The World of the Maya

Merida

With Aurora in Cancun

After visiting the champagne sands and turqoise waters of Mandala beach at Cancun we said “Adios” to the twins and caught the luxury ADO tour bus to Merida.

The bus wound through tropical forests and green landscapes and an occasional palapa as the sun set.

Palapa building

 A four-hour ride later, we arrived at the Fiesta Americana hotel in downtown Merida where we were met by Tapanandini Devi Dasi and David, who drove us past the old palatial homes of Yucatan’s state capital, with a driveby tour of haciendas as we reached her home.

Merida, the Capital of Yucatan

Tapanandini was happy to see us and opened her home and heart with her warm hospitality.

Aurora with Tapanandini

Tapanandini is also known as Teresa Loret de Mola. Daughter of Yucatan’s former governor Carlos Loret de Mola, she is a disciple and follower of Bhakti Sundar Govinda Maharaja, the successor-acharya of Caitanya Saraswat Math in Nabadwip, India.  We were happy to see her and spent the next few days exploring Merida.

In downtown Merida.

In front of the "arcos" in Merida, Yucatan

Relaxing in front of a sweets shop 

Taking it easy in the park. 

Tapanandini has a small sanga of devotees who meet for prasadam and philosophy as well as yoga practice. Upon arrival, we met her daughter Shyamasundari, held a small kirtan together and reminisced about Govinda Maharaja and Shridhar Maharaja. She showed us upstairs to her art studio and our quarters next door, complete with air conditioning for the Yucatan heat and a large hammock, where I rested the night.

After a long nap in the hammock, the next day, we went to the Mundo Maya Museum, a carefully curated collection of artifacts, sculpture, and exhibits on the Mayan civilization which flourished in Meso-America in the area roughly corresponding to present-day Guatemala, Yucatan, Chiapas, and Oaxaca. Shyamasundari Devi works with the Government Culture Ministry, and her husband Alonso has an exhibit of his works at the museum.

Portrait of a Mayan Governor, Carved Stone, Mayan Museum

When we were in Cancun, we visited the Mayan museum there and saw ruins of Mayan structures from the 11th Century. Here, we saw more artifacts, pre-Colombian art, sculptures and exhibits. Gradually, I am beginning to form a more complete picture of the Mayans and how they lived.

The early Mayans inhabited the Yucatan peninsula a long time ago, perhaps a thousand years before the current Christian Era. The Classic Mayan period is really somewhere between 600 and 1100 AD, culminating in the High Classic Period and the construction of their most impressive pyramids somewhere between 1100 and 1500 AD, just before the Spanish Conquest.

Mayan King, stone carving

The Mayans had a highly developed political structure, with a network of royal families. Their towns were organized with a heirarchical command structure. They had no beasts of burden; unlike India, there were no trained elephants, oxen, cows, or horses to share their work or plow the land. They lived on corn. Among their edible produce they ate cactus fruits, coconuts, tomatoes, and avocados, and spiced their food with chiles, and cacao. They ate domesticated turkeys and rabbits. They kept dogs, which were sacred to them and adored as gods in their stone carvings. The Mayans were a sea-going people and traded in cotton, henequen, honey, and obsidian.

Carved Stone Stelae recording conquests and victories of Mayan Kings

No evidence of steel or iron tools is found to any significant degree in their ruins. The Mayans made tools of stone: flint arrowheads and axes and obsidian knives were especially treasured by them. These weapons were still in vogue when they were invaded by the Spanish. While they had no use of iron, they could manipulate gold into ornaments. Tiny adornments of gold, including earrings, nose rings, and even pipes for smoking tobacco and marijuana are found in their tombs. They used jade for ceremonial masks as well as for royal jewellery.

Jade Mask from the Classic Period

Bas Relief, Mundo Maya Museum

It’s hard to believe that the Mayans had any discourse with the Ancient Vedic civilizations of India, or even the more recent Khmer civilizations of Cambodia. And yet...

While the Mayans are essentially a neolithic society with no advanced technology beyond the use of stone tools they were remarkably advanced in terms of social organization, their peculiar mythology, their transcendent view of reality and the inframundo.

Eagle Warrior, Classic Period. Carved Stone.

Their mathematical system was remarkably advanced. They knew the use of the zero and calculated the movements of the stars and planets with great precision. They used a system of reflecting pools and stakes to observe the stars. Their calendar was more precise than the romans and the greeks. They predicted correctly the eclipses of the sun and moon for thousands of years in advance. Did they make these advances in complete isolation? Or, given that they were a sea-faring nation was some communication with faraway lands across the Pacific Ocean possible? 

Head of Mayan King

Communication with Europe seems a more remote possibility, since encounters with foreign peoples has been well-documented from the time of the Greek Herodotus. But perhaps the Mayan had some trade relations with islands in the Pacific or beyond. Their architects certainly understood the construction of pyramids. Was their knowledge entirely native or were their architects able to communicate with more schooled experts? We may never know. 

The Mayans wrote and kept thousands of books in their libraries. But these libraries were burned by the Spanish Conquistadors as heresy and works of the devil wherever they were found. The conquerors knew that the destruction of a people’s history is important for utter domination. Of the codices made by Mayan scholars, only a few remain and these are written at the time of the conquest itself or just after: the Codex Mendoza for example records the Mayan system of education around the time of the conquest. And since the true Mayans themselves had been in turn conquered by the Aztecs, much of their wisdom has been lost forever, eradicated by generations of conquerors.

The Mayas were not naked primitive tribesmen living in ignorance and misery. Their clothes were made of cotton and adorned with fine threads and embroidery. They told stories, wrote poems, and held dramatic performances. Their famed ball-courts were used for great contests that rivaled the Greek Olympics.

Tapanandini’s father, Carlos Loret, writes in “Yucatan en la Patria,” a monograph published by the Secretaria de Educacion Publica in 1969, “One is amazed by the accomplishments of the Mayan civilization of the Classic Period: the penetration realized by their astronomers, the pure delicacy of their bas relief carvings; the exquisite artistry of their ceramics; their love of knowledge; their disdain for war. 

They have been called with justification ‘The Greeks of the Americas’ as they constituted the only group with their own writing system. What has been deciphered so far of their glyphs puts them in contemporary science as the only advanced human society born and developed exclusively in the jungle, far away from their dark and belligerent cousins, the Olmecs.”