National Geographic: Lost Kingdoms of the Maya Page #2
- Year:
- 1993
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They knew that the universe moved
in cycles,
some very large, some very small.
They even predicted eclipses
of the sun.
They seem to have been fascinated
by the relationship between time
and the events in their own lives.
The Maya also left a record in a
medium much more permanent than paper.
And this writing contains much more
than dates and numbers.
On these stone the Maya recorded
the important events
This is the Hieroglyphic Stairway
at Copan,
in the New World.
But early archeologists reassembled
it out of order,
so today we can read it only
in segments.
Sculpture specialist Barbara Fash
is making a catalog
of the 1,200 glyphs on the stairway.
Someday, these drawings may tell
a more complete story of Copan's kings
This means "to plant with a stick
in the ground."
Other hieroglyphs are more accessible,
thanks to dramatic breakthroughs
in the past few decades.
This is the date. It's a...
Epigrapher Linda Schele has done
her share of the recent detective work
This is a little tree-tey.
And on this side,
facing the east, he's young.
But on the west side you can see...
Look at the beard.
It is a rare thing when a people
develop historical consciousness
and make recorded history
a part of what they do.
What we are participating in now
is the recovery of lost history...
...because American history does not
begin in 1492 with Columbus.
It begins in 200 B.C.
with the first Maya king
who wrote his name on a stone.
Long before the first king wrote
his name on a stone,
the Maya were living
They were corn farmers.
Their lives were ruled by the rhythms
of the natural world,
planting and harvesting,
birth and death.
But around A.D. 400,
at about the time Rome
was starting to collapse,
a change swept through the valley.
On a lazy bend in the Copan River,
buildings made from stone were rising
from the jungle floor.
Brilliantly colored buildings
surrounded a whitewashed central plaza
where thousands of people could gather
There was trade in shells
and cacao beans,
tobacco, jade, and feathers.
At the center of the city
stood the ball court.
The object of the ball game seems
to have been to keep
the heavy rubber ball in motion,
Stone carvings at some sites show
ballplayers with severed human heads
dangling from their belts.
But no one knows if they depict
what actually happened to the losers,
or illustrate something more symbolic.
The ball was supposed to be a metaphor
for the movement of the sun
and by extension, also the moon
and the stars.
And you wanted to make sure that there
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