Mayan-expert-with-art.jpg

George Stuart

By JOHN NORTH

WEAVERVILLE — George Stuart, a world-renowned Mayan archaeologist and scholar, presented a talk titled “Mayan Culture: Then and Now” in which he gave an overview of Mayan architecture and culture on May 13 at the Weaverville Library.

A standing-room-only crowd of about 60 people jammed into the library’s conference room to see and hear Stuart’s 45-minute slide presentation, followed by a show-and-tell of various Mayan items he brought with him. Afterward, Stuart fielded questions for 25 minutes.

Stuart, a Barnardsville resident, recently was featured on the PBS series Nova’s documentary “Cracking the Maya Code.” His talk was sponsored by Friends of the Weaverville Library. His is founder and president of the Center for Maya Research.

He has worked in the Maya ruins since 1958 and spent 38 years at National Geographic magazine.
Many of the slides he showed were of Mayan gods or of famous cities, such as Tikal, El Peton, Guatemala. He noted that Tikal, circa 400-850 A.D., boasted a population of about 120,000 people, making it the largest of the ancient ruined cities of the Maya civilization. His talk’s focus was mainly on the Yucatan section of central Mexico — an area about half the size of Texas.

Tikal was considered one of the major cultural and population centers of the Maya civilization, Stuart noted. It once dominated the Maya region politically, economically and militarily while interacting with areas throughout Mesoamerica.

Stuart termed Tikal, the largest of the Classic Maya cities, “amazing,” noting that it had no water other than what was collected from rainwater and stored in underground storage facilities (termed chultuns).

Archaeologists working in Tikal during the last century reportedly even used the ancient chultuns to store water for their own use.

The absence of springs, rivers and lakes in the immediate vicinity of Tikal highlights a prodigious feat: building a major city with only supplies of stored seasonal rainfall, Stuart noted.

Tikal prospered with intensive agricultural techniques, which were far more advanced than the slash-and-burn methods originally theorized by archeologists. The reliance on seasonal rainfall left Tikal vulnerable to prolonged drought, however, which is now thought to have played a major role in the Classic Maya Collapse.

Stuart said that “any Mayan building you see now won’t have the original stucco and painting.”

He also told of Palenque, Mexico, which features the Temple of the Inscriptions. Vast, mysterious and enchanting, the ruined city of Palenque is considered to be the most beautifully conceived of the Mayan city-states and one of the loveliest archaeological sites in the world.

Its geographic setting is splendid beyond words. Nestled amidst steep and thickly forested hills, the ruins are frequently shrouded in mist.

In Maya culture, “rumor had it” that the winners — or the losers — of athletic contests were sacrificed afterward, Stuart said.

He also told of scribes, who “were in control because they did all the writing.”

With a note of sadness, Stuart said “only four books” out of hundreds of thousands from the Classic Maya culture remain today.

After a pause, he wondered out loud what four books people would favor saving if the remainder of books in English were destroyed.

As for the collapse of the Maya culture, Stuart said, “We don’t know what happened after 800 A.D. We know things changed, but things always change.”

Stuart also showed some slides of locales in the now-touristy Yucatan Peninsula  in Mexico, includng Chichen Itza, where the famous Mayan pyramids are more than 1,500 years old, and Tulum, where the first Spanish conquistadors were spotted in the region in 1517.

With a chuckle, Stuart noted that the Spanish ships were called “houses floating on water” by the Maya at the time.

One of the first Spanish conquistadors walked into a Mayan home and took four books, which now are housed in various collections in Europe.

Between 1524 and 1542, the Spanish conquest of the Maya occurred. Afterward the hundreds of thousands of books in the Maya culture were burned by the Spaniards, he said.

After World War II, the corporate chains began marketing their products in Maya country, with the first two including Coca-Cola and Singer Sewing Machines.

“The Yucatan was isolated for many, many years,” Stuart said, but today there are Wal-Marts and cellphones “with good reception,” to be seen everywhere in the region.

“People still make pilgrimages” to Maya holy places, he said, adding that “the modern Maya still go into the caves and burn candles in devotion to their ancestors.”

He said the weaving skills of the Maya were remarkable and that one can tell what village one is in by the style of the women’s dress there.

To Stuart it seems like “every week, people find new Mayan sites in the woods.” However, he added, “There’s really no such thing as a lost city — the local people, especially the farmers, always know about them” already.