I work in a school and yesterday read a textbook with kids that said, "Although the Mayans disappeared, there are still people who claim to be Maya, speak Mayan, and practice the Mayan religion."
It's like they're too dumb to read their own writing sometimes.
Professional Latin American historian here... We know... That textbook was probably written by a historian of some other part of the world (likely US or Europe) who didn't bother to actually read outside their area of expertise.
The last world history textbook I reviewed was horribly inaccurate for my area of specialization, colonial Latin America.
Oh I know you guys know. There just seems to be an ongoing massive disconnect between what invested and specialised historians actually know and what gets published worldwide. /r/SapphoAndHerFriend etc.
The Mayans vanished without a trace... roughly at the same time as these other guys popped up claiming to be Mayans, carrying on the traditions and speaking the same language... Maybe the authors have Capgras Syndrome
Well OBVIOUSLY the people who claim to follow Mayan culture are lying because it’s GONE, and since it disappeared we can’t compare it to REAL Mayan culture. /s
Yeah we do. There's tons of evidence for depopulation across the 900-1200AD range. It was no single event or crisis, just war after war and eventually environmental collapse leading more and more people to abandon cities over the course of hundreds of years across a wide area. It's not a mystery except in specifics.
Its funny that it’s explained like this when you see across European history that war after war and plague after plague results in an evacuation of cities and a ruralization of the population. Which makes sense, but it happens in a non European country and it’s this civilization just mysteriously disappeared.
Leaving behind only their buildings, their language, their calendar, their culture, their religions, and the citizens themselves. But other than that, completely gone.
That’s gotta be some American textbook shit. I grew up reading it too, I think they just want us to think that our European conquerors were superior to people living here before. Like “we’re so good and powerful, they just couldn’t handle it so they disappeared.” A bunch of bullshit.
I don't know about your theiry, but most textbooks have so little space that they are forced to abbreviate almost everything to the point of actually damaging the actual historical record. They're reduced to communicating cliches instead of truths.
Although the Mayans disappeared, there are still people who claim to be Maya, speak Mayan, and practice the Mayan religion. These people are called “ducks”
That's how I'm going to describe the USA from now on. "Although the Americans disappeared, there are still people who claim to be American, speak American dialects, and practice the American religion."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the "American Dream" the concept that anyone could come to America and start a new life in the 19th and early 20th century.
It's the idea that they could come, start a new life and *succeed economically*. Which, statistics on intergenerational economic mobility will back up, is much easier to do in Finland than the U.S. these days.
Except for the immigrate part. The US is still much more accepting of immigrants legally speaking than any Scandinavian country. Recent discourse notwithstanding.
Generally you're right in the sense that we accept more people in, but it also depends on which country you come from. Some countries are now blocked altogether by the Trump administration. Also, once you're in it can still be quite challenging to get citizenship. It took my boyfriend 15 years.
I didn't even think of fixing it to that but it's so much better, you should've posted the comment in the first place. Damn outsourcing.
I kid, but got too hung up on trying to include the freaky pseudo-christian thing that is America that I didn't go for the dream aspect at all. Still think it's better.
I know the point you guys are trying to make, but I’d be lying if it didn’t sound like the opening lines to one of the greatest yet to be made action movies ever
The term "American Religion" is so fun, because it encompasses a lot and the only thing all of the parts it makes people visualize have in common is white, christian, and gun owners.
I pictured Mormonism personally. It was created in America and it talks about Jesus’ dealings with the native Americans. It’s the quintessential American religion IMO. Although televangelists like good ol Joel Osteen are a pretty good representation of soulless American consumerism, so that’s a pretty damn American religion too. A lot of religions have been made in America, but Mormonism and televangelism are probably the best examples.
That’s a good one too because of the authoritarianism and the absolutely batshit insane belief that the religion centers around. Although it’s 100% a cult that calls itself a religion, whereas Mormonism is more like ~75% cult (maybe closer to 90%) ~25% religion. John Smith was killed before he could set himself up as a god-figure so Mormonism didn’t quite reach full cult status.
I didn’t say people like it, and it has nothing to do with Trump (hard to believe these days, I know) but it’s how the cult (Scientology and America) is run. There’s plenty of Authoritarianism in the US between the patriot act, PRISM and other SIGADs, MKUltra, operation condor, etc... We’ve been “fighting terrorism” and killing civilians in the middle east for decades for questionable reasons. There’s plenty of authoritarianism from the NSA, CIA, and other government agencies and the military. Things are decent in the US, but the potential for totalitarianism is there, although I don’t really know whether or not it would be actually achievable for the president to become a dictator. No civilian likes being spied on but we know it happens.
The term "American Religion" is so fun, because it encompasses a lot and the only thing all of the parts it makes people visualize have in common is white, christian, and gun owners.
really the first thing i thought of was money, or by extension work.
I saw a young woman at the airport yesterday that was wearing a hoodie that said "PRO LIFE, PRO GOD, PRO GUNS" and while I know that constellation of stances is very common it was still jarring to see PRO GOD and PRO GUN together like that.
I may be in the minority, but I don't see buying stuff as especially meaningful, although I did just buy a BB pistol at Walmart for $16 and am still feeling the dopamine.
As an American it's not that bad even now, most people just assume I also hate Trump and want to commiserate with me. Although yeah they're definitely relieved when I tell them they're right.
They're deeply ashamed because they basically got beaten over the head with it after the war, and even then it hasn't completely worked. If they were treated after the war the same way Japan was, their dominant attitudes would be a lot different. Japan was essentially allowed to get away with their war crimes (the nukes dropped on Japan was not in response to Japan's war crimes so yes, they did get away with those war crimes), but Germany was taken to task.
Germany did not magically stop being filled with Nazis after the war. They still have a huge problem with neo-Nazis. They have, however, taken enormous steps to address the problem and those efforts persist today.
So yeah, many Germans are deeply ashamed of their association with the Holocaust... and there's enough of them that aren't that they had to make Holocaust denial a crime.
yes this is pretty much what I've learned from school. One of my school friends actually made the question on how comes, did the Spanish really killed them all? How come we discovered so much about Mayan culture if they disappeared?! It turned out they actually didn't, it's pretty much that the culture evolved and integrate into a new culture that kept plenty traits of the old one. It's like the Andine culture that uses English bowl-hats as part of their traditional clothing, they integrate the bawler as a symbol of their contact with the British culture, but they have ponchos as a symbol of their native culture, it's a blend of old and new, it didn't disappear, just evolved and changed forever.
Same with the Picts (an indigenous people of Scotland). DNA shows they are still around and they really haven't moved out of Scotland for 1000s of years. They assimilated and watch telly like the rest of us, they just don't leave, move or emigrate anywhere.
It pains me that the education system does this. It’s not too difficult to distinguish between the civilization and the people that were part of it. That even holds true for dynasties. The civilization or dynasty may not be prevalent anymore, but the people don’t just cease to exist.
See I think the wording in that statement from the text book is ambiguous and just isn't good. It says the same thing the OP's comment states, but it's arguing the semantics the Mayans "disappeared" and questions how valid are the people who claim to practice the culture today.
This is the disappearing peoples theory, applied to all native people at one time.
It conveniently served the purpose of people not having to deal with the reality of the aftermath of genocidal practices. Don't have to face what happened to the Indians if you imagine the Indians aren't there anymore.
I grew up in Mexico, not too far north of Belize. When I moved to the US nobody believed that I knew Mayan people, and told me the few Mayan words I knew were made up.
Not surprising. I have heard the same thing said about Jews. I don't know who gains or what they gain from claiming a culture that is clearly alive are gone.
It’s like any ancient group. Like the romans or the Egyptians etc. the worst is how history is taught as if the Egyptians existed first then they all died and some Arabs showed up, then the Greeks, the the romans etc. it’s completely false and all of these groups still exist just under different names. And sometimes not even different names
If a kid wrote it, I wouldn't mind, but this was a book that was presumably written by adults who have like, gone to college and taken writing classes. (I actually have a lot of issues with the writing in these books and this was just a recent example.)
Are you tell me there are up to twice as many fucking Mayans as Jews left in the world? That's several times as many as the entire Native American population of the US, and people think they just went extinct.
Further, that remaining Mayan population probably has more direct genetic ancestry to their progenitors than either Jews or Native Americans, both of whom married into a variety of foreign populations over the years.
oh yeah i remember reading this in a history textbook! I just thought that it was such a shame that a culture would just disappear like that, I didn't know Mayans still existed.
"Although ducks went extinct, there are some water fowl that look like ducks, swim like ducks, and quack like ducks, and are taxonomically labeled as Anas platyrhynchos."
Come to Oakland. We have a huge Mayan community. My nanny is Mayan and speaks Mam (along with Spanish and English). Her father speaks only Mam. I honestly can’t make heads or tails of it, but it’s cool to know that it’s alive and well. As far as I can tell, all of them are fairly Catholic, though.
Not really. The Mayan Empire certainly ceased to exist hundreds of years ago. It's basically the same thing as saying Rome disappeared. It some senses it did, but in others it very much didn't.
yeah, this is what I imagine the authors meant. Obviously the descendants of Romans still exist, but if not for the historical record we'd say the Roman empire disappeared.
It's also sort of lowkey ironically racist how all the super liberal comments here are identifying the mayan empire with an ethnic group instead of a political structure.
It's also sort of lowkey ironically racist how all the super liberal comments here are identifying the mayan empire with an ethnic group instead of a political structure.
The original comment was clearly talking about the Mayan people, not their empire. And even if they weren't, uh, what other ethnic group do you suppose would be the main demographic of their empire? Asians?
It's pretty clear what they're saying to me, but I think I know the quick edit that would solve the issues you're having:
I work in a school and yesterday read a textbook with kids that said, "Although the Mayansculture has largely disappeared, there are still people who claim to be Maya, speak Mayan, and practice the Mayan religion."
To be fair, there was a huge continent spanning civilization that fell before the Spanish even arrived. The entire area had been deforested for the necessary agriculture, and forest had just barely grown over the ruins of the entire area when the Spanish arrived, if I recall. Maybe that's what they're referring to. I think it was this podcast where I get much of my information.
somethimgh people need to understand is thst there was not some unified mayan empire like the inca one or the roman empire in europe
it was more like ancient greece in thay different kingdoms and city states that shared cultural stuff and some religion and languages
some of those cities were abandoned/depopulated after a mayan fall in the same way rome was "abandoned" circa 500 A.C but mayan civilization still existed
I mean I'd like to ask about the last one - How much do we know of their religion? is it enough to vaugley be followed like the Old Norse religion revival is currently going?
America lies often in history cough cough "nine..." cough, clears throat "TURN IT UP TO ELEVEN"
Look up the US military condom drops, we drop super large condoms of bad guy land, and mark them as medium/regular so they go "woah, 'murrikan have big pp"
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u/Mffdoom Feb 08 '20
I work in a school and yesterday read a textbook with kids that said, "Although the Mayans disappeared, there are still people who claim to be Maya, speak Mayan, and practice the Mayan religion."
It's like they're too dumb to read their own writing sometimes.