My favorite part of this week was watching the documentary Breaking the Mayan Code. It was full of cool facts that I didn’t
know about. I really didn’t know
much about the Mayans before I watched this documentary so it illuminated a lot
for me.
I had no idea the Mayans had books and that they were so beautifully
illustrated. I was so upset when I
saw all of those books being burned.
A huge part of a people’s culture was just destroyed right in front of
their eyes…shameful.
I also thought it was interesting that they valued time so much. The fact that they had specific “day
keepers” who could read the calendars and were in charges of keeping track of
important dates seemed so foreign.
I guess I’m just used to opening up my planner and having all the holidays
and everyone’s birthdays written out for me. My whole life is in that thing…
It’s also pretty amazing that there are 30 Mayan languages! How did they
keep all of that straight? I really liked when someone said (I don’t remember
who it was) said “words are the vehicles of history”. It is really true…words are how we are remembered. They’re what remain after we are
gone. It made me think of how
hundreds of years later we are required to take classes of Shakespeare…that’s
all we really have left of him.
This documentary showed just how much we can learn about a culture from
what they wrote, or drew.
Another thing I found to be really interesting was that glyphs could be
abstract and morph into each other or even be hidden behind each other. I feel like that could get really
confusing, but it made the Mayans even more mysterious.
I was also really intrigued by the calendar round that Fursterman
discovered. I think it is amazing
that they had technology like that back then. It also made perfect sense…maybe even more so than our
current calendar. Once they
discovered the day that marked the beginning of the calendar round and of time
in Mayan culture it seemed to unlock so many other parts of the code.
The importance of the invention of Xerox was also interesting. I didn’t realize how much simpler
making copies could make a process like deciphering glyphs. I thought it was really cool how they
could cut out the glyphs and arrange them on huge pieces of paper and put
together a whole story like a giant puzzle.
Finally I really liked that the Mayans put their books on altars. That’s where I think they deserve to be…well
the good ones anyway.
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