Maya History and Religion

Daily life in a Mayan kingdom was a complex, multi-faceted -- and often times difficult -- way of life.  Their geographic area encompassed a portion of Mesoamerica, from Southeastern Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula down into Northern Central America.  Mayan territory included Pacific coastline, mountainous highlands, and forested lowlands.  Scholars today believe the total area covered approximately 125,000 square miles.  Each area had its own unique challenges, from the fertile Pacific side, with warm, tropical conditions, to the highlands, with cooler, more temperate-like zones.  Volcanoes, rivers, mountains and forests fill Mayan Mesoamerica, each with its own sub-zone and micro climate.  Unlike North American tribal societies, where large animals were followed seasonally, the food sources of the Maya -- fish, small animals, deer, and birds -- remained mostly stationary, permitting earlier members of Mayan society to establish deep roots in particular locales.

Over the past 200 years, thousands of books, reports, magazines, and articles have been published about ancient Mexico, part of the greater cultural region of Mesoamerica. Part of this is about the few ancient native manuscripts that have miraculously been spared from the blind wrath of the Spanish missionaries. However, what has struck me in the many years that I have studied these windows in time of the ancient civilizations in Mesoamerica is that little attention has been and is paid to the artistic qualities of the makers of these manuscripts. For some of these manuscripts can be categorized as "indigenous art" on a very high creative and artistic level. It is truly fascinating to see how much information these artists have managed to bring together in a logical context and in an often small space. There are hardly any images to be found without any kind of information. True masters of their craft, building on and refining age-old traditions and knowledge with very limited resources such as reed pens and a limited number of natural dyes. A very special example of this is page 1 of the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer in which various philosophies, principles and ways of life important to ancient Mexican cultures have been merged into one scene, in a truly fantastic and harmonious whole. And all this on a rectangular piece of deerskin of about 17.5 x 16.5 cm. A true pocket-sized artistic masterpiece.

El universo y nuestro planeta están en constante diálogo. Desde el origen del hombre y de la formación y el entramado de las civilizaciones más antiguas, ha existido la necesidad humana de imaginar y explicar el inicio de la vida, el planeta y la humanidad. Los mayas no fueron excepción a la regla. En el marco de esa idea largamente estudiada por hombres y mujeres de todas las épocas, la sexta edición del Festival Internacional de la Cultura Maya 2017 tendrá como concepto original " La cosmogonía y la preservación del planeta " , en un evento que se llevará al cabo del 19 de octubre al 5 de noviembre próximos.  De esta manera, Yucatán volverá a ser sede del mayor encuentro académico, científico, intelectual, artístico y estético que ha sido el FICMAYA desde su fundación en 2012. En esta ocasión, el país invitado será Canadá y la Ciudad de México la entidad invitada. Del programa de actividades destacan la mesa redonda, " La Cosmogonía y la Mitología entre Los Mayas " , y, especialmente, la conferencia mundial " La Cosmogonía y la Mitología de las Civilizaciones Milenaria en Preservación del Planeta " , que se realizará del 24 al 26 de octubre.

Este trabajo explora la construcción histórica de un conjunto de comunidades q’eqchi’ fuertemente interrelacionadas entre sí, que ha dado lugar a una comunidad unificada y que, a la vez, ha sido dejada de lado por los estudios regionales del Ixcán, en el departamento de Quiché.  A través del análisis de documentos históricos, entrevistas y trabajo de campo con representantes de las 32 comunidades que actualmente componen Los Copones, ha sido posible reconstruir la historia de la región desde el siglo XVIII hasta la actualidad, así como hacer visibles los diferentes momentos constitutivos de su historia como amaq’.    Dichos momentos han oscilado desde las primeras migraciones de los ch’ol-q’eqchi’ y q’eqchi’ en el siglo XVIII, las migraciones producto de la llegada del sistema finquero a Alta Verapaz y de las concesiones a los milicianos liberales a finales del XIX, hasta la llegada del ejército y la contrainsurgencia como ordenamiento territorial a finales del XX, y en el XXI los megaproyectos y el narcotráfico.  Todos estos momentos se han insertado en las propias dinámicas locales, y no han evitado la consolidación de una amplia organización comunitaria que busca el reconocimiento del territorio que han habitado desde antes de la constitución misma del Estado guatemalteco.

The following work is an archaeological analysis regarding one aspect of ancient Lowland Maya civilization, where new evidence has been uncovered concerning the Early Classic period. At the site of La Milpa, a tomb was excavated revealing the remains and grave assemblage of an elite individual: this comparative analysis is an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the tomb in its relation to other coeval tombs.

The article, originally published in Mesoweb's The PARI Journal <mesoweb.com/pari/journal/archive/PARI1103.pdf> depicts and analyzes  two stelae from Chichen Itza. A prominent display of "Fire Bird" on Stela 2 prompts a review and discussion of bird iconography at the site.

In this paper, I present a Maya legend of travelling saints and people searching for their home. The story shows the ways in which a sense of belonging is contested, recreated and sustained within the context of place and pilgrimage. I argue that to understand such a narrative, a phenomenal and existential experience associated to particular collective memories and performances must be taken into consideration in addition to historical, political and cultural backgrounds.

La presente obra, es un trabajo colectivo realizado por tres especialistas en líneas de investigación que se entrecruzan para el tratamiento de la astronomía maya. Desde la arqueología, los estudios antropológicos en turismo y la comunicación social, así como de los imaginarios sociales, es que se desarrolló la presente obra, para introducirnos a la astronomía maya prehispánica, abarcando temas desde las formas en que se construyeron sus pirámides, templos y palacios, hasta la asombrosa capacidad de entender al universo en sus propios términos, dejando con ello, un legado cultural que hoy en día se ha mantenido vigente, pero con cambios, en las comunidades de origen maya de la Península de Yucatán. También se tratan los principales mitos que han surgido en torno al tema y porqué, no sólo resultan ser información engañosa al estar sesgada y fuera de contexto, sino que, desvinculan el enorme logro cultural y tecnológico con la población heredera de los mismos.

Underlying Maya cosmology, history and religion are several key mythological narratives explaining the origins of the world, and providing sacred charters for civilized/moral behavior. Key elements from these narratives—including shared mythemes, characters, and toponyms—have long been known to recur in various regions of Southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, in the oral traditions of several groups speaking distinct but related Mayan languages. One such is a widespread narrative concerning an aged god of the mountains whose daughter, granddaughter, or wife runs away with a young culture hero: a parable often echoing acute concerns about female marital fidelity in contemporary christianized Maya communities. Naturally enough, the contexts of these modern myths have occasioned some concern that they may be little more than thinly disguised retellings of Biblical stories of unfaithful wives, such as Hosea and Gomer. Yet several Late Classic Maya vases and monuments from the late 7th and early 8th century AD apparently reference episodes from this same narrative, here explicitly involving Huk Xib (later Huk Siip), the aged Lord of the Deer, whose wife is spirited away by Juun Ixiim, the youthful Maize God, in a union which may have produced the famed Hero Twins. Epigraphic and iconographic analysis of the texts and imagery reflecting this lost myth, coupled with cautious comparison with potentially related modern Maya myths, allow us to reconstruct many of the basic events of this ancient tale, although several mysteries remain. Such continuity reminds us that myths can be surprisingly durable, even in the wake of military conquest and centuries of colonial rule and religious conversion. Nonetheless, still unresolved is the extent to which these various early fragments allow the confident reconstruct of a single, underlying myth. It is suggested that various regional and temporal variants may find expression or emphasis in these texts, raising questions about many of our reconstructions of ancient mythic narratives.

This study employs a conjunctive, interdisciplinary approach to contemporary iconographic, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence to shed light on the role of religious specialists and religious practice in Maya society of the Classic Period (A.D. 250 - 900). Its central contribution is a thematic model of Classic Maya priesthood.

While the existence of priests in Classic society has been questioned—and while some have seen the religious specialists and political leaders of the period as shamans—this study finds evidence for an elect group of professional worshippers who constituted a ‘class apart’, wearing distinctive vestments, propitiating deities in temples, producing liturgical documents (codices), and performing community-wide services on a regular, calendrical basis. Such traits are all characteristic of priests in universal comparison. Priests occupied various ranked offices since at least the outset of the Late Classic Period (A.D. 600), including: (1) ajk’uhuun or “worshipper”, a propitiator of deities and keeper of codices, but also a court chaplain (parallel to the Colonial Yucatec ajk’ìin); (2) yajawk’ahk’ or “fire's vassal”, primarily a warrior priest, but also responsible for incense ceremonies (parallel to the Aztec tlenamácac “fire priest”); and; (3) ti’sakhuun “speaker of/for the white headband”, a prophet and oracular priest (cognate with the Colonial Yucatec chi’laan), intermediary betweens humans and gods, and also a spokesman for the king. Importantly, a number of prominent ixajk’uhuun or “priestesses” are also known from the second half of the Late Classic Period (A.D. 700 - 800).

The existence of a Classic Maya priesthood reveals hitherto unsuspected dimensions of the social, political and economic organization of Maya society.  Like their Postclassic and Modern descendants, Classic priests were more than esteemed religious specialists, scribes and teachers; they also wielded considerable political and economic power. They commissioned their own monuments and temples, governed their own segmentary lineage compounds, and even acted as regents or stewards for young rulers. 

While most priests acknowledged subordination to their k’uhulajaw or “holy lord”—himself the divine king and ex officio high priest—this information could be suppressed in private documents, and some priests served multiple rulers in turn. As such, the monumental commissions of priests and other non-royal nobles comprise a crucial, nominally independent register of historical information which reveal emic dimensions of resistance to royal ideology, and which can be profitably compared and contrasted with “official” royal history.

Ix Tab, the ancient Maya suicide goddess, appears in various settings in the contemporary popular culture of Yucatán, Mexico. In a state where the suicide rate is double the Mexican national average, discourses about Ix Tab feed misconceptions about indigenous proclivities to suicide and render Maya people exotic. In an effort to unravel the origins of Ix Tab and the contemporary beliefs about indigenous suicide, we studied the ethnohistoric origins of Ix Tab in Diego de Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatán and reviewed iconography from art databases and more than forty-four hundred pages of published works to identify either an ancient Maya suicide deity or suicide by hanging as a motif in ancient Maya art. Our research found no iconographic evidence of a suicide deity, and we came upon only two images of humans hanging by the neck, neither representing suicide. This indicates that there was no ancient Maya suicide deity and that suicide by hanging was not a significant motif among the ancient Maya.

Since the 1970s hundreds of looted ceramics of related style have found their way into public and private collections around the world through the international antiquities and black markets. These objects were later found to have come from the archaeological site of El Zotz, Guatemala. Since their original context has been occluded and their stratigraphic information has been lost, traditional archaeological seriation has proven difficult to develop and apply to these objects. Through the application of formal analysis and paleographic scrutiny, though, some of the original social contexts as well as a partial chronological sequence for them can be recreated. Since some of these vessels contain the names of kings on them, this relative chronology allows for the reconstruction of a dynastic sequence. Demonstrating stylistic change over time, it also reflects the iconographic and conceptual development of particular spiritual practices. It is hoped that this study will provide a methodological framework for future research of problematic collections, which is the status of most Maya ceramics.

La ubicación en el sistema de Cuenta Larga de las ruedas calendáricas 1 Ajaw 3 Wayeb’ y 8 Ajaw 18 Xul, registradas en la escena del Tablero de Palacio, ha representado un problema dentro de los estudios epigràficos. Este trabajo ofrece una solución al respecto.

Versión publicada del trabajo "La escena del Tablero del Palacio: Ubicación de sus ruedas calendáricas en el sistema de Cuenta Larga. Implicaciones históricas"
La "presentación" de este número de Lakamha' señala;
En este número el Dr. Guillermo Bernal Romero nos presenta la escena del Tablero del Palacio que ilustra la entronización de K’inich K’an Joy Chitam, ocurrida el  30 de mayo de 702.
Las implicaciones históricas en la ubicación de estas  fechas en las ruedas calendáricas en el sistema de la cuenta larga, remarca la significación que tuvo ese día tzolk´in para la corte real palencana, significación que unificaba los conceptos del poder divino con su poder  terrenal.
Compartimos la pasión por la pintura, la naturaleza y la cultura maya de la ilustradora Alifie Rojas Candanedo con ustedes en nuestra portada.

Este libro es el primer tomo de la colección Instrumentos sonoros prehispánicos mayas, en él ofrecemos una propuesta de clasificación e interpretación de los artefactos sonoros maya, así como sus variantes de usos y contextos, en específico los idiófonos de golpe directo e indirecto.

This study explores the multifaceted Maya Deluge Myth, from its pre-Columbian origins to current fantasies about a great world-destroying flood at the 13 Baktun period ending of the Maya Long Count on 21 (or 23) December 2012. No such flood is prophesied in any Maya records for this date, and the famous scene on Dresden Codex page 74 is discussed in its context as a symbolic depiction of the annual world-renewing downpours at the onset of the rainy season in springtime in the Maya world. The presiding gods of warfare and blood sacrifice were the agents of fertility and the regeneration of nature, and not the agents for the destruction of the Maya in a world-ending deluge. The misinterpretation of Dresden page 74 has propagated, unchallenged, for over a century of Maya scholarship and found its way into “new age,” fringe, and popular culture. This research helps to set the record straight along with providing a history of the meme.

This paper reviews the evidence for the visual separation, phonetic readings, and semantic significance of three common portrait glyphs in Classic Maya hieroglyphic writing: (1) the Foliated Maize God (IXIIM, JUUN, na); (2) the Tonsured Maize God (AJAN, WAXAK); and (3) the Female portrait (IX). Although visually similar and sharing certain traits common to the depiction of young and beautiful/handsome beings, contextual analysis nonetheless reveals several consistent graphic distinctions. The signs do not substitute for one another, and they have distinct reading values. Some reassessment of previous iconographic work on maize god(s) and lunar deities will be needed in light of the evidence for distinctions between these three signs.

El objetivo del presente artículo es indagar de manera breve sobre el posible origen, significado e inter-pretación de los apellidos de origen maya Bacab, Balam y Chan. Se expondrá cómo se analizan estas palabras por epigrafistas y lingüistas cuando forman parte de los nombres personales prehispánicos del período Clásico y Colonial en el área maya. Se muestran ejemplos de cómo han sido traducidos e interpretados en textos de la época colonial y qué significado se les atribuye en la actualidad.

The aim of this paper is to inquire briefly about the origin, meaning and interpretation of the names of Mayan origin Bacab, Balam and Chan. Will expose how the epigraphers and linguists analyzed these words when they are part of some prehispanic names of the Classical period and Colonial periodon the Maya area. It will be discussed how have they been translated and interpreted in texts from the colonial era and which meaning ascribed the people to them in nowadays.

Este trabajo es una síntesis comentada sobre el uso y simbolismo de las sonajas en los mayas, lo cual forma parte del libro Instrumentos sonoros prehispánicos mayas. Tomo I Idiófonos, editado por el Centro de Estudios Mayas de la UNAM, que se encuentra actualmente en prensa y será publicado en 2021. Los instrumentos idiófonos mayas prehispánicos (cuya etimología proviene del griego antiguo, ídios = propio y phoné= voz, sonido, capacidad del habla), cuya materia oscila debido a su solidez y elasticidad, lo que genera sonidos sin tener la necesidad de emplear membranas o cuerdas en tensión 1. Se subdividen según la forma como son ejecutados, en este caso pueden ser percutidos directa o indirectamente, punteados,

En toda su composición, la pirámide de El Castillo en Chichén Itzá tiene una intensión arquitectónica específica. Sus constructores manifestaron en el número de escalones, escalinatas, cuerpos y paneles un mensaje aritmético que hacía evidente su calendario. De ser así, propongo que también incluyeron su interpretación del cosmos en el cuerpo de la pirámide, recurriendo a un patrón de números enteros en las medidas angulares y, de longitud, donde factores, productos, dividendos, divisores y cocientes hacían evidente la metafórica armonía del espacio y el tiempo.

This research demonstrates the scope of the application of the theory of the History of Religions, made by the famous historian of religions Angelo Brelich, in the study of the religion of the ancient Maya. It proposes a new methodology developed specifically for the interpretation of the superhuman characters from this belief system. In particular, we analyze the character known as God N.
     
The Mayan religion of Pre-Hispanic times must be understood as a dynamic system that is constantly transforming. The polytheism that was generated during the Late Classic period was due to a social process of specialization by the revolution of at least three pre-deists systems (animism, fetishism and ancestor worship) set the foundations for the creation of the divinities. God N should be treated as part of this process. The Spanish conquest stopped the consolidation of polytheism, however, remained pre-deists beliefs during the colonial and modern times, indicating a historical process based on a dialectical movement of continuity and transformation.


Este estudio muestra los alcances de la aplicación de la teoría de la Historia de las Religiones, formulada por el célebre historiador de las religiones Angelo Brelich, en el estudio de la religión de los antiguos mayas. Propone una metodología novedosa elaborada específicamente para la interpretación de los personajes sobrehumanos de este sistema de creencias. En particular, se analiza el personaje conocido como Dios N.

La religión maya de la época prehispánica debe entenderse como un sistema dinámico que se encuentra en constante devenir. El politeísmo que se estaba generando durante el final del periodo Clásico se debió a un proceso social de especialización que por medio de la revolución de al menos tres sistemas predeístas (animismo, fetichismo y culto a los ancestros) estableció las bases para la creación de las divinidades. El Dios N debe ser entendido como parte de este proceso. La conquista española detuvo la consolidación del politeísmo, no obstante, las creencias predeístas permanecieron durante la época colonial y moderna, lo que indica un proceso histórico basado en un movimiento dialéctico de continuidad y transformación.