Going Mayan

Me trying out different inks with the sketches.

Will and I are in the same group for the Rosetta Project so he made a wonderful post about the process of creating our rosetta thing.  He pretty much summed up that whole process so I won't add much to what he said.  I instead wanted to blog a little about the process of coming up with the writing that we were going to use.

Because this project is pretty time consuming, our group mostly split up into smaller specialty groups to get it done and so that we wouldn't be spending way too much time to finish the project.  So I pretty much ended up as the Mayan language expert.  The mayan language can be pretty daunting.  Various dialects of Mayan are spoken today, but none quite like the ancient language.  Modern Mayan is also written in regular Roman lettering like English, so trying to crack the code of Mayan glyphs was a pretty daunting task.

Mayan Glyphing Party

This past Wednesday I had the opportunity with Mike and others not from our group to travel back in time and get our hands dirty with the beautiful Mayan glyph writing system. 

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE AT CHICHEN ITZA

I love architecture and I have been fascinated by the Mayan architecture ever since I started blogging, well to be honest I always have been, but I never quite seemed to be able to fit it into any of the topics I was blogging about. Something I hadn't thought much about until researching for this post is the depth of research and knowledge can come from just a given culture's architecture. We can study a culture through the lens of architecture to examine what the culture deemed important. I would like to highlight a certain pyramid in Chichén Itzá called Kukulkan's pyramid to examine the importance of astronomy and architecture to the Mayans. 

Scraping Metal

This golden disk found in Peru is an contains
an inscription of a calendar system.

A few months ago they played a special on the Discovery channel about  discoveries of America before Columbus.  After talking about various theories about who were actually the first people to travel to the New World, they came to the conclusion that pretty much everyone discovered America at one point in time.  They finally changed their question from "Who discovered America?" to "Who didn't discover America?".  Well today I am not going to talk about the discovery of America but the making of metal books.  To those of us who are LDS (such as members of our Reinventing Knowledge class here at BYU) metal plate writings might be of special interest because the Book of Mormon was translated from an ancient record engraved on golden plates.  Although engravings on metal plates were at one point thought of as a rare occurrence, recent discoveries have shown more and more examples of this form of information storage.  As you will see in this post, we might pose ourselves a similar question:

"Who didn't write on metal plates?"

Sitting on the Fence . . . For Thousands of Years

As we began this unit on written knowledge, I was rather excited.  I love hand writing and different symbols and everything that has to do with writing.  The power of the written word is something I have loved ever since I learned to read.  I suddenly became disappointed when I realized that I needed to talk about writing within the Hopi culture, mostly because they do not have an alphabet.  I guess that kind of puts a damper on writing if you don't have an alphabet.  Luckily as I have studied out the topic, I have realized that the Hopi language and people can give us a lot of cool clues as to how writing systems are developed because they stayed with a transitionary step to developing writing systems - the pictograph.

The famous "Hopi Prophecy Rock" - Said to depict
the consequences of not living in harmony
with the earth.  Says that if we don't there will be a
WWIII-like cataclysmic event. 

Epic Performance

Imagine yourself high up in the mountains of present day Guatemala in a stone courtyard or plaza adorned with statues and figures carved from stone of fierce warriors, majestic kings and intelligent priests. The spoken words of a poet drift to your ears through the crisp air typical of the dry season. You listen attentively, relishing in the glorious detail of brave warriors and fierce battles. A part of you stirs in pride for your ancestors and rich cultural history. 

Preserve the Maya language!

Talking with Jose Canché was a bit surreal and very interesting. He is a member from one of the wards I served in on my mission in Los Angeles. I met him because he approached us asking us if we knew of a way he could get a Book of Mormon in Maya (officially classified by linguists as Maya- Yucatán). Yes, the same language passed down from the mysterious Ancient Mayan people. Jose is from Guatemala near the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico. He grew up speaking the language Maya. It isn't one of the 22 or so dialects found in Guatemala, rather it is simply Maya. 

map of the Ancient Mayan empire (green)

Popol Vuh and the Mayan language

The mysterious Mayan civilization was an advanced society that thrived between 1500BC and 900AD with its height around 250BC. Study of Mayan civilization remained untouched until the 1830s until we started discovering and deciphering glyphs from temples and other sites.

¿Which Doctor?

Even though we usually think of medicine as a "science" and as something that should be standard, medicinal practices vary from culture to culture and even from family to family.  All of us inherit beliefs from our parents about what causes what illnesses and what to do to cure them.  In my family, for example, my parents taught  me from a young age to always wash my hands to kill germs, which are a main cause of disease.  They taught me that we should cook our food well to prevent it.  That to cure a sickness the best thing is rest and to be well hydrated.  When we are sick our have a surgery there is always ice cream.  I vividly remember sucking on mickey mouse popsicles when I got my tonsils out as a child.

Dating! (Mayan style)

My home is situated far from the cultural center of the church in a suburb just north of the bustling city of Chicago. This cultural distance combined with recently returning from a mission in Los Angeles has caused me quite a culture shock here at BYU. Not surprisingly, the biggest part of this culture shock is the overwhelming marriage atmosphere here in Provo. Everyone knows that marriage permeates the air we breath here in such saturated levels it could quite possibly be dangerous to the unexpected tourist. It is fairly obvious that this folk knowledge of marriage comes from years of informal and informal schooling. From church to the home, many LDS members have grown up with a future marriage and homemaking at the forefront of their minds. You could say the Provo marriage obsession traces its roots all the way back to Sunbeam class.

A rich deposit of learning potential can come from examining (at a cautious distance mind you) this new culture I find myself thrust into here at school. As part of this examination, I take you along the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico and through Guatemala to compare Mayan marriage and dating practices to those found closer to home here in Provo.

Unlike most LDS children, thoughts of marriage usually started around the age of 16 for males and 12 for females at a ceremony called the "Descent of the Gods" (shown in the painting to the right). In this ceremony the adolescents would ceremoniously remove clothing- white beads for males and a red shell belt for females that represent their virginity.

The main drive behind marriage in both cultures is primarily: to provide a healthy, strong and large family. Despite this similarity, Mayan parents were more involved than LDS parents in their children's dating and marriage life. We are used to many "marriage/dating talks" or the varying amounts of pressure to date. Instead Mayans went a step further and practiced arranged marriages. The method of these arrangements was through a professional atanzahab (matchmaker). He would read the prospective couples' horoscopes to determine compatibility in such areas as birthdays, names and among the gods. After this time the bride to be's father would agree on a price for his daughter and once in agreement the groom to be would work for him. This process could take as long as five to six years to complete. Throughout this whole arrangement process it is highly likely the marriage couple to be would not so much as engage in a single conversation. I laugh as I compare this Mayan custom to the stories we here in Provo that shock us involving a total time elapse of one month from first meeting, then dating and finally engagement and marriage.

After this deeply entertaining and interesting study of Mayan marriage and courting practices, it makes me think of what marriage should be based on. I also wonder simply what marriage means at its core to me and to all of us as members of the LDS Church. Personally, I know I prefer the methods many of our parents use to keep this particular piece of folk knowledge alive and vibrant by (might I go as far to say?) brainwashing us from a young age. I will pay the price of some cultural discomfort as I adjust to life here in Provo in exchange for a marriage based on profound love and the true Gospel and not simply a negotiation made between my parents and her parents. I do not judge the Mayans seeing as the distance between their culture and time period to Provo is much greater than Chicago's is!