Eighteen Rabbit Needed Al Gore
I've just returned from an adventure trip in Central America and am posting one of the entries from my Adventure Log below. If you'd like to have the complete set of adventures covering Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador, just email your request and I'll be happy to send it to you with my compliments.
Eighteen Rabbit Needed Al Gore
Zoom back 1200 or 1300 years. It’s really not so long ago. “Eighteen Rabbit” and other Mayan god-kings and ancestors, “Smoke Jaguar,” “Blue-Quetzal Macaw,” and all the other rulers were living in Copan, honoring the deities, keeping order, commissioning new structures to pay homage to their gods and ancestors. Their glyphs, only recently decoded by archaeologists, tell the story. Their astronomical calculations were, well, astronomically accurate.
But, didn’t somebody notice that they were cutting down too many trees? That the temperature in the fertile valley around Copan, stripped of cooling vegetation, was getting hotter? That population growth meant it was necessary to cultivate higher and higher on the surrounding slopes to produce enough maize to feed everybody?
The rulers were supposed to have a direct connection to the deities, but despite their prayers, droughts came, and when it finally rained, the denuded slopes eroded. So, the common people began to doubt their rulers’ powers. Disobedience grew.
“Maybe Eighteen Rabbits doesn’t have an in with the rain god after all. Maybe he’s sold us a bill of goods. This religion stuff could be a farce. Why are we paying taxes to this guy when he can’t even plead for rain and make it happen? Is our whole religious story a fantasy? What if there isn’t really any god, after all?”
The whole system fell apart, as has happened with so many religions before, and those that are yet to come. There aren’t any gods making sure everything turns out OK. There’s just us.
The Mayans didn’t wake up in time. Will we?
Sorry for the moralizing. Come to Copan, or any archaeological site and you have to wonder why we still don’t learn the lessons.
Any Mayan site will do. Copan, Chichen Itza, Tikal, Caracoal, they’re all alike. The peoples’ intellectual, cultural, and architectural achievements are amazing. We marvel at their advanced understanding, but we don’t understand.
Visit Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Or Borubudor in Java. Or, any Anasazi village in Arizona. Same story. We look, are intrigued, but fail to realize that all cultures are essentially the same. We come, we grow, and we believe that some god is running the show, we abdicate responsibility, and then we blow it, believing that the gods will make everything right.
We don’t have to keep repeating this cycle. What we do today makes a difference.
Eighteen Rabbit Needed Al Gore
Zoom back 1200 or 1300 years. It’s really not so long ago. “Eighteen Rabbit” and other Mayan god-kings and ancestors, “Smoke Jaguar,” “Blue-Quetzal Macaw,” and all the other rulers were living in Copan, honoring the deities, keeping order, commissioning new structures to pay homage to their gods and ancestors. Their glyphs, only recently decoded by archaeologists, tell the story. Their astronomical calculations were, well, astronomically accurate.
But, didn’t somebody notice that they were cutting down too many trees? That the temperature in the fertile valley around Copan, stripped of cooling vegetation, was getting hotter? That population growth meant it was necessary to cultivate higher and higher on the surrounding slopes to produce enough maize to feed everybody?
The rulers were supposed to have a direct connection to the deities, but despite their prayers, droughts came, and when it finally rained, the denuded slopes eroded. So, the common people began to doubt their rulers’ powers. Disobedience grew.
“Maybe Eighteen Rabbits doesn’t have an in with the rain god after all. Maybe he’s sold us a bill of goods. This religion stuff could be a farce. Why are we paying taxes to this guy when he can’t even plead for rain and make it happen? Is our whole religious story a fantasy? What if there isn’t really any god, after all?”
The whole system fell apart, as has happened with so many religions before, and those that are yet to come. There aren’t any gods making sure everything turns out OK. There’s just us.
The Mayans didn’t wake up in time. Will we?
Sorry for the moralizing. Come to Copan, or any archaeological site and you have to wonder why we still don’t learn the lessons.
Any Mayan site will do. Copan, Chichen Itza, Tikal, Caracoal, they’re all alike. The peoples’ intellectual, cultural, and architectural achievements are amazing. We marvel at their advanced understanding, but we don’t understand.
Visit Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Or Borubudor in Java. Or, any Anasazi village in Arizona. Same story. We look, are intrigued, but fail to realize that all cultures are essentially the same. We come, we grow, and we believe that some god is running the show, we abdicate responsibility, and then we blow it, believing that the gods will make everything right.
We don’t have to keep repeating this cycle. What we do today makes a difference.
posted by George Walther | 2:03 PM
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