Mayan Mariners

From their earliest prehistory until today, each generation of the Maya people has seen new ideas, change and the slow incursion of the modern world. They are themselves like their own sacred Ceiba tree thrusting upward for light while straining their roots down into the dry ruins of their past. The Jesuit priests were only partially successful in the transfiguration of the Maya to their Christian beliefs. There is still a deep-rooted mix of ancient culture within the Mayan adaptation of Christianity. Time has a way of adding complexity to the lives of these people and yet it is being woven with the skilled hand of the artist into the new cultural tapestry of the Maya still steeped in tradition. But these traditions are becoming harder to preserve as the world closes in on them, inevitably like the jungle has on their ancient cities. But time was their obsession and change has been their story. The Maya from their mysterious beginnings to their role in the modern world have been a dynamic presence. Retaining the anachronistic cultural traits, which persist, is for them like a watch ticking in the pocket of a dead man. 


The clanking of the anchor chain through the hawser pipe off San Pedro harbor back on Ambergris caye announced the conclusion of our Mayan adventure through the yet unspoiled wilds of Belize and Guatemala. As the Tropic Airlines propeller plane lumbered down the runway and lifted-off Ambergris bound for Corozal, I took with me an enormous appreciation for what the ancient Maya had accomplished. The complexity of their culture, their government, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, and civilization were all calling out to me from the “Place of Voices”. Voices to remind us and teach us these things that they had accomplished and built in the prehistoric jungles under a tropical sky in a land that time has somehow forgotten