Mississippian and Maya cosmology
The Hand constellation and the Milky Way




As I have been working on a Biloxi ethnography (still in progress) and researching both MIIS1 and Maya mythology and cosmology, interesting similarities occur between the two. For instance, it is interesting that both cultures focus on Orion's Belt as having major cosmological significance in relation to creation, life, and death. In Mississippian cosmology this is reflected in the Hand constellation, where Orion's Belt forms the wrist of the cut-off hand (various Plains myths refer to a celestial chief's arm or hand being cut off and left to dangle in the sky) facing downward in the night sky (Lankford 2007). In Maya cosmology, Orion's Belt is referred to in the Popol Vuh, the Maya creation story, as both the 'three stones of creation' and the 'hearthstones' (Freidel et al. 1993). 

 

The fact that the stars of Orion's Belt were important to ancient Native Americans is evident in the pyramidal layout of Teotihuacan's three largest pyramids: Pyramid of the Moon, Pyramid of the Sun, and the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, which seem to match quite well the celestial configuration of Orion's three Belt stars. Of course, interestingly, the three pyramids of Egypt's Gizeh also seem to match this configuration! 

Similarly, both cultures refer to the peculiar movement of the Milky Way in the night sky. The 'rising and falling sky' motif was apparently prevalent throughout the US Southeast (among at least the Chitimachas, Alabamas, Cherokees, Choctaws, Shawnees) (we can probably safely add Biloxis here), the Plains (Foxes, Poncas), and the Southwest (Navajos) (Lankford 2007: 204), represented in mythology and apparently based on the nightly movement of the Milky Way.  The Milky Way moves from a near vertical position, in which  Mayas refer to it as the 'cosmic tree,' to a nearly horizontal position, in which Mayas refer to it as the 'sky canoe.'  This is the celestial canoe carrying the Two Paddler Gods who set the 'Three Stones of Creation' (Orion's Belt, Ak 'Ek, or Turtle) in place, from which First Father, or the Maize God, is reborn, thus creating a new universe (Freidel et al. 1993).  The Canoe then 'sinks' on the western horizon at dawn, the time of the birth of creation (ibid.).

The Hand constellation is said to mark the location of the Portal to the Otherworld, at least in Southeastern mythology. Within the Hand constellation "lies a galaxy (Messier 42) visible as a fuzzy star that is understood to be a hole in the sky, a portal" (Lankford 2007: 197). "Today, [Alnitak, Saiph, and Rigel in Orion] are said to be the three hearthstones of the typical Quiché [Maya] kitchen fireplace, arranged to form a triangle, and the cloudy area they enclose (Great Nebula M[essier] 42) is said to be the smoke from the fire" (Tedlock 1985: 261 in Freidel et al. 1993: 79). The Southeastern Hand constellation portal may indeed be the same portal into which the Maya king "Pakal falls on his sarcophagus lid and out of which beings of the Otherworld emerge" (Freidel et al. 1993: 87).

The Hand-and-Eye motif of the MIIS. Could the 'eye' symbol represent 'see' while the 'hand' symbol represents the constellation? This may represent the idea of a god or gods seeing or looking down onto the earth from the Hand constellation, wherein lies the portal, possibly also represented by the eye, between earth and the Otherworld.

Similarly, the Milky Way plays similar roles in both cultures as a 'Path of Souls' used by the dead to journey into the Otherworld. In fact, the Mayan term for 'death' is 'och be, literally meaning 'enter the Road [of Souls],' meaning the Milky Way. There is a "quite similar understanding of the Milky Way among Siberian groups" (Lankford 2007: 212) suggesting "an impressive time-depth" (ibid.) for this association of the Milky Way with death and as a path to the afterlife.

This petroglyph from Chaco Canyon (once home to the Anasazis) in the US Southwest, thought by some to commemorate the 1054 CE Supernova explosion. The starburst may represent the explosion while the crescent moon and hand symbols represent the event's location in the sky: just above the moon and at or near the Hand constellation. If this interpretation is correct, it would show that the Hand constellation was known even in the Southwest and perhaps throughout much of Native America.

More work remains to be done on Southeastern (or Mississippian) cultural beliefs and cosmology in comparison with those of Mesoamerica. Perhaps more entries to come on this very complex topic....

1 MIIS = Mississippian Intercultural Interaction Sphere (also known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, or SECC)

References

Freidel, David, Schele, L. & Parker, J. 1993. Maya cosmos: three thousand years of the shaman's path. New York: HarperCollins.

Lankford, George. 2007. The "path of souls": some death imagery in the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. In Ancient objects and sacred realms: interpretations of Mississippian iconography. Reilly, F. Kent & Garber, James, eds. Austin: University of Texas Press.

El Mirador

One of the largest ancient Maya cities, and home to possibly the world's largest pyramid.

Click here to see CNN story on this ancient American metropolis.

The Maya Cosmic Prophecy 2012: From Sensation to Sensibility

Maya Scholars in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and North America have been watching with amusement and dismay as self-styled experts proclaim that ancient Maya prophets foretold an earth-shattering happening to occur December 21, 2012. This predicted phenomenon gets described in contradictory but always cataclysmic fashion--as an ecological collapse, a sunspot storm, a rare cosmic conjunction of the earth, sun, and the galactic center, a new and awesome stage of our evolution, and even a sudden reversal of the Earth's magnetic field which will erase all our computer drives. One even predicts the earth's initiation into a Galactic Federation, whose elders have been accelerating our evolution with a "galactic beam" for the last 5000 years. In sum, the world as we know it will suddenly come to a screeching halt.

These predictions are alleged to be prophecies by so-called "Ancient Mayans" whose "astronomically precise" calendar supposedly terminates on that date. According to such accounts, these mysterious Maya geniuses appeared suddenly, built an extraordinary civilization, designed in it clues for us, and then suddenly, inexplicably, vanished, as if they had completed their terrestrial mission. These same experts claim special credibility for the Maya prophecies by asserting that these historic sages, with their possible extraterrestrial origins, had tapped into an astonishing esoteric wisdom.

Could any of this be true? Is this a cosmic, or comic, prophecy?

Mark Van Stone, a REAL anthropologist and Mayanist, writes of the REAL meaning of December, 21, 2012, according to the Maya calendar:

http://www.famsi.org/research/vanstone/2012/index.html

This is a slide show, so don't be daunted by the number of pages. There is a lot of background info on the Maya calendar.

To think this today (Peten jungle, Guatemala)...



















...used to be this (El Mirador, Guatemala)...

...which looks a lot like this (Cahokia, Illinois)...

As part of my course on Classic Maya Civilization, we are actually learning about some pre-Classic Maya cities that have only recently come to light in the Peten lowlands of Guatemala. Perhaps the first large Maya city was located here, now called El Mirador. The middle picture above is an artist's conception of the ancient city based on current archaeological evidence. It is thought that perhaps up to 100,000 people may have lived here in the Maya city. The city was built of limestone and its monumental structures were painted red and white. Keep in mind the ruins of this once breathtaking Maya city date to ca. 300 BC, well before the Classic Maya civilization of great kings and monuments that we've known about for some time. That means that, indeed, Maya civilization dates back far earlier than we once thought, and their civilization achieved monumental grandeur much earlier than previously thought.

What's even more intriguing, although this comparison is still considered outside the mainstream perspective of most current anthropologists, is that large earthen monumental structures similar to the those of the Olmec and the stone structures of the Maya were present in North America's Mississippi Valley dating back to nearly 4,000 BC (Watson Brake, Louisiana).

This begs the question: Did the ancestors of the later Olmec and Maya civilizations live in the Mississippi Valley before migrating south into Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America)? Anthropologists have long tried to imply Mesoamerican influence upon the Mississippi Valley and Southeastern U.S., but it seems, more and more, we are being presented with evidence to the contrary: the Mississippi Valley may have influenced Mesoamerica.

Breaking the Maya Code



For those of you, who, like me, are interested in the Mayan hieroglyphs and the stories they tell about the ancient Maya civilization, a 2-hour documentary is slated to be available DVD on September 16, 2008. Apparently a brief 50-minute version of this was aired back in April on NOVA, which I unfortunately missed. The film is based on Michael Coe's book, Breaking the Maya Code, which I have read, documenting the history of how the ancient Mayan hieroglyphs were deciphered.

It was long thought that the Mayan glyphs were a form of picture-writing, perhaps similar to what the Mexica, or Aztecs, used. However, a Russian scholar, Yuri Knorosov, living in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in the USSR in the 1950s, who had never even visited the Maya ruins and worked only from pictures and paper copies, had discovered that the Mayan glyphs, like those of ancient Egypt and Sumeria, were partly phonetic, giving clues to their pronunciation and correct decipherment.

Heb’ Kab’nal
The Lacandones

A Q'anjob'al Maya story

Ay jun ab’ix chiyal intxutx yet heb’ jichmam tzet maxyun pitz’oj heb’ a heb’ anima yet payxa. K’am chi pitzk’oj heb’ yuj no’ tiltik chijayi chi chiontoq no’ chiyab’en no’ b’ay chiajteq heb’ unin okoq. Maxb’et chalayayteq a no’ chib’et chaonayteq. Chi pitzk’oj jun jun unin chi chionaytoq no’ k’am chipitzk’oj heb’ anima. Axa P’elixh maxnaoni tzet oq-yun pitzk’oj heb’ anima kaq ti’ ta kak’alti’. Maxpitzk’oj heb’ maxsayon rason. Maxb’et sayonteq te’ q’olal taj maxtoj b’ay nanlaq ak’al. Maxb’et chikon chib’ej. Maxyab’en no’ tiltik tu’ jab’ chib’ej tu’ maxayk’ay no’ kaq chiyun yayk’ay no’ ostok. Maxb’et maxayk’ay no’. Chikon P’elixh tu’ te’ q’olal taj tu’. "Echinb’el wuxhtaq oqachlowoq ti’ chiwat’nej alob’ej." Maxyi’onaj te’ q’olal taj tu’ lanan yuqi te’ maxq’anwontoq yul nuq’ no’ tiltik tu’ kax chikamel no’. A b’ay chib’etek’ jun junel chib’et ya’kan kam, otaqk’on waqtaqk’on lajlajonk’on tiltik. Kay tu’ maxyun kami. Kay tu’ maxyun pitzk’ojkan heb’. Axkatu k’amxa maqtxel oqchiontoq heb’ kax maxpitzk’ojkan heb’. Axkatu maxyun pitzk’ojkan heb’ anima yet antiwo ley yet heb’ jichmam.

There is a story my mother tells about our ancestors, how it happened they grew [progressed] those people from long ago. They do not progress because of the lacandon. They [the lacandones] come, they eat, they hear where they [children] go up, the children enter [the steambath]. [And they] go to receive, those animals go receiving to themselves. Each child is born, the animal eats him up, the people do not progress. And so Vírvez [P’elixh] was thinking: How will it happen the people grow, thus if it is [to be] they grow [and he] looked for a way. He went looking for pine resin, he went in among the valleys. He went to cook meat. Those lacandon smelled the meat [and] they fell as it happens the buzzard falls. They went, they fell down. That Vírvez was cooking that pine tree sap. "Wait, my brother, you will eat, here I am preparing your meal." And he raised up that pine tree resin—it was boiling—[and he] threw it down the throats of those lacandones and they died. There he went by every time he went to leave them dead—five, six, ten animal lacandones. Thus it happened that they died. Thus it happened the people continued to grow. Thus no more will anyone eat them up and they progressed. So it happened the people grew in the old law of our ancestors.

This story is about a group of Ch'ol-speaking Maya people called the Lacandon, or Lacandones, who were never conquered by the Europeans and who were apparently not on good terms with the Q'anjob'al at this point in history. Note that the story-teller (see below) uses the term no' tiltik for the Lacandon, instead of the usual Q'anjob'al term naq kab'nal. The no'(1) is a classifier for animals (most Q'anjob'al nouns take some type of classifier usually translated 'the' in English), and the tiltik was described by informants as an inhuman, vampire-like creature with deep red eyes and long black clothes over a skeleton. There is one occurrence of lajlajonk'on tiltik, with lajlajon (ten) and k'on the numerical version of the no' classifier for animals. The word naq is a human classifier used with kab'nal, the actual term for the Lacandon, but her repeated use of no' tiltik seems to indicate her equation of them with something less than human probably due to their behavior.

Note the Spanish borrowings: anima (borrowed into most Mayan languages and in Q'anjob'al means 'person' or 'people'), rason (razón, reason), antiwo (antiguo, old), and ley (law).

This story was told by Eulalia Garcia M., a native speaker of Q'anjob'al, as it appears in an International Journal of American Linguistics (IJAL) article of 1980 by Laura Martin.

The article's English translation is not too smooth, but it gets the basic idea across.

(1) In Q'anjob'al, you cannot simply say "I have a dog" or "There is a house." You must use the appropriate classifiers for dog or house: Ay jun no' hintx'i' (exists-one-[animal]-my-dog) or Ay jun te' na (exists-one-[wood]-house; te' the classifier for houses, wooden objects, etc.). There is no verb 'to have' in Q'anjob'al.

A real Yukatek Maya perspective on the movie Apocalypto

I especially liked his ending sentence:

"Perhaps Gibson could make a movie showing how the Mayas still are suffering discrimination, even to the point of being cheated out of our lands and displaced, because of the ships he showed arriving as the finale of 'Apocalypto.'"

Not to mention his remarks on the Yukatek language as spoken by non-Maya actors!

Who were the Maya?

Not the people in 'Apocalypto'

By PATRICIO G. BALONA
Staff Writer

The Mayas were savages and needed to be straightened out.

That is the message Mel Gibson's movie "Apocalypto" conveyed to me when it contrasted savage bloodthirsty pagans meeting with arriving Europeans carrying the symbol of the cross.
But we are not savages.

Spanish invaders who arrived among the Maya in the 16th century depicted natives as barbaric people dedicated to devil worship in order to justify brutality and conquest. We all know native peoples didn't fare well under Christianity; some cultures were completely lost. Coincidentally, Christianity is the foundation of Gibson's belief and spirituality.

But a more serious massacre -- that of the Yukatek language -- begins early in the movie. The non-Maya actors of North American Indian heritage pronouncing their rehearsed Yukatek lines sounded like Hollywood Western stereotypes saying: "How! Me Tonto, this Painted Horse."
Although I was born a Yukatek Maya and raised in a Yukatek village, speaking Yukatek as the first of four languages I know, I had to glance at the subtitles to figure out what the actors were trying to say.

It was slightly refreshing that Gibson cast an elder, a storyteller, who spoke the language without pauses, with such musical flow and accuracy that for a moment I thought I was in my village listening to my own elders. But, sad to say, the only other significant part in the movie where the power of the Yukatek language was genuinely demonstrated is when the tiny village girl talks about the prophecy of the jaguar ending the evil and vile ways of the devil people.

The film is full of violence, floods of blood, throat-slitting, beheadings, heads rolling down the steps of temples and hearts being wrenched out of gaping holes in upper abdomens.

I had to turn to my friend, Robert Sitler, a Latin American studies professor at Stetson University, to ask for his reaction.

"Sadly, 'Apocalypto' will leave mainstream American moviegoers seeing Maya as heartless savages," Sitler said after the movie. He said the movie "unwittingly reinforces a long-standing tradition of virulent racism against the Maya among white Europeans and their Spanish-speaking descendents."

The film falls short of Gibson's intention -- which, remotely, appears to be telling the story of Jaguar Paw, the hero played by Rudy Youngblood, and the prophecy of his rise to power. The film fails for two reasons.

First, Gibson bogs down the plot with his craze for blood and death. Second, just as Jaguar Paw appears to be achieving success, he runs into ships anchored in the bay with boats rowing ashore carrying grim-faced conquistadors bearing the symbols of the cross.

I am not certain which Jaguar Paw Gibson tried to portray in his movie. There were several famous Jaguar Paws in Maya hieroglyphics, including one who became king of the great Maya city of Calakmul in 686 and was long gone when the Spaniards arrived 806 years later. There were no glorious Maya cities, simply small communities scattered throughout the Maya world.
And Mr. Gibson, that world is not only Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras, as you defined it in promoting your movie. It also includes what is now Belize and El Salvador.

Unlike the sadistic and violent caricatures of Maya in "Apocalypto," real Maya intensely nurture their children and honor both their elders and ancestors, embracing human mortality in the context of a cultural heritage going back more than a hundred generations.

My only hope is that moviegoers would take the movie as a misleading and distorted Hollywood drama designed to entertain.

Perhaps Gibson could make a movie showing how the Mayas still are suffering discrimination, even to the point of being cheated out of our lands and displaced, because of the ships he showed arriving as the finale of "Apocalypto."

Yab'ixal Ix Xajaw
Story of the Moon

A Q'anjob'al Maya story

A yet payxatu,
? at time-DEM

ix ko tx'utx' Xajaw chi tz'eq'eq'i ix yet aqb'alil axka cham ko man k’u ti nani.
CLAS 3P-POSS mother moon INCOM bright CLAS at night ? CLAS 3P-POSS ? sun ? now

Palta ix tx'utx' wojb'atz'
but CLAS mother howler-monkey

k'am chi je way yuninal ix,
there-no-exist INCOM ? sleep E3S-children-3S-POSS

yujtol k'am aq'b'alil.
that-why there-no-exist night

Axa yetoq jelanil ix
? with intelligence-3S-POSS

max k'uon ix yunetu wayi.
COM teach? E3S 3S-POSS-children sleep-SUFF

Palta eb' unin tu k'am
but 3P children here there-no-exist

chi je way eb' yuj
INCOM ? sleep 3P-for

tzeqeqial xal Xajaw tu.
shine CLAS moon there

Axa naq b'ab'el unin max
? CLAS first child COM

q'umlej ay b'a naq yetoq
converse there-is oldest CLAS with

yuxhtaq naq.
3S-POSS-brother CLAS

A nani oqon
? now ?

mulnajoq masanil k'u.
work-PART all day

Oqkowajb'aoq'oq masanil xaq' an ak'un k'al masanil
PART-?-gather-PART? all leaf PART bush and all

xaq' te' te'.
leaf CLAS wood (tree)?

Axa yet oqonwayoq, k'ojank'ulal
? there-exist ?-sleep (time)-? slow

oqtoqkomaqcheloq sat
?-?-?-cover-? face

ix Xajaw tu.
CLAS moon there

Kajtu oqjejiloni yet k'ualil k'al yet aq'b'alil. Kaytu max yun kankan ix ko tx'utx' Xajaw
So ?-?-see at on the day and so at night. So COM 3S-make? become CLAS 3S-POSS mother moon

tu yin q'eqq'inal.
there in darkness.

Once upon a time, our mother moon was as bright in the night as the sun in the day all the night long. But the howler monkey's children could not sleep because there was no night. Then the mother of the monkeys taught the children to sleep thanks to her intelligence. But the children could not see their dreams due to the light of mother moon. Then the oldest child made an agreement with his brothers. Now they would gather leaves and at the time to sleep they would slowly cover the face of mother moon. That would make difference between day and night. And so our mother moon only shines with a weak light in the darkness of the night.

Traducción en español

Una vez, nuestra madre luna alumbraba toda la noche igual que el sol en el día. Pero los niños del mono aullador no podían dormir, ya que no hubo noche. Entonces la madre de los monos les hizo dormir através de su inteligencia. Pero los niños no podían ver sus sueños por la claridad de la luna. Entonces el hermano mayor de los monitos hizo un acuerdo con sus hermanitos. Ahora iban a trabajar todo el día. Iban a juntar todas las hojas de monte y de los árboles y en la hora de dormir iban a cubrir la cara de la madre luna despacio. Asi iban a poder ver la diferencia entre el día y la noche. Y así quedó alumbrado suave nuestra madre luna en la oscuridad.

As many of you know, I’m taking a class called The Structure of Mayan. In this class we’ve had to select one Mayan language (out of 31 total, both living and extinct) on which to work, researching and doing papers on different aspects of it such as phonetics, morphology, and syntax. I partnered with a classmate and friend of mine to work on Q’anjob’al, one of the highland Mayan languages spoken near the border area of Mexico and Guatemala. In the process of doing some online research, I came across this short story. I tried to gloss it as best I could with my current knowledge of the language*, which is not much as you can tell from all the ? scattered throughout the gloss. But it’s a beginning to helping me to understand the word order and syntax a little better.

Just for a little background on Q’anjob’al and Mayan in general:

Mayan languages are ergative-absolutive, meaning that they treat the agent of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs.

Those ‘ you see after certain consonants are the markers for an ejective stop. The ejective is one of the primary characteristics of Mayan languages. It is pronounced by holding back air then letting it go with a sudden burst after the consonant sound. The letter j is pronounced h, q is a uvular stop, tx is pronounced ch (not sure of exact difference between ch and tx), and x is a retroflex sh sound (tongue bent backward toward rear of the mouth). While b' is implosive in some Mayan languages, it is not in Q'anjob'al. ' after a vowel indicates a glottal stop.

Mayan languages have many particles, several of which are in this text. Mayan nouns take various classifiers. For example, in the above text, there is ix, referring to females. Naq refers to males. Cham refers to older males, volcanoes, stars and planets, among other things. Te' is for wood or things made of wood. No’ refers to animals, so that ‘a cat’ in Q’anjob’al is jun no’ mis (one CLAS cat).

Verbs, as you can see, pose great challenges in the number of aspectual and various other markers they may take.

There is, of course, much more for me to learn!

* Some of this may change once I speak to my Q'anjob'al-speaking friend!
** Note that, in the text, COM refers to completive aspect, INCOM to incompletive, CLAS to classifier.

Tayxin.