & the dreaded beard. So the devious chiefs got togeather, produced a mirror & showed the king his horrifing reflection. Well the king was so freaked out by what he saw that he took to drinking....drank for 4 days & nights & finally disappeared into the forest... to the east.

 500 years later the spanish terror Cortez showed up...from the east. He was bearded & ugly as sin to the Mayans who immedeatly belived him to be their beloved Quetzalcoatl reincarnate. They virtually handed the empire over to a stunned Cortez.

 After Quetzalcoatls disappearence in the year 999, & before the arrival of Cortez the Mayan empire fell into some disaray for want of a strong leader. To answer questions usually left up to a king, they had adopted the strange little ritual of throwing victims down a well to communicate with the gods. If the victim, [usually women & children,the children I understand] could survive the day by treading water he, or she, was hauled out & questioned about the gods wishes. Well it seems sometime in the 12th century all the dignitarys of the empire gathered at this well to ask the gods who should be king. It was a fine day heaving women down into this well, waiting for a survivor, when up stepped a particulary sharp young man named Hunac Ceel.

 He peeled off his clothing, dove into the well, surfaced a few minutes later & started yelling. What Hunac Ceel was yelling was this:

"I have spoken to the Gods, & the Gods have said this...I AM THE KING!" Well no one argued with the Gods decision, Hunac Ceel was hauled out & made king of the entire Yucatan. He & his heirs ruled for the next 250 years.

 Strange people these Mayans, & in the strange buisness of travel writing, a visit to one of the greatest Mayan ruins, Chichen-Itza,

seemed right in order.

 Chichen Itza, pronounced Chicken Pizza, the religious & political center of the Yucatan, was started by the Mayans in the 400s. It was remodeled & added on to by the Toltecs, whoever they were, untill the 900s, when they mysteriously dissappeared. After extensive research, I am prepared to tell you why they dissappeared. Taxes....thats right....the kings & priests kept raising taxes untill the Toltecs, [whoever they were,] just got pissed off & left. Went to the beach, started selling cheap jewelry is my guess.

 It was a hot & muggy January day when Vic & I pulled into Chichen Itza. The first thing apparent was that we were not exactly the first white people to view these ruins. In fact we had been preceeded by a half million other white people, [& a hundred other hues] just that day. Fifty tour busses sat in the 10 acre parking lot. A bedraggled army of 'authentic' Mayan artifact salesmen lined the entrance.

 We marched with the crowd through the ticket gates, down a jungle path & into the ruins....& were stunned. The 6 sq. KM site is mowed like a golf course, the ruins rebuilt like new. But for the other tourists, we were transported back in time. To escape the throngs we clambered up the extreme steepness of the huge pyramid known as 'The Castle.' From the lofty perch one looks down on the ball field, the Platform of Venus, the nunnery, the Church, the sacrifisial platform called the Chac Mool. A stone temple graces the top of the pyramid, we walked to the far side of this spooky edifice, a haunting, been there before, type of feeling. We were alone in the cool darkness, transported a 1000 years back, when suddenly something moved in a dark corner. My eyes strained to see this apiration when suddenly it said three words that stopped my heart. It said,

 "Well... Steve Church!"

 From the darkness stepped two ex-Butteions, Iris Levin & Annie Rowitz.

 Its a very small, but very strange world.