Word: mayan
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Since February archeologists had been delving into a 30-foot mound in the mountains of Guatemala. This week they announced their prize discovery: "The finest single piece of Mayan jade carving ever found...
...apple-green breastplate, about six inches wide, carved in the 9th Century. Cut into the jade was the figure of a priest, or ruler, presiding over a circle of deities (see cut). To make it, the Mayan artist had labored with wooden bow drills, and smoothed his work down with abrasive sand. Carnegie Institution diggers found the breastplate and an assortment of gold-leaf ornaments, copper bells "and one alabaster vase amid the rotted bones in an ever-deepening series of graves...
Healey lived with the Lacandones in their remote jungles. Little by little he learned some of their secrets. The Mayan "Old Empire" of the region had fallen long ago; tropical vegetation covered its ruins. But the handful of Lacandones still worship in Mayan temples, keeping the old gods alive...
Though not the most striking of Mayan "Old Empire" ruins, Bonampak is remarkably well preserved. Three stelae (record stones) have fallen on their faces, protecting their elaborate carvings from weather damage. Three intact inner rooms contain the most perfect specimens of Mayan fresco painting. In full color, Mayan kings, priests and warriors parade across the walls carrying umbrellas, waving fans, blowing horns and beating drums...
Morley believes that the great Mayan cities were slowly abandoned, one after the other, principally because of crop failures, partly because of epidemics, social disintegration, wars. The last great city founded was Mayapan, about A.D. 1000. It was sacked by local rivals some 450 years later. Within another century Cortes and his Spaniards appeared. Their conquest of the Maya lands was difficult and protracted, for the Maya were degenerate but they were stubborn...