Precious Few Films Attempt to Portray the Ancient Maya in a Sympathetic and Realistic Way.

The documentary-film industry has found the “Mysterious Maya”, “Mayan Calendar Prophecy” and the “2012 End of the World” to be fertile soil. There are so many of these films that I can’t keep track of them all… And most of them are sensational, opportunistic, garbage, merely jumping on the “Mayan Apocalypse” bandwagon.

However, Independent filmmaker David Lebrun is a delicious exception. He and his wife Amy Halpern spent eleven years making Breaking the Maya Code .

This is a feature-length, 2-hour visualization of Michael Coe’s book of the same name,

and Lebrun and Coe tell the incredibly complex, 150-year story of the decipherment of this mysterious script. (*see note below)

David selected me to do the graphics and the “hand-inserts”. This means my hands got to be in the film —carving stone, writing Japanese, painting Mayan glyphs in codices and on ceramic vessels, and writing Mayan in Colonial Spanish letters— but not my face. (The makeup people were able to make my hands look Maya, painting them brown and even shaving off my arm-hair! But, sadly, my mug was too Anglo.) I also drew all the Maya glyphs used in the film’s numerous graphics, and with my friend Paul Johnson, made all the codex-props used in the film. The largest number of these eventually were burned in the “Bonfire of Maní” scene, (in 1561 the Archbishop of Yucatan burned every Maya book he could lay his hands on… An act which his Maya flock, who had trustingly turned them over to him, “regretted to an amazing degree”.) To make these books as authentic as possible, we copied the texts and images from ancient Maya vases (thanks to the fabulous visual database of Justin Kerr actually printed them on bark-paper, so they would burn authentically. I have made props for a number of historic movies, from wax-seals for The Man in the Iron Mask,

to the “Pirate’s Code Book” in Pirates of the Caribbean 3,

but I have never had as much fun working for any other film as I did in Breaking the Maya Code.

PBS-NOVA edited Lebrun’s splendid film down to 53 minutes and called it “Cracking the Maya Code“.

Though not as in-depth as “BtMC”, it is a fine introduction to an understanding of the Mysterious Maya Glyphs. WGBH-Boston, who produce NOVA, also put up a great website where one can see and hear an ancient Maya stela read through from start to finish. They engaged me to render the text into stately English, and I in turn hired my friend, linguist Barbara MacLeod (a far better decipherer than I), to read it aloud in sonorous Mayan.
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(*below Note):
Now, I am happy to report, the majority of Maya texts can be read, and it turns out that they contain the same kind of wisdom we find written on monuments the world over. Now, don’t get me wrong; I don’t mean to belittle this information; what the ancient Greeks and Romans and Egyptians and Chinese carved for the Ages on stone is an extremely important source of historical and cultural information —notwithstanding their stunning calligraphy— but have you ever sat down to read through it? “Lord So-and-so nobly led his people/soldiers to prosperity/victory, in the year …”, or “Here lies Dame Such-and-such, a good wife and mother … “, or “This building’s cornerstone laid by So-and-so in the year …” Every culture has unique ways to invoke blessings from above, and the Maya erected statues or stelae (monumental carved slabs), bearing beautiful glyphs and images of their sacred kings performing ceremonies. And what they say, carefully documented with dated events and calculations of the intervals between events, is “Lord So-and-so dedicated this temple with a ‘scattering’ of his blood/ burning of incense/ donning the costume of the god Such-and-such. Six years and 136 days later he was married to Lady So-and-so, noble daughter of Lord Whatsisname of [neighboring kingdom]. Twelve years and 73 days later, So-and-so made sacred war on the people of ….” And so on in that rather tedious vein. Ho-hum. We have thousands of inscriptions in Maya glyphs, but none of them mention an “apocalypse” nor a “2012 End of the World” nor even an “End of the Mayan Calendar”.  (Frankly, I find the beautiful artistry of Maya calligraphy much more interesting than the events it so beautifully records.)

To repeat a technicality: The word “Maya” is properly used as a noun or an adjective: “Maya culture”, or “the ancient Maya” “Maya glyphs”. One ought *only* use “Mayan” when referring to language: “Landa was fluent in Mayan”, or “the Mayan word for ‘snake’ is the same as the word for ‘sky’: *Chan*.”

Another Good Documentary and a Couple Feature Films

National Geographic, once reknowned for the quality of its features about the Maya (and the ancient Americas in general), has lost a little of its Mesoamerican creds since George Stuart retired. One of the documentaries that I DO recommend, they made during his tenure: Dawn of the Maya (2004).

It was this film that introduced me to producer/director Graham Townsley.

He has been responsible for about 20 films (mostly on PBS’s “NOVA”), as producer, director, and/or writer. His work is intelligent and deeply respectful of the people he exhibits for us.
So I was deeply honored when he sought me out to contribute to his new series on the Maya predictions of 2012, and the 2012 phenomenon in general. It will consist of three parts, one about the ancient Maya calendar and their culture of prophecy, a second on the Maya Collapse of the tenth century, and a third on the modern New Age response to the so-called “Mayan 2012 Prophecies”. I believe in this one, you’ll get to see my face…

Among films-as-entertainment, a few spring to mind. In some James Bond film from my distant youth, the Bad Guy and his bevy of buxom, blank-faced women occupy a fanciful Maya ruin, where James battles crocodiles or water snakes… (Why didn’t the Baddie just throw him into a piranha pool?) More recently, the latest “National Treasure”

and “Indiana Jones” films construct quasi-Maya temples (replete with Chichen-Itza serpents, talud-tablero step-pyramids, and numerous teetering replicas of the Aztec Sun Stone.

The “Jones” film also features the gratuitous massacre of an entire population of Maya Temple guardians and destruction of a whole alien museum, just because George Lucas couldn’t figure out what to do with them by film’s end. (At least Nicholas Cage is able to save the Museum of Alexandria!) Finally, they put Maya inscriptions side-by-side with Ancient Chinese Shang-Dynasty characters, and locate Maya civilization in South Dakota and Peru respectively. I roll my eyes, heave a big sigh. … Ah, Hollywood!

Blood, Gore and Gibson

Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto has the unique distinction of being the only feature film whose dialogue is entirely in the lovely Mayan language.

This remarkable feature is offset, of course: Gibson portrays the Maya as either Noble Savages living “innocently” in the forest, violently impaling pigs and playing nasty practical jokes on their friends (in the first five minutes), or as Jaded Bloodthirsty City-Dwellers, drugged or diseased, performing mass sacrifices, and cowering at a solar eclipse (a scene Gibson borrowed from Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court). The ancient Maya may have had a stone-age technology, but they were excellent astronomers: they knew how to predict eclipses. He seems reluctant to credit them with anything good, even of having built a glorious city of towering pyramids. which he shows for about three seconds total…. In this, he is not unlike the first explorers, who gave credit for the Mayas’ Lost Cities to the Phoenicians, the Lost Tribes of Israel, the Egyptians, … anybody but those pesky Indians. The little bit of Maya costume and construction we are granted to see (most of the film is one long, tedious Run Through the Jungle) is mostly authentic, thanks to the guidance of Gibson’s adviser Archaeologist Richard Hansen, who has been excavating in the vast Mirador Basin in Northern Guatemala for several years now.

Animation is Getting Better than Live Action

The best recent films about the Maya are both cartoons: The Road to El Dorado is an unlikely animated musical, featuring the vocal skills of Elton John, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Rosie Perez, and Edward James Olmos.

The film is very loosely inspired by the true story of two Spanish castaways, captured by the Maya of Yucatan in 1511, some years before the arrival of Cortez, who in 1519 tried to enlist them in his Conquest. One, Gerónimo de Aguilar, a former priest, joined up. The other, Gonzalo Guerrero, remained with his adopted people, and eventually died fighting the Conquistadors. (Even more unlikely, the film has a happy ending: The jovial citizens of El Dorado are spared their own World End, and the castaways leave the city with their sexy sidekick Chel, played by Rosie Perez. The three lose the gold, but save their self-respect.)

King Tarabak of El Dorado is modeled after the so-called “Fat Cacique”, a Classic ruler of “The Ik’ Site” in northern Guatemala, whose workshops produced dozens of vases painted with distinctive pink glyphs …and featuring a distinctively portly ruler.

These vases were all brought to light by “tomb raiders” like Lara Croft.) Temples, costume, haircuts, glyphs, the Maya ballgame, even the spears, sandals and other details are pretty correct. This accuracy is thanks to archaeologist John Pohl, adviser to the film, who did his best to keep the film honest. Alas, the big fish and the golden-walled pyramids are fantasy, but at least the architecture is right.

It occurs to me that the trope of the Hidden City is also based loosely on history: Conquistadors didn’t bother to invade the Maya in the central Peten jungle of Guatemala for 250 years; it was not until 1697 that they captured the kingdom of Tayasal. Tayasal is the modern Flores, the Maya jungle city into which tourists fly on their way to Tikal. Even today the area is heavily forested, one of the largest patches of rainforest on the continent. Like the Maya of El Dorado, Tayasal’s isolation delayed the End of their World for centuries.

The second cartoon is a short called Kichwa, made apparently by film students at the French École Supérieure des Métiers Artistiques.

Kichwa by Esma-Movie
This French school is pretty prolific, producing dozens of shorts that are charming and technically excellent. Kichwa features time travelers and a Maya civilization, placed, like the City of the Crystal Skulls, in Peru. If one can ignore that jarring error, the kids got the visuals pretty well, and the story is rather fun.

Having written these four at one sitting, I expect I have neglected a Maya-themed film or two. There are rumors of other 2012 end-of-the-world films coming soon to a multiplex near you.

Looking at ancient Maya glyphs, we find some evidence, but it ain’t much.

Very few of the books and websites about the “Mayan Predictions of 2012″  admit this.  We archaeologists and decipherers have analyzed thousands of ancient inscriptions in Mayan.  Most of the carved stone monuments —the most prominent surviving glyph texts— as well as glyphs on painted vases, carry dates in the Maya calendar.  (Though most writers prefer to say “Mayan calendar”, this term is technically incorrect. See below.)

Glyphs painted on Kerr Vase 1398, beginning with a very ancient date. This famous vase portrays the mythical battle between God L (Tobacco) and the Lunar Rabbit allied with the Sun God. Though it contains nothing about the end of the world in 2012, it does give us precise dates of this ancient confrontation: tens of thousands of years ago, before the beginning of any known or posited Maya calendar cycle.

The Mayan calendar glyphs which start this text are precisely the same ancient date as the vase shown at left.

In fact, there are so many Calendar dates and time-intervals in their inscriptions, that some glyph scholars believed that the ancient Maya, uniquely, worshipped Time itself.  The fact that the calendar glyphs were the only glyphs to be deciphered, for most of the 20th century, didn’t help. Then, between 1960 and 1980, an avalanche of decipherments revealed that the ancient Maya were simply interested in stating precisely when things happened. The rest of their “mysterious” glyphs were concerned with royal life, conquests, dedications … the same things we carve in stone.

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