Author: Publisher: University of Texas Press ISBN: 0292789319 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 241
Book Description
The title of Edmonson's work refers to the Mayan custom of first predicting their history and then living it, and it may be that no other peoples have ever gone so far in this direction. The Book of Chilam Balam was a sacred text prepared by generations of Mayan priests to record the past and to predict the future. The official prophet of each twenty-year rule was the Chilam Balam, or Spokesman of the Jaguar—the Jaguar being the supreme authority charged with converting the prophet's words into fact. This is a literal but poetic translation of one of fourteen known manuscripts in Yucatecan Maya on ritual and history. It pictures a world of all but incredible numerological order, slowly yielding to Christianity and Spanish political pressure but never surrendering. In fact, it demonstrates the surprising truth of a secret Mayan government during the Spanish rule, which continued to collect tribute in the names of the ruined Classic cities and preserved the essence of the Mayan calendar as a legacy for the tradition's modern inheritors. The history of the Yucatecan Maya from the seventh to the nineteenth century is revealed. And this is history as the Maya saw it—of a people concerned with lords and priests, with the cosmology which justified their rule, and with the civil war which they perceived as the real dimension of the colonial period. A work of both history and literature, the Tizimin presents a great deal of Mayan thought, some of which has been suspected but not previously documented. Edmonson's skillful reordering of the text not only makes perfect historical sense but also resolves the long-standing problem of correlating the two colonial Mayan calendars. The book includes both interpretative and literal translations, as well as the Maya parallel couplets and extensive annotations on each page. The beauty of the sacred text is illuminated by the literal translation, while both versions unveil the magnificent historical, philosophical, and social traditions of the most sophisticated native culture in the New World. The prophetic history of the Tizimin creates a portrait of the continuity and vitality, of the ancient past and the foreordained future of the Maya.
Author: Gerardo Aldana Publisher: University of Arizona Press ISBN: 0816542201 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 465
Book Description
This book contextualizes the discovery of a Venus astronomical pattern by a female Mayan astronomer at Chich'en Itza and the discovery's later adaptation and application at Mayapan. Calculating Brilliance brings different intellectual threads together across time and space, from the Classic to the Postclassic, the colonial period to the twenty-first century to offer a new vision for understanding Mayan astronomy.
Author: Geoffrey E. Braswell Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317543602 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
The archaeological sites of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula are among the most visited ancient cities of the Americas. Archaeologists have recently made great advances in our understanding of the social and political milieu of the northern Maya lowlands. However, such advances have been under-represented in both scholarly and popular literature until now. 'The Ancient Maya of Mexico' presents the results of new and important archaeological, epigraphic, and art historical research in the Mexican states of Yucatan, Campeche, and Quintana Roo. Ranging across the Middle Preclassic to the Modern periods, the volume explores how new archaeological data has transformed our understanding of Maya history. 'The Ancient Maya of Mexico' will be invaluable to students and scholars of archaeology and anthropology, and all those interested in the society, rituals and economic organisation of the Maya region.
Author: Elin C. Danien Publisher: UPenn Museum of Archaeology ISBN: 9780924171130 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
Papers from the 1987 Maya Weekend conference at the University of Pennsylvania Museum present current views of Maya culture and language. Also included is an article by George Stuart summarizing the history of the study of Maya hieroglyphs and the fascinating scholars and laypersons who have helped bring about their decipherment. Symposium Series III University Museum Monograph, 77
Author: Stephen D. Houston Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press ISBN: 9780806132044 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 584
Book Description
The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing is an important story of intellectual discovery and a tale of code breaking comparable to the interpreting of Egyptian hieroglyphs and the decoding of cuneiform. This book provides a history of the interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs. Introductory essays offer the historical context and describe the personalities and theories of the many authors who contributed to the understanding of these ancient glyphs.
Author: Jacob K. Olupona Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134481993 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 365
Book Description
At a time when local traditions across the world are forcibly colliding with global culture, Beyond Primitivism explores the future of indigenous religions as they encounter modernity and globalisation.
Author: Ion Storland Publisher: Ion Storland ISBN: 915197004X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 293
Book Description
Mapping accurately the future is no longer a storytelling fantasy; rather, a workplace of data scientists, programmers or analysts. With a background in engineering and as an estimator, Ion Storland presents a book that explores in the present, a future scenario of human civilization on Earth and beyond, based on information and observations from the past. The interdisciplinary content gathered and described in the book seeks to build a panoramic view of how the various domains and sectors of economy, technology, and society are interrelated and interact with peoples’ day-to-day lives; and also to picture the consequences of actions that frame the events of the future. An inevitable future of interlinked brains will form a mindociety — a society of people whose minds are connected through brain implants. What can we expect from such an outcome? How should we prepare? From describing confined norms and mindset (from Storland’s point of view) on planet Earth, to the astonishing, universal, philosophical burden of existence, Sorland raises the hypothesis of Existential Infinitylock, which makes it impossible for anyone or anything to be able to define the origin of existence; not today, not in million or billions years. The argument is based on and takes into account the properties of infinite order.
Author: Rex Koontz Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0429979045 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 400
Book Description
From the early cities in the second millennium BC to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan on the eve of the Spanish conquest, Ancient Mesoamericans created landscapes full of meaning and power in the center of their urban spaces. The sixteenth century description of Tenochtitlan by Bernal Diaz del Castillo and the archaeological remnants of Teotihuacan attest to the power and centrality of these urban configurations in Ancient Mesoamerican history. In Landscape and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica, Rex Koontz, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, and Annabeth Headrick explore the cultural logic that structured and generated these centers.Through case studies of specific urban spaces and their meanings, the authors examine the general principles by which the Ancient Mesoamericans created meaningful urban space. In a profoundly interdisciplinary exchange involving both archaeologists and art historians, this volume connects the symbolism of those landscapes, the performances that activated this symbolism, and the cultural poetics of these ensembles.
Author: Miguel Leon-Portilla Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press ISBN: 9780806123080 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
In this second English-language edition of one of his most notable works, Miguel León-Portilla explores the Maya Indians’ remarkable concepts of time. At the book’s first appearance Evon Z. Vogt, Curator of Middle American Ethnology in Harvard University, predicted that it would become "a classic in anthropology," a prediction borne out by the continuing critical attention given to it by leading scholars. Like no other people in history, the ancient Maya were obsessed by the study of time. Their sages framed its cycles with tireless exactitude. Yet their preoccupation with time was not limited to calendrics; it was a central trait in their evolving culture. In this absorbing work León-Portilla probes the question, What did time really mean for the ancient Maya in terms of their mythology, religious thought, worldview, and everyday life? In his analysis of key Maya texts and computations, he reveals one of the most elaborate attempts of the human mind to penetrate the secrets of existence.
Author: John S. Henderson Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 9780801482847 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 362
Book Description
Theirs was one of the few complex societies to emerge in and to adapt successfully to a tropical-forest environment. Their architecture, sculpture, and painting were sophisticated and compellingly beautiful.
Author: 
Author: Gerardo Aldana
Author: Geoffrey E. Braswell
Author: Elin C. Danien
Author: Stephen D. Houston
Author: Jacob K. Olupona
Author: Ion Storland
Author: Rex Koontz
Author: Miguel Leon-Portilla
Author: John S. Henderson