Ugly as she is, she has a terrible older brother. Of all the weird, scaly, winged, hairy, stinking creatures that inhabit the Underworld, he is the creepiest.
White Bone Centipede, by name, looks like the skeleton of a long-dead snake, but don’t let that fool you. He has a hundred greasy legs that crawl faster than you can run. He waits like some moldy, rotten, chewed-up thing at the entrances to caves. He is the mouth of caves, because his gaping jaws are so huge. Anyone who slips through the cracks of his bucktoothed fangs sticks to the insides of his wormy body, all slick white armor and goo. There’s no way out because he is the son of Death. Bone is the rattle of his breath and everlasting is his poisonous sting.
White Bone
Centipede
by name,
looks like the skeleton
of a long-dead snake,
but don’t let that fool you.
He has a hundred
greasy legs that crawl faster
than you can run.
THE
WATER LILLY
JAGUAR
Water Lily Jaguar swims in the silver rivers of the rainforest. Water Lily Jaguar swims in the silver pool of the moon. When waves of lily pads tremble and heave, you know the Water Lily Jaguar is swimming underwater, searching for tasty catfish. When he comes up for air, he will be dripping in water lily flowers, water lily vines, from head to toe. If he doesn’t rise to the surface, he has dived deeper, down to the bottom of the bottomless lagoon, down through the sunless caverns, down to the sunless palace where the Lords of Death are having supper. Water Lily Jaguar marches, Water Lily Jaguar prowls the halls sniffing for something to eat. There is nothing on the fire but stacks of burning bones, nothing to drink but jugs full of blood. Next time one of those dreadful lords—Pus Master or Bone Scepter—says something nasty, he may have to take a nibble. But the Lords of Death never speak crossly to Water Lily Jaguar. They show him great respect, not simply because he is fierce, but because he is a terrific dancer.
When Water Lily Jaguar prances, the eyeballs on his necklace jangle, the bells clang on his tail. When Water Lily Jaguar dances, water lily petals sweeten the air as he spins. His coat of stars is sending out sparks, his golden fur is flashing rays of light.
Oh, he is really whirling now, and the Lords of Death are beating their turtle shell drums and pounding their feet. They’re shuffling and stumbling and tottering in circles, banging and crashing and crunching each other’s toes. The kings are wearing their high-backed sandals and stomping on the stones.
And now they’re all coming out of the woodwork, the knife bats and fish flies and two-headed geeks. The footless birds and spiny worms are delighted there’s a party. The crabs and the lizards are waltzing up a storm. The music is getting louder now because the anteaters are blowing their trumpets. And who’s that hairy frog tooting on his horn?
And who’s that coming here and steaming up the room? Why it’s the Sun, Our Father, dancing with Grandmother Moon! And isn’t that Venus leading the snake dance with the lightning-footed god of storms? And isn’t that the Night Wind doing the one-step all alone?
The dance floor is thundering with hoof beats and claws. The air is reeling with glass wings, dog stinks, and buzzing antennae. Things get out of hand when Water Lily Jaguar dances, and the dead start jumping for joy.
THE MAYA
A Brief History
One day, in 1746, a twelve-year-old Mexican boy named José de la Fuente Coronado was wandering through the jungle near Palenque when he came upon the mossy walls of what appeared to be a palace. Its abandoned rooms were thick with vines, the empty corridors adorned with solemn faces, figures, and rows of strange beasts. Temples crowned the surrounding hills, but on closer inspection, the hills were not hills at all; they were giant pyramids with stone steps leading upward. The boy spoke and dreamed of nothing else, and soon word of this enchanted place spread throughout the region. When news of the lost city reached the king of Spain, the mysteries of the ancient stones captured the world’s imagination.
Who built those magnificent pyramids? Who were those godlike figures carved in stone? What did their strange hieroglyphic writing say?
After a century of exploration, we know that the ancestors of the Maya people living near the ruins today built those spectacular cities over two thousand years ago. The faces carved on the temples are images of gods or portraits of divine kings and queens, and the writing on the walls celebrates the extraordinary history of one of the greatest civilizations in the New World.
The stones speak of deeper mysteries: the nature of the cosmos, of space and time. For the Maya, this creation began on August 13, 3114 B.C. From that date they counted millions of days back to past creations and millions of days into the distant future. The Long Count Calendar was endless, bigger than the universe!
Time also moved in shorter cycles: the 819-day calendar; the 260-day sacred calendar; the Venus cycle; the lunar series; and the Nine Lords of Night, who ruled over the nine hours of darkness. With so many cycles of time, it’s a wonder the calendar priests could keep track, but they did, counting the days and observing the orbits of the sun, moon, and planets almost as accurately as scientists today. Accuracy was important for predicting eclipses, knowing the proper time for planting, and for divining individual destinies. People and gods were often named for the day on which they were born. The Calendar Round foretold events in everyday life and gave a circular pattern to Maya history.
In the Books of Chilam Balam, the Jaguar Priests wrote that time began when a divine being who looked very much like a man set his footprint on the road. Nobody knows when that happened, but the journey was hard and long.
The Popol Vuh, the great epic of the K’iche Maya people, tells us that the ancestors came to the New World by following seven steppingstones across the sea. Some scientists say that the first Americans traveled from Asia in boats over 16,000 years ago. When they landed along the Pacific coast, they enjoyed a prosperous life as fishermen, eating shrimp and clams to their heart’s content and piling the shells into giant mounds that still stand among the mangrove swamps of southern Mexico.
Eventually the Maya migrated into the lush mountains of Guatemala. Then, about 4000 years ago, they started walking south to Honduras and El Salvador, east to Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula, west to Chiapas, and as far north as the Huasteca area of Veracruz. In these humid, volcanic regions they planted corn, built houses of mud and thatch, and settled down. Over time they learned to survive earthquakes, torrential storms, and searing heat, all the perils of two opposing times of year, the rainy season and the dry. Only two civilizations have flourished in the jungle. Like the Khmer of Cambodia, the Maya saw life as a balance of opposites: light and dark, birth and death, abundance and desolation. The idea must have come from observing the cycles of nature.
Once the Maya settled down, their world changed dramatically. During the Preclassic period (1500–100 B.C.), they began making fine pottery and building stone structures decorated with images of the divine bird Seven Macaw. Their small villages swelled into city-states and their temples grew into manmade mountains. The great center of El Mirador was populated by more than fifty thousand people, and its main pyramid rose 230 feet above the jungle floor. At the top of the social pyramid stood the king (ahaw), who ruled over the nine levels of the Underworld and thirteen levels of the sky.
Prosperity rested on the sweat of the corn farmers as well as the cleverness of Maya merchants. These adventurous men never stopped walking the roads, becoming part of a vast trading network that put them in touch with the material and intellectual riches of other Mesoamerican cultures. From the Zoques living along the Pacific coast they learned the story of the Hero Twins. From their Olmec neighbors on the Gulf of Mexico, they acquired rubber and mirrors along with mathematics, astronomy, and writing. By 250 B.C. the Maya developed their own unique system of hieroglyphic writing, which was composed of pictures and symbols that represented spoken syllables.
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For unknown reasons, cities like El Mirador were abandoned in 100 B.C. and people moved to other areas of the rainforest. That period is known as the Preclassic collapse.
The low point in the cycle didn’t last long because the Maya brought their knowledge, languages, and customs with them and started building large cities again. Now they were carving their history in stone, recording the names and dates of their rulers as well as the names and dates of their enemies, some as far away as Teotihuacan, near modern Mexico City. During the Classic period (A.D. 200–900), Maya civilization came into full flower.
There were hundreds of centers in the Maya realm competing for political, economic, and religious power. Despite their glorious achievements, none of the great city-states—Palenque, Tikal, Calakmul, and Copan—was able to form a unified empire.
Instead, art, science, and religion united the independent city-states. Renowned artists and scribes who traveled from city to city established a fairly standard art style and system of writing. Mathematicians and astronomers shared their latest discoveries: the proper geometric proportions of the temples, rare planetary conjunctions, and the precise dates of future solar eclipses. Although each city had its favorite deities and myths, the same gods were worshipped throughout the Maya region.
On festival days, thousands crowded the ceremonial centers to witness a new king take the throne or to observe the end of a calendar cycle. These public spectacles were often staged at the solstices, equinoxes, zenith or nadir passages, when the sun bathed the red temples in dazzling rays of light. During those celebrations, the sky and earth, the physical and spiritual worlds were in harmony.
The many levels of the Maya universe were reflected in the many levels of society. Nobles of the royal courts held sumptuous feasts attended by dancers, drummers, acrobats, and actors dressed in extravagant costumes. While the nobles were busy plotting political intrigues and alliances, the long-distance merchants were seeking precious jades, cottons, cacao, and other luxuries to delight the upper class. Stonecutters polished exquisite jade jewels and carved delicate bas-reliefs for noble houses. The most gifted artisans, often members of the ruling elite, painted fine ceramics to be buried in royal tombs. Meanwhile, potters crafted everyday cookware and figurines for household altars. In the markets, venders traded corn, salt, beans, and chili peppers produced by the farmers.
Although farmers lived on the lowest rung of society, their labors were the most honored. Corn was the foundation of Maya daily life and religion. People were made of corn and therefore part of the natural cycle of life, death, and rebirth. The great cycles of creation, the movements of the stars and planets, were related to the seasonal growth and harvesting of corn from mother earth.
The levels of society, the levels of the cosmos, and the thirteen parts of the soul were one. Plants, stars, and human destiny were intertwined.
The night sky was a mirror that reflected life in the Underworld. The ancestors who dwelled in the darkness below could be seen as stars at night. They shared the immense sky with Owl, Peccary, Eagle, Jaguar, and other supernatural animals that made up the Maya constellations.
Needless to say, the Maya saw the night sky differently than the Greeks and Romans. Orion’s Belt was pictured as a turtle carrying three stars on its back. The turtle also represented the earth. Three other stars in Orion—Mintaka, Saiph, and Rigel—were seen as Three Hearthstones that sit in the center of a Maya house. The Milky Way represented the World Tree, the starry white road to Xibalba, and the giant Crocodile whose upper body formed the heavens. As for the planets, Venus was envisioned as a feathered serpent as well as a vicious god of war. In other words, something as certain as a star had many identities.
The same was true for people. On the earth’s surface, men and women possessed an animal soul that tied them to the natural world. While a person was sleeping, his or her animal soul would wander through the wilderness, and if it were harmed, the person would get sick. Powerful shamans had the animal souls of jaguars and hummingbirds and could transform themselves into these beings at will. The White Bone Centipede was the companion animal spirit of K’an Bahlam, king of Palenque.
Kings and queens lived in luxury, but their duties were many. As gods in human form, they were responsible for maintaining an orderly society in harmony with the agricultural cycle and the great cosmic forces. Adorned in jade ornaments and lavish feathers, they represented the tree of life at the center of the world. As high priests, they had the power to communicate with the gods. In the art of Yaxchilan, the queen, Lady Xok, is seen conversing with the Vision Serpent before her husband goes to war. In order to guarantee continued prosperity, rulers regularly sacrificed their own blood.
Kings and queens were trained warriors expected to do battle. On public monuments they pose in quilted cotton armor, subduing their captives with war shields, clubs, and spears. Kings were also accomplished ballplayers.
Of all the Maya pastimes, none was more popular than the ball-game, pok-ta-pok. The game, which resembled soccer, was not just a sport. The rubber ball represented the sun and the ball court was the doorway to the Underworld. When Maya kings played the game, they represented the Hero Twins who defeated the Lords of Death. In order to reenact the story, warriors invaded a nearby kingdom, captured a noble, and after playing the ballgame, sacrificed him to the gods. His bones were considered seeds, and their ritual “planting” promised abundant crops.
Raids on nearby territories eventually turned into long-term struggles between political rivals. Wars, drought, overpopulation, or social unrest threatened the stability of the great city-states. By the ninth century, time completed a circle. Once again the lowland cities were abandoned, and the power shifted to Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula.
The collapse of Classic Maya civilization marked the end of the rule of divine kings. Yet this ending gave birth to a society dominated by nobles and the wealthy merchant class. As trading networks expanded, more people could acquire the luxuries once reserved for royalty. A simpler art style spread throughout Mesoamerica, along with new ideas and a larger pantheon of gods.
The Postclassic period continued until the Spanish Conquest of 1521. The foreign invaders crushed the ruling class, erased history, and destroyed the writing system. Only four ancient codices survived the Spanish bonfires. The Maya population was decimated.
Five hundred years after the conquest, Maya culture persists. The six million Maya of today speak thirty languages and hundreds of dialects. Of the traditional arts, Maya weavers still produce some of the ancient designs. The living Maya possess an alternate view of the world in which everyday reality and the supernatural coexist and dreams and waking life are interrelated. In some Guatemalan villages, the day keepers maintain the sacred 260-day calendar. Most Maya practice Christianity yet still offer prayers to Chak and remember the gods and goddesses in their stories.
The history of the Maya is a continuing story. With each new archaeological discovery and the decipherment of hieroglyphic texts, we can read another chapter. The Maya developed an enduring civilization in the mountains and rainforests of Mexico and Central America. Their history is part of our past, present, and future.
THE
STORY of this BOOK
On my first visit to Palenque, the pyramids were floating through the morning mist like a city in a dream. My friend Moises Morales told me that the dream was real and that if I wanted to understand the ancient Maya I had to spend time in their rainforest world. Soon I was living in a tree house in the jungle where I could barely see the sky through the outstretched arms of ramon trees. Leaves as big as umbrellas sheltered laughing falcons, scarlet macaws, and giant iguanas. At night a lone jaguar, Lord of the Underworld, prowled the hills, howler monkeys roared in the treetops at dawn. Snakes slept in the branches, caimans dozed in the pools, and rooting under the strangler vines were coatis and a wild peccary named Petunia. People spoke of serpent birds, of dwarves with backward feet, of Chak and the guardian s
pirits who dwelled in caves on San Juan Mountain. The earth was alive and buzzing, dying and coming back to life with every rain. All the creatures around me were characters in the ongoing story of creation.
The story began on a starless night when the earth and sky were wrapped in shadows and the only sound was water rippling. Out of the darkness a woman’s voice rose up and said, “Long ago, when the sky was empty, there was only the sea, only silence, except for a voice rising from the water.”
Her words echoed around a thousand campfires centuries before the start of the Long Count Calendar and the first stone temples dedicated to the gods of sun, wind, rain, and lightning. Storytellers knew in their hearts that words were stronger than stones. After all, Itzamna had created the world with his words. Children who rolled with laughter when they heard how the Hero Twins turned their older brothers into monkeys believed every word. After countless tellings, grandmothers dreamed that their stories would outlast the grandest temples, and their dream came true. With the help of the divine writers Itzamna, Rabbit, Howler Monkey, and Spider Monkey, the Maya became one of five civilizations in the world that devised a written language, not to keep accounts, as the Sumerians and Egyptians did, but to enchant listeners with the deeds of divine kings and queens and the supernatural beings who shaped their world.
Of all the amazing stories poets wrote and recited, only a few exist in a form most of us can read. We know the ancient deities from pictures carved in stone or painted on clay pots, stucco walls, and the pages of hieroglyphic books made of bark paper. The earliest images of the Hero Twins, the Corn God, Chak, and the Feathered Serpent date to 100 BC. The four hieroglyphic books that survived the Spanish Conquest were written almost a thousand years ago.
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