The Maya Forest Garden

The Maya Forest Garden
Author: Anabel Ford
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2016-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1315417928

Using studies on contemporary Maya farming techniques and important new archaeological research, the authors show that the ancient Maya were able to support, sustainably, a vast population by farming the forest—thus refuting the common notion that Maya civilization devolved due to overpopulation and famine.

The Maya Tropical Forest

The Maya Tropical Forest
Author: James D. Nations
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0292778775

The Maya Tropical Forest, which occupies the lowlands of southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, is the closest rainforest to the United States and one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Western Hemisphere. It has been home to the Maya peoples for nearly four millennia, starting around 1800 BC. Ancient cities in the rainforest such as Palenque, Yaxchilan, Tikal, and Caracol draw thousands of tourists and scholars seeking to learn more about the prehistoric Maya. Their contemporary descendants, the modern Maya, utilize the forest's natural resources in village life and international trade, while striving to protect their homeland from deforestation and environmental degradation. Writing for both visitors and conservationists, James Nations tells the fascinating story of how ancient and modern Maya peoples have used and guarded the rich natural resources of the Maya Tropical Forest. He opens with a natural history that profiles the forest's significant animals and plants. Nations then describes the Maya peoples, biological preserves, and major archaeological sites in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Drawing on more than twenty-five years of conservation work in the Maya Tropical Forest, Nations tells first-hand stories of the creation of national parks and other protected areas to safeguard the region's natural resources and archaeological heritage. He concludes with an expert assessment of the forest's future in which he calls for expanded archaeological tourism to create an ecologically sustainable economic base for the region.

The Maya Tropical Forest

The Maya Tropical Forest
Author: James D. Nations
Publisher:
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2006-07
Genre: History
ISBN:

The Maya Tropical Forest, which occupies the lowlands of southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, is the closest rainforest to the United States and one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Western Hemisphere. It has been home to the Maya peoples for nearly four millennia, starting around 1800 BC. Ancient cities in the rainforest such as Palenque, Yaxchilan, Tikal, and Caracol draw thousands of tourists and scholars seeking to learn more about the prehistoric Maya. Their contemporary descendants, the modern Maya, utilize the forest's natural resources in village life and international trade, while striving to protect their homeland from deforestation and environmental degradation. Writing for both visitors and conservationists, James Nations tells the fascinating story of how ancient and modern Maya peoples have used and guarded the rich natural resources of the Maya Tropical Forest. He opens with a natural history that profiles the forest's significant animals and plants. Nations then describes the Maya peoples, biological preserves, and major archaeological sites in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Drawing on more than twenty-five years of conservation work in the Maya Tropical Forest, Nations tells first-hand stories of the creation of national parks and other protected areas to safeguard the region's natural resources and archaeological heritage. He concludes with an expert assessment of the forest's future in which he calls for expanded archaeological tourism to create an ecologically sustainable economic base for the region.

Maya

Maya
Author: Nikolai Grube
Publisher:
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2007-09-01
Genre: Central America
ISBN: 9783833143397

Lost cities in the jungle and towering temple pyramids form only a small part of Mayan culture. This fascinating people achieved the landmarks of an advanced civilisation - such as a highly developed writing system and densely populated cities - in the classical period (AD 300-600), earning them a place among the greatest civilisations in the world. However, this period represents just one phase in the history of the Mayan culture, which extends over thousands of years. Our knowledge of Mayan life has increased dramatically in recent decades. As a result, specialists from a wide range of disciplines have contributed to this book in order to represent all of the latest research on the Maya. The contributions included in this magnificent volume range from the origins of Mayan culture all the way to today, giving insight into everyday life and religion as well as the artistic accomplishments and intellectual abilities of this important culture.

Ancient Maya

Ancient Maya
Author: Arthur Demarest
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2004-12-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521533904

Ancient Maya comes to life in this new holistic and theoretical study.

Reinventing the Lacandón

Reinventing the Lacandón
Author: Brian Gollnick
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2022-08-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0816550484

Before massive deforestation began in the 1960s, the Lacandón jungle, which lies on the border of Mexico and Guatemala, was part of the largest tropical rain forest north of the Amazon. The destruction of the Lacandón occurred with little attention from the international press—until January 1, 1994, when a group of armed Maya rebels led by a charismatic spokesperson who called himself Subcomandante Marcos emerged from jungle communities and briefly occupied several towns in the Mexican state of Chiapas. These rebels, known as the Zapatista National Liberation Army, became front-page news around the globe, and they used their notoriety to issue rhetorically powerful communiqués that denounced political corruption, the Mexican government’s treatment of indigenous peoples, and the negative impact of globalization. As Brian Gollnick reveals, the Zapatista communiqués had deeper roots in the Mayan rain forest than Westerners realized—and he points out that the very idea of the jungle is also deeply rooted, though in different ways, in the Western imagination. Gollnick draws on theoretical innovations offered by subaltern studies to discover “oral traces” left by indigenous inhabitants in dominant cultural productions. He explores both how the jungle region and its inhabitants have been represented in literary writings from the time of the Spanish conquest to the present and how the indigenous people have represented themselves in such works, including post-colonial and anti-colonial narratives, poetry, video, and photography. His goal is to show how popular and elite cultures have interacted in creating depictions of life in the rain forest and to offer new critical vocabularies for analyzing forms of cross-cultural expression.

Rainforest Home Remedies

Rainforest Home Remedies
Author: Rosita Arvigo
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2001-01-09
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 006251637X

Rainforest Healing from Your Home and Garden Find alternatives to chemical anti-depressants and painkillers in your spice rack. Learn about natural anti-itch salves for insect bites. Soothe and relieve envy, grief, sadness, and fear the Maya way. Rid your house of negative energy with a Maya cleansing ritual. Try the easy-to-make bronchitis remedy.

The Maya

The Maya
Author: Henri Stierlin
Publisher: Taschen America Llc
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2001
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9783822812419

This volume retraces the development and magnificent flowering of Mayan architecture in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize over the period 300 B.C.-A.D. 1500. Tikal, the earliest Mayan religious centre, Palenque famous for its ceremonial centre, and Copan with its hieroglyphic staircase featuring 2500 glyphs are among the cities featured, along with Chichen Itza and its ball court, and Bonampak and its frescoes. These astounding creations testify to the knowledge and refinement of the most advanced of the pre-Columbian civilizations. Book jacket.

Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests

Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests
Author: John Robinson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 612
Release: 2000-02-08
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9780231504928

Throughout the world people are concerned about the demise of tropical forests and their wildlife. Hunting by forest-dwelling people has a dramatic effect on wildlife in many tropical forests, frequently driving species to local extinction, with devastating implications for other species and the health of the forests themselves. But wildlife is an important source of protein and cash for rural peoples. Can hunting be managed to conserve biological communities while meeting human needs? Are hunting rates as practiced by tropical forest peoples sustainable? If not, what are the biological, social, and cultural implications of this failure? Answering these questions is ever more important as national and international agencies seek to integrate the development of local peoples with the conservation of tropical forest systems and species. This book presents a wide array of studies that examine the sustainability of hunting as practiced by rural peoples. Comprising work by both biological and social scientists, Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests provides a balanced viewpoint on the ecological and human aspects of this hunting. The first section examines the effects of hunting on wildlife in tropical forests throughout the world. The next section looks at the importance of hunting to local communities. The third section looks at institutional challenges of resource management, while the fourth draws on economic perspectives to understand both hunting and sustainability. A final section provides synthesis and summary of the factors that influence sustainability and the implications for management. Drawing on examples from Ecuador to Congo-Zaire to Sulawesi, Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests will be a valuable resource to policymakers, conservation organizations, and students and scholars of biology, ecology, and anthropology.

In Search of the Rain Forest

In Search of the Rain Forest
Author: Candace Slater
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2004-03-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0822385279

The essays collected here offer important new reflections on the multiple images of and rhetoric surrounding the rain forest. The slogan “Save the Rain Forest!”—emblazoned on glossy posters of tall trees wreathed in vines and studded with monkeys and parrots—promotes the popular image of a marvelously wild and vulnerable rain forest. Although representations like these have fueled laudable rescue efforts, in many ways they have done more harm than good, as these essays show. Such icons tend to conceal both the biological variety of rain forests and the diversity of their human inhabitants. They also frequently obscure the specific local and global interactions that are as much a part of today’s rain forests as are the array of plants and animals. In attending to these complexities, this volume focuses on specific portrayals of rain forests and the consequences of these characterizations for both forest inhabitants and outsiders. From diverse disciplines—history, archaeology, sociology, literature, law, and cultural anthropology—the contributors provide case studies from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. They point the way toward a search for a rain forest that is both a natural entity and a social history, an inhabited place and a shifting set of ideas. The essayists demonstrate how the single image of a wild and yet fragile forest became fixed in the popular mind in the late twentieth century, thereby influencing the policies of corporations, environmental groups, and governments. Such simplistic conceptions, In Search of the Rain Forest shows, might lead companies to tout their “green” technologies even as they try to downplay the dissenting voices of native populations. Or they might cause a government to create a tiger reserve that displaces peaceful peasants while opening the doors to poachers and bandits. By encouraging a nuanced understanding of distinctive, constantly evolving forests with different social and natural histories, this volume provides an important impetus for protection efforts that take into account the rain forest in all of its complexity. Contributors. Scott Fedick, Alex Greene, Paul Greenough, Nancy Peluso, Suzana Sawyer, Candace Slater, Charles Zerner