Maya Cosmos

Maya Cosmos
Author: David Freidel
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Total Pages: 544
Release: 1995-02-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780688140694

A Masterful blend of archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, and lively personal reportage, Maya Comos tells a constellation of stories, from the historical to the mythological, and envokes the awesome power of one of the richest civilizations ever to grace the earth.

The Cosmos of the Yucatec Maya

The Cosmos of the Yucatec Maya
Author: Merideth Paxton
Publisher: UNM Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780826322920

Traces implications of a previously unrecognized image of the solar year in the Madrid Codex to find new meanings in the Dresden Codex and the Maya calendar system and a regional settlement organization in Yucatan.

Maya Political Science

Maya Political Science
Author: Prudence M. Rice
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2013-08-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292757840

How did the ancient Maya rule their world? Despite more than a century of archaeological investigation and glyphic decipherment, the nature of Maya political organization and political geography has remained an open question. Many debates have raged over models of centralization versus decentralization, superordinate and subordinate status—with far-flung analogies to emerging states in Europe, Asia, and Africa. But Prudence Rice asserts that neither the model of two giant "superpowers" nor that which postulates scores of small, weakly independent polities fits the accumulating body of material and cultural evidence. In this groundbreaking book, Rice builds a new model of Classic lowland Maya (AD 179-948) political organization and political geography. Using the method of direct historical analogy, she integrates ethnohistoric and ethnographic knowledge of the Colonial-period and modern Maya with archaeological, epigraphic, and iconographic data from the ancient Maya. On this basis of cultural continuity, she constructs a convincing case that the fundamental ordering principles of Classic Maya geopolitical organization were the calendar (specifically a 256-year cycle of time known as the may) and the concept of quadripartition, or the division of the cosmos into four cardinal directions. Rice also examines this new model of geopolitical organization in the Preclassic and Postclassic periods and demonstrates that it offers fresh insights into the nature of rulership, ballgame ritual, and warfare among the Classic lowland Maya.

Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos

Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos
Author: Prudence M. Rice
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2019-04-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1607328895

Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos explores the sociocultural significance of more than three hundred Middle Preclassic Maya figurines uncovered at the site of Nixtun-Ch'ich' on Lake Petén Itzá in northern Guatemala. In this careful, holistic, and detailed analysis of the Petén lakes figurines—hand-modeled, terracotta anthropomorphic fragments, animal figures, and musical instruments such as whistles and ocarinas—Prudence M. Rice engages with a broad swath of theory and comparative data on Maya ritual practice. Presenting original data, Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos offers insight into the synchronous appearance of fired-clay figurines with the emergence of societal complexity in and beyond Mesoamerica. Rice situates these Preclassic Maya figurines in the broader context of Mesoamerican human figural representation, identifies possible connections between anthropomorphic figurine heads and the origins of calendrics and other writing in Mesoamerica, and examines the role of anthropomorphic figurines and zoomorphic musical instruments in Preclassic Maya ritual. The volume shows how community rituals involving the figurines helped to mitigate the uncertainties of societal transitions, including the beginnings of settled agricultural life, the emergence of social differentiation and inequalities, and the centralization of political power and decision-making in the Petén lowlands. Literature on Maya ritual, cosmology, and specialized artifacts has traditionally focused on the Classic period, with little research centering on the very beginnings of Maya sociopolitical organization and ideological beliefs in the Middle Preclassic. Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos is a welcome contribution to the understanding of the earliest Maya and will be significant to Mayanists and Mesoamericanists as well as nonspecialists with interest in these early figurines

The Popol Vuh

The Popol Vuh
Author: Lewis Spence
Publisher: New York : AMS Press
Total Pages: 80
Release: 1908
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Mayan Calendar Astrology

Mayan Calendar Astrology
Author: Kenneth Johnson
Publisher: Lucita Publishing
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2011-12
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 9780977403592

"Mayan Calendar Astrology: Mapping Your Inner Cosmos" is the quintessential handbook to help you understand the art of Mayan astrology and how to harness it for a profound illumination of your personal lifepath. If you liked "Jaguar Wisdom," this book will take you even deeper into the powerful insights that Mayan astrology can offer, whether you're a seasoned expert or just a beginner. Included in the book are: - Complete information about the day signs and numbers - The importance of the Year Lord - The Mayan Destiny chart (also known as the Mayan Cross) - The complete nine-sign horoscope - Solar and lunar cycles - A unique method for determining the phases of human life - The personal compatibility matrices embedded within the Tzolk'in - A little-known technique for assessing human relationships by combining two horoscopes into a composite chart - Calendar diagrams and horoscope templates - A powerful and meditative technique called the "Path of Feathered Serpent," based on our own "personal lunar month" and designed, through a series of guided meditations, to awaken the koyopa or inner lightning we all possess. REVIEWS: "I am profoundly grateful to Kenneth Johnson for sharing his experientially based understanding of the Tzolk'in in this remarkable book. As a long-time lover of the Mayan world, 'Mayan Calendar Astrology' finally opened my eyes to the subtle workings of the 260-day calendar and led me to embrace it as a genuine path to self-understanding. The author's work is based upon his years of work with several aj q'ijab' in the Guatemalan highlands, primarily in Momostenango, the important center for contemporary Mayan calendar knowledge. Johnson's explanations of the significance of the 13 numbers, the Mayan Destiny chart, the Year Lords, and the Path of Feathered Serpent are unique in popular literature and will enrich the understanding of even dedicated scholars." - Robert Sitler, PhD, Director, Latin American Studies, Stetson University

Star Gods of the Maya

Star Gods of the Maya
Author: Susan Milbrath
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 558
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292778511

“A prodigious work of unmatched interdisciplinary scholarship” on Maya astronomy and religion (Journal of Interdisciplinary History). Observations of the sun, moon, planets, and stars played a central role in ancient Maya lifeways, as they do today among contemporary Maya who maintain the traditional ways. This pathfinding book reconstructs ancient Maya astronomy and cosmology through the astronomical information encoded in Pre-Columbian Maya art and confirmed by the current practices of living Maya peoples. Susan Milbrath opens the book with a discussion of modern Maya beliefs about astronomy, along with essential information on naked-eye observation. She devotes subsequent chapters to Pre-Columbian astronomical imagery, which she traces back through time, starting from the Colonial and Postclassic eras. She delves into many aspects of the Maya astronomical images, including the major astronomical gods and their associated glyphs, astronomical almanacs in the Maya codices and changes in the imagery of the heavens over time. This investigation yields new data and a new synthesis of information about the specific astronomical events and cycles recorded in Maya art and architecture. Indeed, it constitutes the first major study of the relationship between art and astronomy in ancient Maya culture. “Milbrath has given us a comprehensive reference work that facilitates access to a very broad and varied body of literature spanning several disciplines.” ―Isis “Destined to become a standard reference work on Maya archeoastronomy . . . Utterly comprehensive.” —Andrea Stone, Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Maya Calendar Origins

Maya Calendar Origins
Author: Prudence M. Rice
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2009-02-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292774494

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.

A Forest of Kings

A Forest of Kings
Author: Linda Schele
Publisher: William Morrow
Total Pages: 564
Release: 1990
Genre: History
ISBN:

The recent interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs has given us the first written history of the New World as it existed before the European invasion. Now, two central figures in the massive effort to decode the glyphs, Linda Schele and David Freidel, make this history available for the first time in all its detail. A Forest of Kings is the story of Maya kingship, from the beginning of its institution and the first great pyramid builders two thousand years ago to the decline of Maya civilization and its destruction by the Spanish. Here the great historic rulers of Precolumbian civilization come to life again with the decipherment of the writing. At its height, Maya civilization flourished under great kings like Shield-Jaguar, who ruled for over sixty years, expanding his kingdom and building some of the most impressive works of architecture in the ancient world. Long placed on a mist-shrouded pedestal as austere, peaceful stargazers, the Maya elites are now known to have been the rulers or populous, aggressive city-states. Hailed as "a Rosetta Stone of Maya civilization" (Brian M. Fagan, author of People of the Earth), A Forest of Kings is "a must for interested readers," says Evon Vogt, professor of anthropology at Harvard University.