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Author: John M. Weeks Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
In Maya Daykeeping, three divinatory calendars from highland Guatemala - examples of a Mayan literary tradition that includes the Popul Vuh, Annals of the Cakchiquels, and the Titles of the Lords of Totonicapan - dating to 1685, 1722, and 1855, are transcribed in K'iche or Kaqchikel side-by-side with English translations. Calendars such as these continue to be the basis for prognostication, determining everything from the time for planting and harvest to foreshadowing illness and death. Good, bad, and mixed fates can all be found in these examples of the solar calendar and the 260-day divinatory calendar. The use of such calendars is mentioned in historical and ethnographic works, but very few examples are known to exist. Each of the three calendars transcribed and translated by John M. Weeks, Frauke Sachse, and Christian M. Prager - and housed at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology - is unique in structure and content. Moreover, except for an unpublished study of the 1722 calendar by Rudolf Schuller and Oliver La Farge (1934), these little-known works appear to have escaped the attention of most scholars. Introductory essays contextualize each document in time and space, and a series of appendixes present previously unpublished calendrical notes assembled in the early twentieth century. Providing considerable information on the divinatory use of calendars in colonial highland Maya society previously unavailable without a visit to the University of Pennsylvania's archives, Maya Daykeeping is an invaluable primary resource for Maya scholars. Mesoamerican Worlds Series
Author: John M. Weeks Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
In Maya Daykeeping, three divinatory calendars from highland Guatemala - examples of a Mayan literary tradition that includes the Popul Vuh, Annals of the Cakchiquels, and the Titles of the Lords of Totonicapan - dating to 1685, 1722, and 1855, are transcribed in K'iche or Kaqchikel side-by-side with English translations. Calendars such as these continue to be the basis for prognostication, determining everything from the time for planting and harvest to foreshadowing illness and death. Good, bad, and mixed fates can all be found in these examples of the solar calendar and the 260-day divinatory calendar. The use of such calendars is mentioned in historical and ethnographic works, but very few examples are known to exist. Each of the three calendars transcribed and translated by John M. Weeks, Frauke Sachse, and Christian M. Prager - and housed at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology - is unique in structure and content. Moreover, except for an unpublished study of the 1722 calendar by Rudolf Schuller and Oliver La Farge (1934), these little-known works appear to have escaped the attention of most scholars. Introductory essays contextualize each document in time and space, and a series of appendixes present previously unpublished calendrical notes assembled in the early twentieth century. Providing considerable information on the divinatory use of calendars in colonial highland Maya society previously unavailable without a visit to the University of Pennsylvania's archives, Maya Daykeeping is an invaluable primary resource for Maya scholars. Mesoamerican Worlds Series
Author: Julie Gibbings Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108806619 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 427
Book Description
Postcolonial histories have long emphasized the darker side of narratives of historical progress, especially their role in underwriting global and racial hierarchies. Concepts like primitiveness, backwardness, and underdevelopment not only racialized and gendered peoples and regions, but also ranked them on a seemingly naturalized timeline - their 'present' is our 'past' - and reframed the politics of capitalist expansion and colonization as an orderly, natural process of evolution towards modernity. Our Time is Now reveals that modernity particularly appealed to those excluded from power, precisely because of its aspirational and future orientation. In the process, marginalized peoples creatively imagined diverse political futures that redefined the racialized and temporal terms of modernity. Employing a critical reading of a wide variety of previously untapped sources, Julie Gibbings demonstrates how the struggle between indigenous people and settlers to manage contested ideas of time and history as well as practices of modern politics, economics, and social norms were central to the rise of coffee capitalism in Guatemala and to twentieth century populist dictatorship and revolution.
Author: Prudence M. Rice Publisher: University of Texas Press ISBN: 0292774494 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 291
Book Description
In Maya Political Science: Time, Astronomy, and the Cosmos, Prudence M. Rice proposed a new model of Maya political organization in which geopolitical seats of power rotated according to a 256-year calendar cycle known as the May. This fundamental connection between timekeeping and Maya political organization sparked Rice's interest in the origins of the two major calendars used by the ancient lowland Maya, one 260 days long, and the other having 365 days. In Maya Calendar Origins, she presents a provocative new thesis about the origins and development of the calendrical system. Integrating data from anthropology, archaeology, art history, astronomy, ethnohistory, myth, and linguistics, Rice argues that the Maya calendars developed about a millennium earlier than commonly thought, around 1200 BC, as an outgrowth of observations of the natural phenomena that scheduled the movements of late Archaic hunter-gatherer-collectors throughout what became Mesoamerica. She asserts that an understanding of the cycles of weather and celestial movements became the basis of power for early rulers, who could thereby claim "control" over supernatural cosmic forces. Rice shows how time became materialized—transformed into status objects such as monuments that encoded calendrical or temporal concerns—as well as politicized, becoming the foundation for societal order, political legitimization, and wealth. Rice's research also sheds new light on the origins of the Popol Vuh, which, Rice believes, encodes the history of the development of the Mesoamerican calendars. She also explores the connections between the Maya and early Olmec and Izapan cultures in the Isthmian region, who shared with the Maya the cosmovision and ideology incorporated into the calendrical systems.
Author: Robert Sitler, Ph.D. Publisher: North Atlantic Books ISBN: 158394575X Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 209
Book Description
Author Robert Sitler’s immersion in Mayan culture began with a transformative spiritual experience more than three decades ago in the ruins of Palenque, Mexico. Led by a local to a nearby Mayan village, Sitler discovered firsthand what traditional Mayan life was like—a community of people living in peace with each other and their physical surroundings. In The Living Maya, he shares this experience and many that followed. In the process, he immerses readers in a rich indigenous culture and offers a fresh view of the 2012 phenomenon, focusing on the valuable lessons Mayan culture can teach us in this time of transition. Personal anecdotes are interwoven with factual information about the roots of traditional Mayan customs and traditions, presenting a rare multifaceted view of their simple yet profound way of life. The book showcases Mayan infant care, community building, ties to nature, attitudes toward the elderly, and orientation to spirituality. In The Living Maya, Sitler shows how following “the Mayan way” can help us ground our lives in harmony with nature, broaden our perspectives on human existence, connect us with our capacity for compassion, and use the vaunted cataclysm of 2012 as a unique chance for growth.
Author: Mary Fran Koppa Publisher: Light Technology Publishing ISBN: 9781889965031 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 172
Book Description
On the Mayan Calendar, every day of the year represents the energy of one of the twenty solar glyphs and one of the thirteen numbers, called tones. The solar glyph indicates your soul purpose, and the tone is the energy you will use to attain this purpose.
Author: Hunbatz Men Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1591439876 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 128
Book Description
Mayan daykeeper Hunbatz Men reveals the multi-calendar system of the Maya that guided the lives of his ancestors and how it can guide us today • The first book to reveal the secrets of the Mayan Pleiades calendar: the Tzek’eb • Explains how the Maya used their astronomical knowledge to guide their lives on Earth The Mayan Calendar has taken on special prominence with the imminent arrival of 2012, a date that many claim is the end of that calendar. However, as Mayan elder and daykeeper Hunbatz Men shows, the cosmological understanding of his ancestors was so sophisticated that they had not one, but many calendars, each based on the cycles of different systems in the cosmos. In this book he reveals for the first time the Tzek’eb, or Pleiades, Calendar of 26,000 years, which charts the revolution of our solar system around Alcyone, the central star of the Pleiades system. He also discusses the K’uuk’ulcan Calendar of the 4 seasons of the solar year and the wheel of the K’altunes Calendar, which is composed of 13 cycles of 20 years each that form a calendar of 260 years. In traditional Mayan culture the computation of time was not determined by simple economic or social motives. The calendars served the higher purpose of synchronizing the lives of human beings and their societies to the great cosmic pulsation, to the rhythm of the annual seasons, and to the other cycles that dictate changes upon Earth. Mayan understanding of the cosmic cycles was so exact that this knowledge could be used to influence all stages of life--from planning when to conceive (parents could choose not only the sex of their child but its vocation and future destiny) to plotting out the course of the entire society. Pyramids played a crucial role in applying this wisdom because, as Hunbatz Men shows, they were able to produce and transform energy in accordance with the cosmic cycles charted by the calendars. This book reveals for the first time the wisdom of the multi-calendar Mayan system and how it can help guide our modern world.
Author: Scott R. Hutson Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1351029568 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 983
Book Description
The Maya World brings together over 60 authors, representing the fields of archaeology, art history, epigraphy, geography, and ethnography, who explore cutting-edge research on every major facet of the ancient Maya and all sub-regions within the Maya world. The Maya world, which covers Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador, contains over a hundred ancient sites that are open to tourism, eight of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and many thousands more that have been dug or await investigation. In addition to captivating the lay public, the ancient Maya have attracted scores of major interdisciplinary research expeditions and hundreds of smaller projects going back to the 19th century, making them one of the best-known ancient cultures. The Maya World explores their renowned writing system, towering stone pyramids, exquisitely painted murals, and elaborate funerary tombs as well as their creative agricultural strategies, complex social, economic, and political relationships, widespread interactions with other societies, and remarkable cultural resilience in the face of historical ruptures. This is an invaluable reference volume for scholars of the ancient Maya, including archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists.
Author: Gerardo Aldana y Villalobos Publisher: Oxbow Books ISBN: 1782976442 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 177
Book Description
Archaeoastronomy and the Maya illustrates archaeoastronomical approaches to ancient Mayan cultural production. The book is contextualized through a history of archaeoastronomical investigations into Mayan sites, originating in the 19th century discovery of astronomical tables within hieroglyphic books. Early 20th century archaeological excavations revealed inscriptions carved into stone that also preserved astronomical records, along with architecture that was built to reflect astronomical orientations. These materials provided the basis of a growing professionalized archaeoastronomy, blossoming in the 1970s and expanding into recent years. The chapters here exemplify the advances made in the field during the early 21st century as well as the on-going diversity of approaches, presenting new perspectives and discoveries in ancient Mayan astronomy that result from recent studies of architectural alignments, codices, epigraphy, iconography, ethnography, and calendrics. More than just investigations of esoteric ancient sciences, studies of ancient Mayan astronomy have profoundly aided our understanding of Mayan worldviews. Concepts of time and space, meanings encoded in religious art, intentions underlying architectural alignments, and even methods of political legitimization are all illuminated through the study of Mayan astronomy.
Author: David Stuart Publisher: Crown ISBN: 0385527276 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 370
Book Description
The world's foremost expert on Maya culture looks at 2012 hysteria and explains the truth about what the Maya meant and what we want to believe. Apocalypse 2012: An Investigation into Civilizations End. The World Cataclysm in 2012. 2012: The return of Quetzalcoatl. According to many of these alarmingly titled books, the ancient Maya not only had a keen insight into the mystical workings of our planet and the cosmos, but they were also able to predict that the world will end in the year 2012. David Stuart, the foremost scholar of the Maya and recipient of numerous awards for his work, takes a hard look at the frenzy over 2012 and offers a fascination (and accurate) trip through Mayan culture and belief. Stuart shows how the idea that the "end of the Mayan calendar," which supposedly heralds the end of our own existence, says far more about our culture than about the ancient Maya. The Order of Days explores how the real intellectual achievement of ancient Maya timekeeping and worldview is far more impressive and remarkable than any of the popular, and often outrageous, claims about this advanced civilization. As someone who has studied the Maya for nearly all of his life and who specializes in reading their ancient texts, Stuart sees the 2012 hubbub as the most recent in a long chain of related ideas about Mesoamericans, the Maya in particular, that depicts them as somehow oddball, not "of this world," or as having some strong mystical link to other realms. Because the year 2012 has no prominent role in anything the ancient Maya ever actually wrote, Stuart takes a wider look at the Maya concepts of time and their underlying philosophy as we can best understand them. The ancient Maya, Stuart contends, were worthy of study and admiration not because they were strange but because they were altogether human, and they developed a compelling vision of time unlike any other civilization before or since.
Author: John M. Weeks
Author: John M. Weeks
Author: Lewis Spence
Author: Julie Gibbings
Author: Prudence M. Rice
Author: Robert Sitler, Ph.D.
Author: Mary Fran Koppa
Author: Hunbatz Men
Author: Scott R. Hutson
Author: Gerardo Aldana y Villalobos
Author: David Stuart