Description
The K’iche’ Maya creation story preserved within the sixteenth-century manuscript Popol Vuh describes the origin of the world and its people in a setting long assumed to be the Guatemalan central highlands. Now a scholar with a deep knowledge of Maya history shows that every one of these mythological events occurred at specific locations and that this landscape used to be the template for the Maya worldview.
Examining the principle Maya deities, Karen Bassie-Sweet links geographic features to gods and beliefs. She reconstructs key elements of the Popol Vuh to argue that the three volcanoes around Lake Atitlan were the three thunderbolt gods and that the lake used to be the center of the world. She also shows that the Maya view of the creation of humans is centered on corn and examines core beliefs in regards to the corn cycle to propose that the creation myth used to be established much in advance in Maya history than in the past supposed. Generously illustrated, Maya Sacred Geography and the Author Deities is a detailed ethnohistorical analysis of Maya religion, cosmology, and ritual practice that convincingly links mythology to the land. A comprehensive remedy of Maya religion, it provides an very important resource for scholars and will fascinate any reader captivated by these ancient beliefs.