Michael D. Coe Quotes
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Kiçe Mayalarının büyük destanı Popol Vuh'a göre, ata tanrılar Qukumatz ve Tepew, sular arasından yeryüzünü çıkarıp hayvan ve bitkiler ile donattılar. Yaratılıştan sonra bu kutsal varlıklar, dualarla anılmak ve yüceltilmek isteğiyle çamurdan insanımsı yaratıklar yaptılar ancak bunlar çamura dönüştüler. Ardından bir ahşap figürler nesli belirdi, ancak tanrılar bu akılsız cüceleri yok etti, onların yerini etten yapılmış insanlar aldı. Ancak bunlarda kötülüğe dönüştüler ve kara yağmurlar yağıp yeryüzünü büyük bir sel basınca yok oldular. En sonunda mısır hamurundan gerçek insanlar, Kiçelerin ataları yaratıldı.
Sayfa 41 - arkadaş yayınlarıKitabı yarım bıraktı
The Maya are hardly a vanished people, for they number around five million souls, the largest single block of American Indians north of Peru. Most have adjusted with remarkable tenacity to the encroachments of Spanish American civilization, although over the past few decades these have taken an increasingly violent and repressive form, characterized of late by drug trafficking, displacement, migration abroad, and, in places, gang activity.
Amerikan yerlileri teknolojide neden bu kadar geriydi?
It might also be reasonably asked why it took so long for the Mexicans to cross the threshold to village-farming life. In the Old World this event first occurred, along the hilly flanks of Mesopotamia, as early as the tenth millennium before Christ, not very much later than the first experimentation with plant and animal domestication. In Mexico, where the American Indian originally took this step, the process of domestication took at least three millennia.
A handicap of this kind is the real reason why sixteenth-century Mexico was the technological inferior of Europe, for once past the frontier into peasant life, ancient Mexican culture unfolded at the same rate as did that of the Old World. Given this late start, the civilization that Cortés destroyed should be compared not to Renaissance Europe, but to the Bronze Age of the Near East and China.
And they called it Teotihuacan
because it was the place
where the lords were buried.
Thus they said:
“When we die, truly we die not,
because we will live, we will rise,
we will continue living, we will awaken.
This will make us happy.”
Several breeds of dog were domesticated by the Maya, each with its own name. One such strain was barkless; males were castrated and fattened on corn, and either eaten or sacrificed. Another was used in the hunt. Both wild and domestic turkeys were known, but only the former used as sacrificial victims in ceremonies.
There were no wild species in the New World suitable for domestication as draught animals. The native American horse was exterminated at the end of the Ice Age, probably by human hunters; the South American llama is amenable only as a pack animal; and modern efforts to tame the North American bison have shown that beast to be completely intractable. As a consequence, none of the American Indians prior to the European arrival had wheeled vehicles.
One of the more horrifying of Aztec practices was the sacrifice of small children on mountain tops to bring rain at the end of the dry season, in propitiation of Tlaloc. It was said that the more the children cried, the more the Rain God was pleased.
It is not unlikely that Olmec literati invented the Long Count and perhaps also developed certain astronomical observations with which the Maya are usually credited.
Unlike our system, adopted from the Hindus, which is decimal and increases in value from right to left, the Maya system was vigesimal and increased from bottom to top in vertical columns. Thus, the first and lowest place has a value of one; the next above it the value of twenty; then 400; and so on. It is immediately apparent that “twenty” would be written with a nought in the lowest place and a dot in the second.
By any criteria, the period from about AD 150 to 650 was the most remarkable in the whole development of ancient Mexico. Cities were founded and grew throughout the area. One of these cities, Teotihuacan, grew larger than all others and became a central point of communication and commerce for all of Mesoamerica. This era of florescence is called the Classic, and it is at this time that the peoples of Mexico built civilizations that can bear comparison with those of other parts of the globe.
While city-states such as Palenque, Copan, and Piedras Negras exercised considerable political control over wide areas beyond their borders, the two major “players” were Tikal and Calakmul, the latter being the largest of all Maya cities. Their conflict recalls the global Great Game of imperial powers in the nineteenth century, fighting wars through proxies, far away from their borders.
Maya takvimi
Within the Ha’b calender, there were 18 named “months” of 20 days each, with a much-dreaded interval of 5 unlucky days added at the end.
A particular day in the 260-day count, such as 1 K’an, also had a position in the Ha’b, for instance 2 Pop. A day designated as 1 K’an 2 Pop could not return until 52 Ha’b (18,980 days) had passed. This is the Calendar Round, and it is the only annual time count possessed by the highland peoples of Mexico, one that obviously has its disadvantages where events taking place over a span of more than 52 years are concerned.
The cacao bean from this tree provided chocolate, the preferred drink of the Mesoamerican ruling classes, but well into Colonial times the beans also served as a form of money in regional markets.
Temple of the Warriors was closely modeled on Pyramid “B” at Tula, but its far greater size and the excellence of the workmanship lavished upon it suggest that the Toltec intruders were better off in Yucatan, where they could call upon the skills of Maya architects and craftsmen.
Chichen Itza, which in those days may have been called Uukil-abnal (“Seven Bushes”), became, under the rule of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the supreme metropolis of a united kingdom, a kind of splendid recreation of the Tula which he had lost.