'Maya Conquistador' and the 2012 Calendar

Reading through the interesting book on Mayan history during the time of the Spanish conquest and colonization title 'Maya Conquistador' by Matthew Restall of Penn State U the author takes the approach of examining primary historical documents written during the era following first contact with the conquistadors in 1502 such as they remain today sometimes edited or redacted.

The reader does relearn of the close encounter of Cortes journeying near the Mayan headlands, of the interaction of Franciso de Montejo with the Mayans in war and piece, of Geronimo de Aguilar's seven years as slave after shipwreck and the establishment of Spanish Merida in 1542 at the Mayan city of Tiho. One learns the early political formations continuing from Mayan society transitioning into the colonial era, of outbreaks of smallpox and the gratuitous rude treatment of humans by humans in this era too.

These works predominantly of Mayan administrator-conversos to Christianity aware of an inevitability of Spanish colonization regard colonization from the point of view of the conquered.

The extent to which the Mayans joined the new world order is surprising. For a time some of their leaders even exploited the invasion to gain leverage over tribal rivals. They seem to have prospered in several respects, even while the common people that hadn't taken Spanish names experienced the cultural changes as brutal.

With Many American interpretations of the ancient Mayan calendar used as a reason for global doom, it is instructive to learn how readily many Mayans seem to have abandoned the old world order for the new. The election of 2012 in the United States could be the best approximate fulfillment of the Mayan calendar that runs out in 2012-for if the U.S.A. elect another voodoo economics policy supporting President the dollar may eventually collapse with 20 trillion dollars of public debt and the unemployment rate between 8 and 9 per cent.

This book's theme may seem prima facie revisionist yet it is not. Rather it s a scholar examination of the way the Maya regarded the appearance and arrival of the new, powerful tribe from across the ocean.

Mayan views of time as cyclical rather than linear were not unlike those of the Nahua. With cyclical time and recurrent events of social history one might explain eras with the resolution of the writer of ecclesiates that 'there is nothing new under the sun'. There is a time for every purpose under heaven.

Cyclical interpretations of social history have even been applied by western historians such as Spengler and Toynbee. We encounter cyclical views of history even on the larger canvas of theoretical physics and contemporary cosmology. Linear views of time-that it is a one-direction flow of entropy, are not contradicted by experience, yet Einstinean general relativity allows for time being constructed a priori in Space-Time I believe with a linear time as a subjective experience and cyclical time as a possible method of construction by intelligent design of techno-physics. In any case, the view of history as cyclical by the Mayans allowed them to place the period of Spanish conquest on the cycle of political changes.

This book has numerous interesting translations of documents of the 16th century some of which have survived through multi-cultural copying and edits. One learns of the books of Chilam Balam, of the Chontal Account from Acalan-Tixchel, reads the 'Pech Accounts from Chicxulub and Yaxkukul and more.

Published in 1998, this book is an interesting piece of history writing.