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For the Maya, the News From Mars Is Not Good
Commentary
Louis E.V. Nevaer, Pacific News Service
Recent discoveries on Mars, combined with crackpot theories about
space aliens and Mayan pyramids, have some residents of Mexico's Yucatan
bracing for a New Age invasion.
MERIDA, Yucatan -
March 30, 2004 -
When NASA announced recently that Mars once harbored the conditions
necessary for life to exist, those of us who live in the Yucatan --
especially the Maya -- let out a collective groan. We fear another
crackpot invasion.
Ever since Erich Von Daniken published his best-selling "The Chariots of
the Gods" in 1968, many misguided people around the world believe the
Maya are the descendants of ancient space travelers. And so they flock
here, usually to poke around Mayan ruins looking for telltale signs of
alien visitation.
"What NASA's space rover had done is confirm what I have argued," wrote
Hoger Isenberg, a German proponent of the idea that the Maya are the
descendants of distant Martians fleeing their dying planet, in an online
forum recently. "The city (he claims exists on the Martian surface)
might be one of the seven legendary cities on Mars."
The theory offered goes something like this: An advanced Martian
civilization despoiled its environment so completely that Mars began to
die. Desperate to save themselves, Martians constructed spaceships and
fled to the nearest inhabitable planet, Earth. They landed in the
Yucatan and built the pyramids with their "extraterrestrial" technology.
For most of the world, the musings of these fringe voices are harmless.
But we in the Yucatan fear the onslaught of tens of thousands of
lunatics fired up by the recent discoveries -- NASA now thinks oceans of
water once existed on Mars -- and determined to make "pilgrimages" to
ancient Maya ceremonial centers.
A lunatic influx happened before, in 1987, when thousands gathered
around the pyramids for a "Harmonic Convergence." At that time, using
the Maya calendar, Jose Arguelles, a Latino charlatan from Oregon,
created a frenzy when he claimed the world was ending. "Harmonic
Convergence refers to the converging of all aspects of reality in a
great, all-unifying harmony," Arguelles argued. "Prophecy of the
Thirteen Heavens and Nine Hells, Harmonic Convergence, Kin 55 and 56,
Magnetic Moon 22-23, August 16-17, 1987."
"I hope it's not like last time," says Alberto Ek Can, a retired bank
accountant and Maya who translates folk tales from Yucatec Maya into
Spanish. "The New Agers look on everyone with disdain."
There were so many fools running around in 1987 that I wound up
sheltering two young adults, both of them students at Stanford
University, in my house. Expecting the world to end, they hadn't brought
along enough cash to get home. They needed a place to sleep while their
parents made arrangements for a Western Union wire transfer.
"I'm not sure what they believed in," Lupita Cantu, our Maya
housekeeper, said after they left. "But I know they didn't believe in
wearing clean clothes. They smelled bad."
Since the Harmonic Convergence follies, the "science" of this line of
inquiry has changed. In 1996, Ernest Orlando, a researcher at Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory, patented a hand-held device to detect
radiation, and shortly thereafter, "amateur" researchers began to trek
the pyramids and wander through the ceremonial centers throughout the
Yucatan looking for "proof positive" -- radiation from the spacecraft
that they claim brought the Martians to the Yucatan.
It would all be funny if it weren't so offensive.
Those who believe that Martians landed here in the distant past devalue
the achievements of the Maya civilization. They implicitly suggest that
the Maya were incapable of raising cities graced with elaborate
ceremonial centers, or creating a complex writing system, nuanced
philosophy, codified laws and structured economies.
Like it or not, any claim that these are the achievements of ancient
space travelers denigrates the intellect of the Maya. More important,
such ideas deny the Maya of their very humanity -- if they are
descendents from ancient space travelers, then they aren't fully human,
right?
There are more than 1 million Mayas in the Yucatan. Those of us who live
among them know them as part of humanity, and the brilliance of their
civilization is part of mankind's cultural heritage.
"There are some people who can't tell the difference between astronomy
and astrology," Alberto Ek Can says. "St. Augustine reminded us that
sometimes the greatest truths are the simplest. Some people forget that.
Some people get the facts mixed up with their wishful thinking."
Then again, what does he know? He's probably from another planet.
PNS contributor Louis E.V. Nevaer (nevaer1@hotmail.com)
is an author and economist who edited Mesoamerica, a journal on Maya
culture, from 1986 to 1994. His most recent book is "The
Rise of the Hispanic Market in the United States: Challenges, Dilemmas,
and Opportunities for Corporate Management"
(M.E. Sharpe Inc., 2004).
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