Tag Archives: Maya
Four trees at the Cardinal Directions
Diagram of Dante's Divine Comedy
The multi-layered universe of the Mesoamerian culture has been taught and appears in books as if it has been proven. Jesper Nielsen’s article Dante’s heritage: questioning the multi-layered model of the Mesoamerican universe questions this notion.
It appears the pre-conquest model of the universe was of the cardinal directions, the center, the upper world and Underworld thus making for a three tiered universe. The different levels were divided into different regions and on each of the levels these different regions correspond to the four cardinal directions.
The number nine is prominent. It is represented by a god in the center and two gods at each of the four cardinal directions. These added up equal nine.
After the conquest, it appears there was a mixture of the cosmological ideas from Dante’s The Divine Comedy brought by the Franciscan friars with the ideas of the native Indian’s resulting in a skewed view of their universe which is how it is taught now and not seriously questioned.
The full article can be viewed at the following link.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3284/is_320_83/ai_n42366465/
B. Beltrán / Science
This vertical column of ancient Mayan glyphs was painted on stone found in a Guatemalan pyramid complex dating back to between 200 B.C. and 300 B.C. and show the Maya were writing at a complex level 150 years earlier than previously thought, though simple glyphs are dated to as early as 600 B.C.
They were found on preserved painted walls and plaster fragments in the pyramidal structure known as Las Pinturas, in San Bartolo, Guatemala.
The writing is completely different than the Zapotec writing and indicates they are not simple derivatives of each other.
Though a lot is now known of Mayan writings it is not known what these glyphs say.
Full article is here is printed on MSNBC.
This book is now available in MesoAmericas.com Book Collection. To visit and read go to: http://www.mesoamericas.com/books/PolopVuh001.php
This book, written shortly after the Spanish Conquest by a Quiché Indian who had learned to read and write Spanish, is generally known as the Popol Vuh, Popol Buj, Book of the Council, Book of the Community, the Sacred Book, or National Book of the Quiché, and it contains the cosmogonical concepts and ancient traditions of this aboriginal American people, the history of their origin, and the chronology of their kings down to the year 1550.
The name of its author and the fate of his original manuscript, which remained hidden for more than 150 years, are unknown. Father Ximénez, who found it in his parish at Santo Tomás Chichicastenango, transcribed the original Quiché text and translated it into Spanish under the title Historias del origen de los Indios de esta Provincia de Guatemala. This transcription, in the handwriting of this priest-historian, is still preserved; but no information has survived concerning the original document written in the Quiché tongue.
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