Cultural Glimpse

“Mayan people did not leave the Earth, with aliens, to another planet,” said our tour guide. “They are still here, making handmade items. Each family-owned store supports almost fifty people.”

Our bus arrived to the Coba Ruins in Tulum.  The tour guide explained that Mayan was not an empire. It was a city of 70,000 people with smaller cities within the bigger city, but not where one person ruled over everyone. Their classical era was between 400 to 900 AC. During that time, men who had knowledge controlled people by keeping them ignorant and using this knowledge to make them people believe in them.

So, those who knew about solstice and equinox, which occurs twice a year, would make predictions based on this information and would credit this prediction to his close relationship to God, which he communicated with by going to the top of the temple. They claimed that the God of Rain, or whatever god, delivered information to this or that special person. (Hmm… I think people in power are still using this system to control people).

He talked about the Mayan sacred book, which mentions the World Tree. That’s a magical tree that creates the four sacred directions moving out of the center. It’s a structure for humans that shapes and accesses the spiritual worlds. According to their belief, the World Tree was the first creation and then everything emanated, and continues to emanate, from it.

“Now we are going to go see the Coba archeological site and, if you want, you can go up the 120 steps.”

The tour guide then explained that we had three options to get to the ruins: one, walk there; two, rent a bicycle; three, rent a Mayan limo, a chauffeured tricycle where you just sit and take in the sights. We opted for the limo, which my children (even myself) found more adventurous than climbing the Coba ruins’ 120 steps, which we did, huffing and puffing.