Wednesday, January 10, 2007

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Maya News Updates 2007, No. 3: Apocalypto - Declared a Racist Movie
Today, January 10, 2007, the online edition of the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre posted a short report on the most recent "rating" of the Mel Gibson movie "Apocalypto," which had its world premiere December 8, 2006. This particular "rating" stems from a group of dedicated academics and functionaries working for and with the many Maya people in Guatemala (edited by MNU):
Califican de racista película Apocalypto: Muestra escenas que distorsionan realidad de los mayas. La película Apocalypto, un relato de aventura en el ocaso de la cultura maya, debe observarse con ojos críticos y no se debe creer en las distorsiones que hicieron los cineastas, afirmaron académicos y funcionarios que trabajan en torno de los pueblos indígenas.
“Los mayas han hecho aportes a la ciencia y a la cultura, y en ningún momento fueron salvajes e ignorantes”, expresó Andrés Cholotío, del Consejo Nacional de Educación Maya, respecto de ciertas escenas de la producción. Agregó que la película deja un mensaje de discriminación y racismo, lo que debe ser rechazado por los guatemaltecos.
Anabella Giracca, directora de Edumaya, de la Universidad Rafael Landívar, aclaró que no ha visto la cinta, pero que sería lamentable que la trama se desarrolle en las interpretaciones sobre la historia o estereotipos que hicieron los cineastas.
Ricardo Cajas, comisionado presidencial contra el Racismo y la Discriminación, destacó que luego de haberla visto no le queda duda de que se trata de un filme “racista y sin apego a la realidad”.
Apocalypto, dirigida por el estadounidense Mel Gibson, llegará tentativamente a la gran pantalla el 9 de marzo próximo.
Piden explicaciones. Una coordinadora que aglutina a 21 entidades que trabajan en torno de los pueblos indígenas mostró al Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte su preocupación por la aparición de este filme. Cajas recordó con resquemor una escena en la que los habitantes temen el fin de la cultura debido a un eclipse. “¿Cómo va a ser posible eso? Los mayas tenían estudios astronómicos muy precisos y hasta sabían cuándo ocurrirían los eclipses”, resaltó.
Opiniones. Mel Gibson: “No hay distorsión”. El cineasta Mel Gibson dijo respecto de su obra: “No desvirtuamos la tradición maya; incluso tuve que leer mucho para construirla. El guión está basado en el Popol Vuh y es una historia de acción y aventura, con la innovación de que se desenvuelve en idioma yucateco”. El ganador de cuatro premios Oscar por Braveheart también dirigió La pasión de Cristo.
León Aguilera: “Es sólo una película”. El cinéfilo León Aguilera opinó: “La cinta está plagada de anacronismos (situaciones u objetos que no se corresponden con su época) y errores histórico-culturales, pero al final de cuentas es sólo una película de entretenimiento y hay que verla como tal”. Agregó: “El filme es rico en producción, vestuario y maquillaje, así como la belleza de los protagonistas”.
A large number of reviews posted just after the world premiere can be found on the web, just using "apocalypto review" as a search option in Google (or your favorite search engine). I have not seen the movie yet, as the Dutch premiere is tomorrow, January 11, 2007. I hope to see the movie next weekend and after that I will provide you with my personal view (if that is what you are waiting for). The original version of the Prensa Libre report can be found at:
http://www.prensalibre.com/pl/2007/enero/10/160416.html

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

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Maya News Updates 2007, No. 2: Maya Collapse - Linked to Monsoon Changes
On January 3, 2007, the scholarly magazine Nature (Vol. 445: 74-77) published an article, written by Yancheva G. et al., in which the collapse of the Tang dynasty in China as well as the collapse of the Maya is linked to monsoon changes. This article is summarized online as follows:
"The Asian–Australian monsoon is an important component of the Earth's climate system that influences the societal and economic activity of roughly half the world's population. The past strength of the rain-bearing East Asian summer monsoon can be reconstructed with archives such as cave deposits, but the winter monsoon has no such signature in the hydrological cycle and has thus proved difficult to reconstruct. Here we present high-resolution records of the magnetic properties and the titanium content of the sediments of Lake Huguang Maar in coastal southeast China over the past 16,000 years, which we use as proxies for the strength of the winter monsoon winds. We find evidence for stronger winter monsoon winds before the Bølling–Allerød warming, during the Younger Dryas episode and during the middle and late Holocene, when cave stalagmites suggest weaker summer monsoons. We conclude that this anticorrelation is best explained by migrations in the intertropical convergence zone. Similar migrations of the intertropical convergence zone have been observed in Central America for the period ad 700 to 900, suggesting global climatic changes at that time. From the coincidence in timing, we suggest that these migrations in the tropical rain belt could have contributed to the declines of both the Tang dynasty in China and the Classic Maya in Central America."
Here follows the online Nature report on this particular article (edited by MNU):
Did worldwide drought wipe out ancient cultures? Monsoon records link demise of the Tang in China and Maya in Mexico. They lived in resplendence, half a world apart, before meeting their respective downfalls within decades of one another. Now a new theory suggests that the decline of the Tang Dynasty in China and that of the Mayan civilization in Mexico may both have been due to the same worldwide drought.

Lake Huguang Maar. Sediments collected from Lake Huguang Maar in southeastern China suggest that Asian summer monsoon rains were weaker during the eighth and ninth centuries AD, the time during which the Tang Dynasty faded from glory. And intriguingly, the same pattern is seen in sediments from Cariaco basin off the Venezuelan coast, suggesting that a similar drought might have been occurring in nearby Mexico. The events may both be the result of a southward shift in rain patterns that deprived the entire northern tropics of summer rains, suggest researchers led by Gerald Haug of Germany's National Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam. The hardship caused by this drought could have been a key factor in the declines of the two cultures, they suggest. At the moment, it is little more than a theory, admits Haug's colleague Larry Peterson, of the University of Miami, Florida. "The records are pretty intriguing," he says. "But it's really just a correlation in time."

Rain, rain, gone away. The parallels are nevertheless notable. The Tang Dynasty, regarded as a high point in Chinese civilization, began to wane in the mid-700s and ultimately fell in AD 907 after a string of rebellions. Similarly, the Maya, who produced the earliest known written records in the Americas, numbered some 15 million in the middle of the eighth century, but had declined by three-quarters by AD 830, and left the last of their calendrical carvings in AD 909. Failing summer rains might have contributed to these precipitous declines, Peterson suggests. "The Mayan royalty were viewed as gods and were depended on to summon the rains," he says. Besides harming crops, the lack of rain might have damaged the leaders' credibility, he suggests. The researchers estimated the strength of summer rains in China by studying deposits of titanium minerals in Lake Huguang Maar. These sediments are carried there by winter monsoon winds; stronger winter winds have been previously linked to weaker summer rains. The Tang decline coincides with a period of strong winds, and so probably also weak rains, they report in Nature. The team has previously found the same pattern in Venezuelan sediments.

Periodic Events and Band of Tropical Rain. The climate change was probably linked to a wholesale shift in the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), a band of heavy tropical rain that also moves in response to effects such as the periodic El Niño events, which likewise weaken monsoon rains in Southeast Asia. Haug and his colleagues suspect that these rain patterns migrated southward en masse, reducing average summer rainfall throughout the northern tropics for some two centuries. Such a shift is certainly possible, although the exact reasons for why it may have moved then are unclear, and hard evidence is lacking.

Stressed out. The timing of the declines and the climate changes make for a neat coincidence, but other factors cannot be ruled out, says Patrick Culbert, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and an expert on Mayan history. "The Maya overpopulated and overexploited their environment, and they died," he argues. "The population had been growing exponentially for 2,000 years." Drought was unlikely to have been the only factor in the cultures' declines, Peterson admits. The Tang people, for instance, were hit hard by a military defeat by the Arab army in AD 751, which would probably have sowed unrest and rebellion. "I'm not saying they were keeling over from lack of water, but if the cultures were maxed out in terms of their environmental resources, it could have been a trigger," Peterson says (report written by Michael Hopkin, Nature.com).
The original report at Nature.com can be found at:
Here follows the January 4, 2007, report as published online by New Scientist (edited by MNU):

Collapse of civilisations linked to monsoon changes. The downfall of one of the greatest Chinese dynasties may have been catalysed by severe changes in climate. The same climate changes may have simultaneously led to the end of the Maya civilisation depicted in Mel Gibson's new film Apocalypto. So says Gerald Haug of the GeoForschungsZentrum in Germany and colleagues, who studied geological records of monsoons over the past 16,000 years. They have found a startling correlation between climate extremes and the fall of two great civilisations: the Tang dynasty in China and the Maya of South America (sic). “It blew me away," says Haug.
Weak Rains. The records show that around the time that these civilizations went into decline, they experienced stronger than average winds in the winter and weaker summer monsoon rains. These weak rains would have reduced crop yields. Records of monsoons beyond the last 50 years are difficult to obtain. Looking for signs of monsoon trends in geological records going back thousands of years can help solve this problem. In China, stalagmites provide the best available historical record of summer monsoon rains, says Haug, as more rain increases the amount of water dripping down from the roofs of caves. But until now, there has been no reliable estimate of winter winds.

Iron and titanium. Haug and his colleagues solved this problem by studying the sediments deposited at the bottom of Lake Hugauang Maar in southeastern China. The sediments are made up primarily of material deposited there by winter monsoon winds because the catchment area is small, meaning very few streams bring in sediments from other sources. As a result, the sediments provide an accurate historical record of the strength of the winter monsoon winds. The researchers looked at iron and titanium levels in a sediment core that was extracted from the lake floor. The oxidation level of the iron told them how much oxygen was present in the lake waters when the sediments were deposited, and therefore how much wind was stirring up the lake surface. Titanium in particles is non-reactive and the quantities accumulated in the layers of sediment provided another measure of wind strength.

Sediment Data. When they compared the 16,000 years represented by the mud core, the researchers found that years of strong winter winds corresponded very closely to strong summer rains and vice versa. "Our sediment data provides a mirror image to summer records in stalagmites," explains Haug. The researchers believe the only coherent explanation for the summer and winter trends and is a shift in the position of a band of low-pressure that girdles the Earth, known as the inter-tropical convergence zone, or ITCZ. They found that when warm temperatures in the Northern hemisphere indicated a northward shift of the ITCZ, summer monsoon rains were strong and winter monsoon winds were weak. "It seems possible that major shifts in ITCZ catalysed simultaneous events in civilisations on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean," conclude the researchers in a paper in Nature.

Catalysing effect. Previously, Haug had shown that the repetitive periods of decline of the Mayan civilisation in Latin America corresponded to dry periods on that continent. The Maya civilisation and Tang dynasty were contemporary and there is a striking similarity between the Chinese and Latin American climate data. These include a general shift towards a drier climate around AD 750 and three very dry periods between then and AD 910, the last of which coincides with both the Maya and the Tang collapse.

Future Climate Predictions. "I am not a historian," cautions Haug, but "there is a coincidence at least". He says his work is part of "a growing piece of evidence that climate has catalysing effect on societies". Analysing historical monsoon records can be extremely useful in making future climate predictions. For instance, some researchers suggest that strong summer monsoon rains are preceded by weak winter winds. If true, this theory could prove extremely useful in preparing agriculture for a difficult year ahead (NewScientist.com news service, article written by Catherine Brahic. Journal reference: Nature, Vol. 445, page 74).
The original article in New Scientist can be found at:
On January 8, 2007, the online edition of the Russian newspaper Pravda reported on the same article in Nature. Here is their report (edited by MNU):
Climate change causes collapse of civilisations. New research suggests that climate change led to the collapse of the most splendid imperial dynasty in China’s history and to the extinction of the Maya civilisation in Central America more than 1,000 years ago. There has never been a satisfactory explanation for the decline and fall of the Tang emperors, whose era is viewed as a highpoint of Chinese civilisation, while the disappearance of the Maya world perplexes scholars. Now a team of scientists has found evidence that a shift in monsoons led to drought and famine in the final century of Tang power. The weather pattern may also have spelt doom for the Maya in faraway Mexico at about the same time, they say.

Martial Arts and Sacrifices. Both ruling hierarchies at the start of the 10th century were victims of poor rainfall and starvation among their peoples when harvests failed. The martial arts honed during the fall of the Tang still provide a staple of modern Chinese epic films and video games, while Mel Gibson, the actor-director, has just released Apocalypto, a blood-drenched film set in the last days of the Maya. The Maya practised human sacrifices to please the gods of rain and Chinese soothsayers were employed by the court to divine the seasons, yet neither could have predicted the slow-motion catastrophe resulting from the changing weather.

Cause and Effect. The cause was to be found in the migration of a band of heavy tropical rain, which moves in response to phenomena such as El Niño (a weather effect created by huge surface temperature fluctuations in tropical eastern Pacific waters), the scientists argued in an article in Nature last week. The effect was to end two golden ages which existed in ignorance of one another on opposite sides of the world.

Climate Extremes. The scientific team, led by Gerald Haug of Germany’s national geosciences research centre, found that a massive movement in tropical rainfall took place in early 900 both in China and in Central America, the Sunday Times reports. They have found a startling correlation between climate extremes and the fall of two great civilisations: the Tang dynasty in China and the Maya of South America (sic, again). “It blew me away," says Haug. The records show that around the time that these civilizations went into decline, they experienced stronger than average winds in the winter and weaker summer monsoon rains. These weak rains would have reduced crop yields.

Tracking Monsoons. Records of monsoons beyond the last 50 years are difficult to obtain. Looking for signs of monsoon trends in geological records going back thousands of years can help solve this problem. In China, stalagmites provide the best available historical record of summer monsoon rains, says Haug, as more rain increases the amount of water dripping down from the roofs of caves. But until now, there has been no reliable estimate of winter winds. Haug and his colleagues solved this problem by studying the sediments deposited at the bottom of Lake Hugauang Maar in southeastern China. The sediments are made up primarily of material deposited there by winter monsoon winds because the catchment area is small, meaning very few streams bring in sediments from other sources. As a result, the sediments provide an accurate historical record of the strength of the winter monsoon winds.

Iron and Titanium. The researchers looked at iron and titanium levels in a sediment core that was extracted from the lake floor. The oxidation level of the iron told them how much oxygen was present in the lake waters when the sediments were deposited, and therefore how much wind was stirring up the lake surface. Titanium in particles is non-reactive and the quantities accumulated in the layers of sediment provided another measure of wind strength, the New Scientist reports (see above). When they compared the 16,000 years represented by the mud core, the researchers found that years of strong winter winds corresponded very closely to strong summer rains and vice versa. "Our sediment data provides a mirror image to summer records in stalagmites," explains Haug.

Band of Low Pressure. The researchers believe the only coherent explanation for the summer and winter trends and is a shift in the position of a band of low-pressure that girdles the Earth, known as the inter-tropical convergence zone, or ITCZ. They found that when warm temperatures in the Northern hemisphere indicated a northward shift of the ITCZ, summer monsoon rains were strong and winter monsoon winds were weak. "It seems possible that major shifts in ITCZ catalysed simultaneous events in civilisations on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean," conclude the researchers in a paper in Nature (prepared by Alexander Timoshik of Pravda.ru).
The original article in Pravda can be found at:

Sunday, January 07, 2007

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Maya News Updates 2007, No. 1: Teya, Yucatan - New Maya Settlement Discovered
Yesterday, January 6, 2007, the online edition of the Diario de Yucatan reported on the archaeological discoveries recently made in the vicinity of Teya, Yucatan (edited by MNU):
Descubren un nuevo asentamiento maya: Hallazgo en trabajos de ampliación en la vía Mérida-Cancún. La construcción de pasos a desnivel y distribuidores viales en las principales carreteras que comunican a Mérida con otros puntos de Yucatán no sólo suponen un logro más de la ingeniería yucateca y avances en las comunicaciones terrestres, sino que también permite explorar, rescatar y consolidar vestigios arqueológicos. Como parte del proceso de desarrollo carretero, la representación local de la Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SCT) dispuso a principios del año 2006 explorar el área de construcción del distribuidor vial de Teya, ubicado a dos kilómetros al oriente de esta hacienda, sobre la carretera Mérida-Cancún.

Teya, Yucatan

El arqueólogo Carlos Peraza Lope, quien encabezó a un grupo de investigadores, dio a conocer al Diario que durante estos trabajos se hallaron vestigios de un asentamiento habitacional maya prehispánico, que se distingue por la conservación de los basamentos y cimentaciones de casas, entre otros detalles. Registrado en el Atlas Arqueológico de Yucatán como 16Qd (7): 221 Kanasín, este asentamiento de gran tamaño, en donde se lograron consolidar 35 estructuras, no fue el centro de un núcleo poblacional: a 500 metros monte adentro hay un conjunto de basamentos de mayor tamaño. Se cree que alcanzó su máximo esplendor en el Clásico Tardío (600-900 d. C.) (report written by Emanuel Rincón Becerra).
The same edition of Diario de Yucatan provides the following two extensions on the above report, with emphasis on some of the important finds (edited by MNU):
Piezas arqueológicas arrojarán más luz de la civilización maya. Durante los trabajos de construcción del distribuidor vial de Teya en la carretera Mérida-Cancún se encontraron también basamentos rectangulares de gran tamaño que albergaron construcciones de hasta cuatro habitaciones donde se hallaron varias cistas (caja formada con piedras talladas lisas, a manera de sarcófago, tapada con lajas planas) vacías y entierros. De igual forma llama la atención la presencia de numerosos basamentos helicoidales perfectamente marcados e incluso con los arranques de los pórticos, que revelan la forma tradicional de la casa maya ovalada. Las construcciones fueron de materiales perecederos, por ello sólo se conserva los cimientos. La presencia de metates se relaciona con una comunidad que preparaba sus alimentos ahí mismo, explica el arqueólogo Carlos Peraza Lope. Hay de diversos tamaños y profundidades, pero, en términos generales, están en puntos similares en todas las construcciones: siempre afuera y ligeramente en un rincón. Vasijas, ollas, cuchillos de pedernal, cajetes, veneneras y vasos son algunos de los vestigios que se encontraron en el área, y que refuerzan la tesis de que fue un núcleo poblacional muy grande. Las estructuras lucen actualmente claras y precisas. Desde los niveles altos del distribuidor vial llaman poderosamente la atención; sin embargo, por ubicarse en “zonas neurálgicas” de esa parte de la nueva carretera es imposible detenerse para observarlos en toda su magnificencia. La Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes dispuso el mantenimiento periódico de las estructuras para que la hierba y el monte no cubran los basamentos y se pierda el trabajo de consolidación. También se desarrollaría un proyecto de integración de imagen urbana, para que las estructuras tengan iluminación y jardineras (written by Emanuel Rincón Becerra).
Location of Hacienda Teya
Hallan estructuras y metates cerca de la vía Mérida-Cancún. “La Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SCT) tiene por norma solicitar a las autoridades del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) el estudio arqueológico de zonas donde habrá cambios sustanciales en la red carretera”, comenta el arqueólogo Carlos Peraza Lope. En este caso se trata de la construcción de un distribuidor vial relativamente cercano a la hacienda Teya que genera un entronque con la vía a Chetumal. “En enero de 2006 se comenzó la exploración, que finalizó en febrero. En julio empezaron los trabajos de campo”, añade el especialista, quien encabezó las labores. “La existencia del asentamiento maya no era desconocida: hay un registro previo en el Atlas de Sitios Arqueológicos”, apunta.
“La geografía yucateca está llena de asentamientos prehispánicos que, desgraciadamente, no pueden ser explorados, estudiados y consolidados a fondo por falta de recursos. Cuando se cuenta con el apoyo de una dependencia, entonces se puede explorar, obtener información, rescatar y consolidar un espacio determinado”, comenta el investigador. “Al trabajar coordinadamente con la SCT logramos establecer que el distribuidor vial pasaba exactamente entre los vestigios de una zona habitacional prehispánica, de modo que exploramos los espacios que se verían afectados directamente, así como los que no representaban un problema para la obra carretera”, prosigue. “El trabajo de gabinete arrojó la presencia de 35 estructuras de diversos tamaños, formas y conceptos arquitectónicos, lo que sumado a 30 metates nos hace suponer que se trató de un asentamiento humano concurrido. “La mayor parte de las estructuras intervenidas se ubican al costado sur de la carretera Mérida-Cancún. Dos conjuntos están dentro de los “pétalos” sureste y suroeste del “trébol” que conforma el paso a desnivel, y un tercer conjunto, en el ramal suroeste del distribuidor (written by Emanuel Rincón Becerra).