Word: maya
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Also from Tikal are incense burners that reflect the Mayas' grotesque imaginings of hell. The 14-in.-high Old Fire God is a satanic orange figure that holds out a human skull. Another censer represents a Maya lord whose throne is decorated by the long-nosed figure of the Cauac Monster, who rules the Maya underworld...
Unlike much of Maya art that celebrates or serves gods, priests and lords, some of the lively figurines found on the island of Jaina mirror the life of ordinary folk. One peasant woman jauntily waving a big conical hat will look strikingly familiar to anyone who has visited the wretchedly poor Maya villages in modern Yucatan...
...counterpoise to these exquisitely delicate objects is the 1,000-year-old, 1,200-lb. limestone Chacmool, the ceremonial figure that is the very emblem of Maya civilization in its later phases. Found at the most celebrated of all Maya sites, Chichen Itza in Yucatan, the semireclining statue is a splendid example of the Chacmools found guarding the entrances of temples. Typically, the male figure leans back on his elbows, pulls up his knees and turns a forbidding gaze on intruders at the sacred gates. A flat plate poised on his belly is believed to have been a receptacle...
...works in the St. Paul exhibit are also from Chichen Itza. They were selected from a collection of 30,000 sacrificial objects that the Mayas threw into a 200-ft.-wide limestone sinkhole that was their sacred cenote, or well. The pieces -- jade pendants, gold jewelry, wooden idols and painted jars -- offer a peerless view of Central American aesthetic traditions over an 800- year period. Says the St. Paul museum's curator of archaeology, Orrin C. Shane III: "The objects from the cenote are the single most important archaeological treasure ever recovered in the Americas." Incredibly, nearly all the pieces...
...sacred well, once regarded by the Maya as the abode of their gods, had been a place for pilgrimage from 800 to 1500 A.D. Following the Spanish conquest, the gold-greedy conquistadores heard gaudy reports that the Indians had thrown gold, jewels and young virgins into the cenote to propitiate their deities. Nothing was ever found until 1904. Then American Archaeologist Edward H. Thompson, working with a steel bucket appended to a simple boom and derrick, and later with primitive deep-sea diving equipment, spent more than five years exploring the sinkhole. Thompson gradually brought up gold bells...