The Mayan collapse is a big red exclamation point for us, because it shows us a parallel with the current climate crisis, he says mayologist Milan Kováč. “They shot all the animals, they didn’t care that they were losing land, they preferred politics over ecology and the pursuit of power, political and economic interests over the traditional balancing act they were close to.”
The scientist works at the Department of Comparative Religious Studies of the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University in Bratislava and is one of the leading mayologists.
Denník N talked to him about the life of the Mayans, about rare Mayan finds made by Slovak scientists, or about expeditions to the Guatemalan jungle.
The scientist explains why laser imaging in the Guatemalan jungle is compared to time standing still, how the Maya moved over huge distances, although they did not know the wheel, why all research on the Maya must be published first in Spanish, or how to work in a place where jaguars, pumas and poisonous snakes.
In the interview you will also read:
why Milan Kováč does not like comparisons to Indiana Jones; why the Maya were not followed by another culture that loosely built on what they had built; where did the idea come from that the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world; how to read the Mayan script.
In the movie Apocalypto director Mel Gibson portrayed the Mayan civilization as cruel and bloodthirsty. Is such an idea about the Maya correct or distorted?
Most of my Mayan colleagues hate the movie, but I like it because it was the first Hollywood feature film made in the Mayan language. I speak Mayan and I enjoyed the original language of the film.
Some things in it were shuffled around in different times – for example, wall paintings from the pre-classical period were shown in a post-classical context, and the Spaniards still came into all this. But at that time, the Mayans no longer built pyramids and lived in huts. The pyramids were broken. The film combined different Mayan periods into one whole, which upset many. On the other hand, there is the “poetic license” that allows such things to be done in films and other fiction.
As for cruelty and sacrifice, they captured it well in the film. Sacrifice was associated only with the Postclassic phase of Maya history, which was heavily influenced by Mexico. This is how the Mayans operated around the 11th to 14th centuries.
Apocalypto movie trailer. Source – AMBI Distribution/YouTube
What was the purpose of the blood sacrifice?
The Maya – like the Aztecs – believed that human blood contained a soul-like substance or energy that was directly linked to the sun. God was sacrificed because it was “food” for him. He was basically charged with energy thanks to the blood. It could be animal or human blood. However, the Mayans very often sacrificed their own blood. They pierced different parts of their bodies themselves. But they also sacrificed captives, where much more blood could flow.
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