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October 2, 2006
Part II: Asking the Wrong Questions
Eyes Wide Shut:
Exploring Solutions Past
Anabel Ford
MesoAmerican Research Center
University of California, Santa Barbara
22 min. (slideshow requires QCShow Player)
Audio only (mp3 format)
View as a webpage (quicktime, real player) (notes)
Canceled checks will be to future historians and cultural anthropologists what the Dead Sea Scrolls and hieroglyphics are to us.
— Brent Staples
The highly regarded ecologist Robert H. MacArthur (1930-1972) wrote in the
preface to his book, Geographical Ecology, "To do science is to search for
repeated patterns, not simply to accumulate facts."
Indeed, analogy is the only way we understand anything, to say that A is
like
B, which is like C. But such analogies demand familiarity, and this
requirement of familiarity has occasionally gotten us off onto a wrong
foot, often
stifling understanding for centuries.
In this lecture, Anabel Ford presents her work on the Maya culture of
Mesoamerica as an allegorical warning on how not to approach a problem.
Ford presented this talk to an astrobiological conference. If there is any
attribute concerning the first discovery of a new form of life elsewhere
in the
galaxy that we are likely to be certain of, it's that we're going to be
quite
surprised by what we find, and we are quite likely to repeat our
mistakes. Our
attempts at imposing European models of human behavior on the Maya lead to
350 years of misunderstanding.
Europeans arrived in the Maya area of Mesoamerica with Cortez in 1525. The last
Maya
kingdom, Petén, wasn't fully conquered until 1697. That intervening
period, and
for almost the entire time since, has been filled with misunderstanding
of the
Maya culture. In 1652, Friar Landa knew that the Maya wrote and demanded to
know their alphabet, but the question itself formed the basis of a
fundamental
misunderstanding.
Maya writing isn't alphabetic, nor is it completely hieroglyphic. Rather it
is a form of rebus writing. It wasn't until the late 1950's, when Tatiana
Proskouriakoff first made significant contributions to the understanding
of Mayan
written language. She discovered that the writing on the monumental
stela and
other buildings was actually historical, dealing with the birth, accession,
and death dates for the Mayan rulers. Knowing the context of the
inscriptions,
Maya epigraphers were then capable for the first time to decipher the
hieroglyphs.
The second great misunderstanding associated with the invading Europeans
was
trying to impose the European idea of the pasture and the plow onto Maya
agriculture. The Maya had neither horses nor oxen, thus they didn't farm
with a
plow, nor would it have been as effective as the processes they evolved
if they
had. Instead they created a culture of being forest gardeners, and by doing
so, created a biodiversely rich, self-sustaining forest that the
Europeans found
impenetrable, messy, and irritating.
— Wirt Atmar
About the Speaker
Anabel Ford distinguished herself in Mesoamerican archaeology with research on the evolution of settlement and environment patterns, demystifying traditional views of the ancient Maya by examining the human aspects of this glamorous civilization. This forms the foundation for her current trajectory.
Using anthropology as a springboard for interdisciplinary research, she proposes ancient traditions yield contemporary solutions for the Maya forest of Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico. "Action Archaeology" is a term she has coined to describe how her focus on cultural ecology- the multifaceted relationships of humans and their environment - is being applied at El Pilar for the benefit of contemporary populations. The co-evolution of human societies and the environment bring particular relevance to the study of Maya prehistory. At El Pilar, Ford is advancing programs that will simulate "Maya Forest Gardens" as an alternative to resource-diminishing, slash-and-burn farming methods.
Research this past year began the examination of the detailed construction chronology of the major regional Maya center of El Pilar, the mapped extent of which spans across the contended international boundary between Belize and Guatemala. With funding from Fulbright-Hays, large scale excavations were launched in the southern public sector of El Pilar, revealing an extraordinarily long prehistory beginning before 600 BC and running through 1000 AD.
The El Pilar Archaeological Reserve for Maya Flora and Fauna, established this year with U.S. Agency for International Development funds in Belize promotes a model of cultural heritage stewardship, nature conservation, and community development relying on collaboration of local villagers, nations of the region, and international scholars from the global community to bring the vision to fruition. Progress is moving forward in Guatemala, where the reserve has been designated within the Biosfera Maya.
For more information, please see:
www.marc.ucsb.edu
www.espmaya.org
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