Table of Contents

Maya: Secrets of their Ancient World at the ROM to April 19, 2012.

All images courtesy the ROM, and the INAH

While viewing what appears to me as one of the most important exhibits about the pre-Columbian society of the ancient Maya, I learned once again that the perception of beauty has no universal standard. While I enjoyed myself immensely, the person walking with me felt no empathy toward the images we had come to view. Halfway through the exhibit, she chose to leave, declaring them "ugly." Mhm! Her loss.

This exhibit of about 250 objects from various regions of Mexico and Central America we call Mesoamerica, where the Mayan culture thrived, is a truly remarkable achievement by the curators from the above three institutions. While to this day the Maya still have a strong presence in Mesoamerica, and while they have managed to preserve their language, albeit in various dialects, their flourishing culture began to crumble about 12-hundred years ago. This is long before the arrival of Columbus in the Americas and the Spanish conquistadors began to plunder their world.

While the Haida living on Canada's west coast had reached the Bronze Age by the time the first white men entered their world, the Maya essentially remained in the Stone Age, but that does not imply that they were an undeveloped people. Quite the opposite. They created some of the most remarkable ceramics come down to us, they had amazingly well organized cities, some of which exceeded the population of any known European city of the same period, their pyramids—which like those of the Egyptians turned out to be burial sites of important rulers—are marvels to behold. They had an understanding of mathematics that allowed them to created two kinds of calendars, the short count calendar of 260 days and the long one of 365, though the latter did not allow for the leap year. The Maya used them in combination in a cycle of days and months, based on the lunar and the solar systems. They had jewelry and tools made from obsidian, the latter being a glass-like byproduct of lava so hard and sharp that even today it is used for some very fine surgical tools and in the high tech industry.

The exhibit is divided into seven distinct thematic sections. These are The Maya World, The City, Cosmology and Ritual, Writing and Timekeeping, The Palace, Death, and finally Collapse and Survival. Each of these sections creates an environment for visitor that will immerse them in this ancient world through the artifacts, and an opportunity to touch some objects, which are actually copies of pieces displayed behind glass. There are audio-visual installations which were shot on location. These expand on some of the exhibition themes, including one that helps visitors to decipher Mayan glyphs, a form of writing that was only deciphered in the 20^th century.

Then, of course, there is that Mayan calendar that many believe predicts either the end of the world or an apocalyptic event on December 21, 2012. For those who feel fatalistic, they might want to attend a talk by astronomer and anthropologist Anthony Aveni on March 20 at 7:00 p.m. In the meantime, suffice it to say that NASA scientists have come to the conclusion that the end of the Mayan calendar does not imply the end of the world, only the end of the Mayan long-count period. Shaped like a wheel, once that wheel reaches the end, it will simply turn to the beginning again, just like our modern Gregorian calendar starts again every January 1.