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It was discussed as one of the few Mayan sacred texts that survived the burning of books by Christian missionaries, containing their creation story of humans made from maize, dough, and blood.
There were a couple of sacred texts that survived, as we'll see later.
— Episode: The Maya Civilization
Episode: The Maya Civilization
It was discussed as one of the few Mayan sacred texts that survived the burning of books by Christian missionaries, containing their creation story of humans made from maize, dough, and blood.
There were a couple of sacred texts that survived, as we'll see later.
A lot of their written history was burned by Christian missionaries who said, you don't need that stuff anymore. You're going to be like us.
And a couple of them, the Popol Vuh and the Chilam Balam had these creation stories wherein there was a god of wind and sky called Huracan, hurricane, sound familiar?
And there was a ceiba tree planted on the earth to create space between the earth and sky for people and animals and plants and things to grow.
And humans came third after the plants and animals.
But in the text, it said that they were made out of mud, sound familiar?
And they could speak but could not think or move.
It sounds like a lot of modern day Americans.
Yeah, all they could say is, please kill me.
So the god said, no, that's not good. So they destroyed them with water.
Then they tried again and created a man from wood and woman from reeds.
And they were sort of like functional humans evidently, but were immortal and didn't have souls.
Zombies.
So the god said, well, that's no good.
Yeah, they got him with boiling water, right?
Yeah, that'll do if you're made of...
Well, I guess I thought if they were made of mud, that would do.
But I guess wood and reeds boiling water would, in their minds, it would kill them.
It sounds more torturous, but it didn't kill all of them because some people survived.
Some of the reed and wood people turned into monkeys.
Also very interesting.
Yes.
In terms of like evolutionary theory.
And then finally, they got it right in their minds.
They created what we think of modern humans in their creation story from maize, dough, and their own blood.
But then the gods thought, hey, they're a little too scary smart.
So they might threaten us one day, but we won't destroy them.
We will just cloud their minds and their eyes and make them not as smart.
Right.
And that's their creation story.
Yeah, it's pretty interesting.
