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El mundo maya
s/t: Four and a Half Centuries of Conquest & Discovery among the Maya
With a British fondness for the colorful fringes of history & a peculiarly British ability to suggest a whole aura of events outside the actual narrative scope of a book, this traveling journalist of much more than reportorial gifts has written a fascinating, speculative & anecdotal sampler-summary of the history of the Maya. That is, what we know about them, & how we have come to know it, since they so tragically entered our historical record in the era of their own cultural decline. Paradoxically, the further forward we come into the present--the era of discovery & scholarship--the deeper our knowledge penetrates the classic Maya past & the more conjectural it becomes. Adamson, who has a fittingly metaphysical turn of mind for the task as well as an ironic sense of humor, links this paradox nicely to the Mayan obsession with time & makes it the structure of his book. His eccentric, abrupt, tangled & vivid style plunges one straight into the Conquest-era Maya world, which we know from Spanish accounts as well as from the Indian codices: a puritanical, fatalistic & sacramentally bloodthirsty society in which "the word for love was also the word for pain." In spite of a vestigial Empire condescension ("the half-bestial glare of neolithic man," the Indians' "great lack of ambition" & "chronic instability"), Adamson manages to reconstruct with equal empathy the reactions of Maya 1st encountering Europeans, those of the 19th century explorer "overwhelmed by the beauty, the stillness, & the sense of desolation" of the ruins, & the more scholarly excitement of deciphering the glyphs on ancient stelae. But his greatest pleasure (& the reader's) is in character vignettes, especially of those passionate, "dotty" 19th century amateurs in whom "recklessness & great curiosity often go together." His own searching, witty intelligence would have been at home with them.--Kirkus
With a British fondness for the colorful fringes of history & a peculiarly British ability to suggest a whole aura of events outside the actual narrative scope of a book, this traveling journalist of much more than reportorial gifts has written a fascinating, speculative & anecdotal sampler-summary of the history of the Maya. That is, what we know about them, & how we have come to know it, since they so tragically entered our historical record in the era of their own cultural decline. Paradoxically, the further forward we come into the present--the era of discovery & scholarship--the deeper our knowledge penetrates the classic Maya past & the more conjectural it becomes. Adamson, who has a fittingly metaphysical turn of mind for the task as well as an ironic sense of humor, links this paradox nicely to the Mayan obsession with time & makes it the structure of his book. His eccentric, abrupt, tangled & vivid style plunges one straight into the Conquest-era Maya world, which we know from Spanish accounts as well as from the Indian codices: a puritanical, fatalistic & sacramentally bloodthirsty society in which "the word for love was also the word for pain." In spite of a vestigial Empire condescension ("the half-bestial glare of neolithic man," the Indians' "great lack of ambition" & "chronic instability"), Adamson manages to reconstruct with equal empathy the reactions of Maya 1st encountering Europeans, those of the 19th century explorer "overwhelmed by the beauty, the stillness, & the sense of desolation" of the ruins, & the more scholarly excitement of deciphering the glyphs on ancient stelae. But his greatest pleasure (& the reader's) is in character vignettes, especially of those passionate, "dotty" 19th century amateurs in whom "recklessness & great curiosity often go together." His own searching, witty intelligence would have been at home with them.--Kirkus
- GenresHistory
270 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1975
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November 20, 2014 4 and a Half Centuries of Conquest & Discovery among the Maya
With a British fondness for the colorful fringes of history & a peculiarly British ability to suggest a whole aura of events outside the actual narrative scope of a book, this traveling journalist of much more than reportorial gifts has written a fascinating, speculative&anecdotal sampler-summary of of the Mayan hist. That is, what we know about them, & how we have come to know it, since they so tragically entered our historical, since they so tragically entered our historical record in the era of their own cultural decline. Paradoxically, the further forward we come into the present--the era of discovery & scholarship--the deeper our knowledge penetrates the classic Maya past & the more conjectural it becomes.
Adamson, who has a fittingly metaphysical turn of mind for the task as well as an ironic sense of humor, links this paradox nicely to the Mayan obsession with time & makes it the structure of his book. His eccentric, abrupt, tangled & vivid style plunges one straight into the Conquest-era Maya world, which we know from Spanish accounts as well as from the Indian codices: a puritanical, fatalistic & sacramentally bloodthirsty society in which "the word for love was also the word for pain." In spite of a vestigial Empire condescension ("the half-bestial glare of neolithic man," the Indians' "great lack of ambition" & "chronic instability"), Adamson manages to reconstruct with equal empathy the reactions of Maya 1st encountering Europeans, those of the 19th century explorer "overwhelmed by the beauty, the stillness, & the sense of desolation" of the ruins, & the more scholarly excitement of deciphering the glyphs on ancient stelae. But his greatest pleasure (& the reader's) is in character vignettes, especially of those passionate, "dotty" 19th century amateurs in whom "recklessness & great curiosity often go together." His own searching, witty intelligence would have been at home with them.--Kirkus (less)
Hardcover, 272 pages
With a British fondness for the colorful fringes of history & a peculiarly British ability to suggest a whole aura of events outside the actual narrative scope of a book, this traveling journalist of much more than reportorial gifts has written a fascinating, speculative&anecdotal sampler-summary of of the Mayan hist. That is, what we know about them, & how we have come to know it, since they so tragically entered our historical, since they so tragically entered our historical record in the era of their own cultural decline. Paradoxically, the further forward we come into the present--the era of discovery & scholarship--the deeper our knowledge penetrates the classic Maya past & the more conjectural it becomes.
Adamson, who has a fittingly metaphysical turn of mind for the task as well as an ironic sense of humor, links this paradox nicely to the Mayan obsession with time & makes it the structure of his book. His eccentric, abrupt, tangled & vivid style plunges one straight into the Conquest-era Maya world, which we know from Spanish accounts as well as from the Indian codices: a puritanical, fatalistic & sacramentally bloodthirsty society in which "the word for love was also the word for pain." In spite of a vestigial Empire condescension ("the half-bestial glare of neolithic man," the Indians' "great lack of ambition" & "chronic instability"), Adamson manages to reconstruct with equal empathy the reactions of Maya 1st encountering Europeans, those of the 19th century explorer "overwhelmed by the beauty, the stillness, & the sense of desolation" of the ruins, & the more scholarly excitement of deciphering the glyphs on ancient stelae. But his greatest pleasure (& the reader's) is in character vignettes, especially of those passionate, "dotty" 19th century amateurs in whom "recklessness & great curiosity often go together." His own searching, witty intelligence would have been at home with them.--Kirkus (less)
Hardcover, 272 pages
February 18, 2024
A mix of Mayan matters and Mayanist meanderings
If you’d like a serious, up-to-date book about the Mayas or their civilization, I suggest you get hold of A. Demarest’s “Ancient Maya”, a first rate study of what is known about that Central American people. Mr. Adamson was an excellent writer but he was a journalist who died at the age of 90 in 2017 after many exploits around the world. His experiences did not really prepare him for a book about archaeology and an old, partially-unknown culture in Yucatán and Guatemala. That’s why I would say that this book is mis-titled. The sub-title is “four and a half centuries of conquest and discovery among the Maya”. I would say that rather than that rather grandiose title, he should have referred to the various characters of men who investigated or told the world about the Maya. The chapters do contain some information about the Maya themselves, but the focus is more on the men who happened to deal with the Maya, dig up the remnants of their civilization, and explore the jungles that had long covered the ancient monuments. The author has a fine, dry British sense of humor and a knack for wandering off the path that he seems to set for himself, but that might not be enough if you would like to know more about the people behind all those ruins.
Some of the earlier chapters contain some dubious riffs on the Mayas and their culture, but I think this is excusable because Adamson wrote in the early 1970s when only the Maya system of date keeping had been figured out. A few years later, thanks to the Russian Yuri Knorosov, the whole writing system was revealed, opening the way to the deciphering of whatever was available.
A plus is that the confusing 19th century wars in Yucatán between the Mexican government and Maya rebels or between various sides in civil wars are brought to light better than I had previously ever found.
In nearly every chapter, the author focuses on a particular individual---Francisco Montejo the Spanish conqueror of the Maya, Bishop Diego de Landa, who burned all the Mayan documents he could find, “Count” Waldeck, a European teller of tall tales in the 19th century whose work encouraged interest in the Maya, but was something of a crackpot who insisted that elephants had featured in Maya life among other things. He was a bit vague about himself as well—by his count he died at the age of 109! If you read this book you’ll learn about a number of other characters who sought ruins and the “secrets of a lost civilization”, which wasn’t actually lost--a French explorer named Charney who wrote of see-through garments of the enticing local damsels (garments which no one else ever mentioned or seems to have seen), and A.P. Maudsley, a British gentleman-scholar whose wife also wrote about the region. It’s an entertaining read, but as I said at the start, it’s not a book from which you are going to get much solid information about the Maya.
If you’d like a serious, up-to-date book about the Mayas or their civilization, I suggest you get hold of A. Demarest’s “Ancient Maya”, a first rate study of what is known about that Central American people. Mr. Adamson was an excellent writer but he was a journalist who died at the age of 90 in 2017 after many exploits around the world. His experiences did not really prepare him for a book about archaeology and an old, partially-unknown culture in Yucatán and Guatemala. That’s why I would say that this book is mis-titled. The sub-title is “four and a half centuries of conquest and discovery among the Maya”. I would say that rather than that rather grandiose title, he should have referred to the various characters of men who investigated or told the world about the Maya. The chapters do contain some information about the Maya themselves, but the focus is more on the men who happened to deal with the Maya, dig up the remnants of their civilization, and explore the jungles that had long covered the ancient monuments. The author has a fine, dry British sense of humor and a knack for wandering off the path that he seems to set for himself, but that might not be enough if you would like to know more about the people behind all those ruins.
Some of the earlier chapters contain some dubious riffs on the Mayas and their culture, but I think this is excusable because Adamson wrote in the early 1970s when only the Maya system of date keeping had been figured out. A few years later, thanks to the Russian Yuri Knorosov, the whole writing system was revealed, opening the way to the deciphering of whatever was available.
A plus is that the confusing 19th century wars in Yucatán between the Mexican government and Maya rebels or between various sides in civil wars are brought to light better than I had previously ever found.
In nearly every chapter, the author focuses on a particular individual---Francisco Montejo the Spanish conqueror of the Maya, Bishop Diego de Landa, who burned all the Mayan documents he could find, “Count” Waldeck, a European teller of tall tales in the 19th century whose work encouraged interest in the Maya, but was something of a crackpot who insisted that elephants had featured in Maya life among other things. He was a bit vague about himself as well—by his count he died at the age of 109! If you read this book you’ll learn about a number of other characters who sought ruins and the “secrets of a lost civilization”, which wasn’t actually lost--a French explorer named Charney who wrote of see-through garments of the enticing local damsels (garments which no one else ever mentioned or seems to have seen), and A.P. Maudsley, a British gentleman-scholar whose wife also wrote about the region. It’s an entertaining read, but as I said at the start, it’s not a book from which you are going to get much solid information about the Maya.
June 26, 2017
Fast moving tour through history of the Maya
November 19, 2014
This book is written by a journalist, not a specialist. It gives an overview of what we know about the Maya and of the history of how we came to know it. Well written, it will serve as an introductory text.
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