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2. The lame civilization of the Stone Age

No matter how strange this Mayan aristocrat with a deformed head, twisted facial features, tattoos and "plug-ins" all over his body, and cross-eyed eyes may look like, he is still an excellent guide and guide for those who want to enter the city of Tikal......

So, you go up and talk to this Mayan nobleman, whether it is pretending to be a foreign envoy, or directly under the guise of a "divine envoy", or directly using hypnotism, in short, you must fool him into believing that you are a very important guest and must be treated solemnly.

Therefore, the Mayan nobleman respectfully jumped out of the palanquin and saluted, saying that he would extend a warm welcome to you on behalf of all the corn people of the city.

You're about to smile back, when suddenly something feels wrong...... Corn people? Huh? Aren't they Mayans?

…… This one...... How so? There is absolutely no doubt that the city of Tikal in front of you is a city-state built by the Mayans. But the problem is that the Mayans at that time really didn't know that they would be called Mayans......

-- The term "Maya" as we are now called originated from Columbus's voyage diary, and its origin is an awkward misunderstanding.

It was in 15o2 A.D., Columbus' last voyage to the Americas, exactly 1o years after his first appearance as the "New Great 6". After his expedition docked in the Bay of Honduras, Columbus was intrigued by the sight of a very fine clay pot in the local market. The indigenous trader told him that this beautiful clay pot came from the "Maya...... From then on, this magical name was first introduced to the ears of Europeans.

Then, in the process of conquest of the Yucatan Peninsula, the Spanish colonizers found many abandoned megalithic cities and temples that were on the verge of extinction, which they considered to be the so-called "Maya", and collectively referred to the indigenous people of this area as "Maya".

But in fact, the word "Maya" in response to Columbus's reply was not referring to the entire Mayan civilization as we know it today, but merely to describe a city-state called "Mayapan" (which was abandoned at the time, but the name of the place was retained), that is, the origin of the clay pots.

As for the Mayans, when they called their own people, they generally liked to call themselves "corn people" because they were the first to breed corn and used it as their staple food...... The reason why there are Mayans, Mayan civilizations, and Mayan prophecies today is that later scholars forcibly deducted the name of a city above the entire region and nation, and it sounds as awkward as using Guangzhou people to refer to all Chinese.

Thus, during the classical period of the Mayan civilization, from the third to the ninth centuries AD, the Mayans either called themselves the people of such and such a city-state, or they called themselves "corn people", or they did not call themselves Mayans - it would be a few hundred years before the Mayapan city-state was established!

In fact, almost the same misunderstanding has occurred in China - when the Portuguese navigators of the early 16th century boarded Macau6 and asked the locals what this place was, the local fishermen mistakenly thought that the red-haired ghosts were asking about the Mazu Temple by the sea, and said that this place was "Ma Ge...... As a result, Macau's English name has become "macao" (pronounced similar to "Ma Ge"), which is not at all like its Chinese pronunciation.

In the history of ancient civilizations, there are many more examples like this. For example, the Sumerians, who founded the oldest civilization in the Mesopotamian plains, called themselves "blackheads" at the time. If you travel to the Middle East at that time, you will definitely not find a people who call themselves Sumerians.

Anyway, this mistake can't be corrected for the time being, so let's continue to call them "Mayans" for the rest of this article!

Anyway, after some exchange, the Mayan nobleman, who calls himself the Corn Man, begins to enthusiastically show you the way around the city of Tikal.

Although the Maya civilization was a city-state, unlike the Greeks, who were accustomed to relying on seafaring trade for food, the lonely Mayans could not find a place to import food, so they had to farm their own fields to support themselves. The city of Tikal is surrounded by lush cornfields dotted with other crops such as peppers, pumpkins, cotton, cocoa beans and agave, as well as fallow land.

-- Until modern times, the Mayans still practiced the "milpa farming method", which is commonly known as slash-and-burn farming, in which a large fire is placed to clear a place, the seeds are sown and then fed by the sky, and after the corn is harvested, they move to another place to set fire...... Because the Maya did not know how to fertilize, the soil fertility was lost too quickly, and the soil in the tropical rainforest was very poor, so if you did not fallow for three to six years, you would not have another harvest.

Further on, you will come to a small village inhabited by Mayan farmers, where you can see some circular spired huts made of banana leaves and thatch, flocks of turkeys, barking dogs, Mayan women washing clothes and cooking, and small traders carrying heavy baskets on their backs, mainly shells, salt cubes, cocoa beans, parrots, bone ornaments, brightly colored bird feathers, etc...... In addition, Mayan warriors can occasionally be seen with bright feathers on their heads, various oil paints on their faces, cotton capes on their shoulders, and javelins and round shields in their hands.

In general, although the climate of the living environment is equally hot, the Mayans are a little more "shy" than the ancient Egyptians, and generally do not go out and hang out. Mayan women usually wore a boxy white straight skirt like a sack, decorated with embroidery, pendants, shells, etc., and a scarf when they went out, and the color of the clothes was generally more monotonous. Only noble women of higher status could use splendid dyed fabrics.

As for the standard attire of ancient Mayan men, it was always a loincloth, a shawl, sandals and a headdress. It is only in terms of ornaments and embroidery patterns that vary according to the status of each person.

As in ancient China, the Mayans wore long hairs for both men and women, with men wearing braids and buns tied at the top of their heads, and women wearing buns in many styles. In addition, almost everyone in the Maya had tattoos, and the higher the status, the more tattoos they had on their bodies.

At first glance, this qiē seems to be almost the same as the ancient southwestern cottage in China, but if you distinguish it carefully, there will be an obvious difference:

That is, there is no metal to be found!

- Mayan farmers in the cornfields, who generally used wood, stone and bone tools to work; The occasional Mayan warrior only wore sharpened flint tied to a javelin. Even among the Mayan nobility, there are no gold or silver ornaments, but only bright feathers, delicate bone tools, and sumptuous jade ornaments. The sharp daggers they wore with them were also made of bone.

There is no way, the Maya in the classical period were culturally prosperous, but they were still technically in the Stone Age, and there was nothing in gold, silver, copper and iron.

- Perhaps because of the cruelty of the heavens, although the Mayans created a glorious civilization, they really did not find any metal minerals in the territory they ruled. The closest copper, gold, and silver mines to the city of Tikal were all thousands of miles away on the Mexican plateau, and were not mined until the ninth century...... As for the iron-smelting technology, it was not until Columbus was now in the new 6 that no American nation was made clear.

By the beginning of the 21st century, among all the Mayan sites in the classical period, archaeologists had only found a metal object from the ruins of the city of Copan, specifically a small mutilated bronze statue, which was also imported from South America, not created by the Mayans themselves.

Even at the end of the Mayan civilization, when the Spaniards were about to arrive, the Mayan gold, silver, and copper products were completely imported from afar, and the quantity was scarce and expensive, and could only be used to make some bells, earrings and other ornaments, which could not be used in actual production and life.

Therefore, although the Mayan civilization in the classical period had built magnificent cities, it was still in the Stone Age, which was too primitive to be primitive.

With no gold or silver available, the Mayan aristocracy of the Stone Age had to choose feathers and jade to decorate their bodies, leaving behind countless exquisite jade artifacts for later generations - the so-called "jade culture", which was actually the ultimate embodiment of Stone Age culture.

A situation similar to that of the Mayans has also occurred in the ruins of early Chinese civilization - the ancient Chinese ancestors, as early as the Neolithic Age, had already given birth to agricultural civilization and had surplus productivity. However, due to the lack of use of metal, the ancestors could only focus on pondering jade, so that we have now excavated countless extremely exquisite jade artifacts on the Liangzhu culture in the south of the Yangtze River and the Hongshan culture outside the Saiwai.

This custom of liking jade has been passed down from ancient times to modern times in the land of China, and finally formed the pinnacle of oriental jade culture, and thus gives people the illusion that there seems to be some kind of inheritance relationship between Chinese civilization and American civilization.

In addition to the lack of metal, the Mayans lacked large livestock, no cats, no sheep, no horses, no pigs, and no donkeys to catch mice. The only mammal in the hands of the Mayans that could be called a domestic animal was the dog. The problem is that the dog is only so big that no matter how domesticated it is, it can't be used as a horse to ride, or it can replace cattle to plow the land, even if it is cooked in a pot, there will be too little meat.

In addition, due to the lack of large livestock and good roads, the Maya did not have a clear wheel, and transportation was either done by canoe or on two legs. Those magnificent pyramids were built by the Mayans with stone tools and pushed by shoulders, which is really not easy.

Finally, the Mayans of the classical period also did not have a clear bow and arrow, and their only long-range weapon was the javelin. The bows and arrows that appeared in their hands later were transmitted from the Mexican plateau after the ninth century, and were so crude that they could be broken at a glance, and were not as powerful as javelins.

In short, the Mayan civilization, which has been endowed with countless mysteries by modern film and television media, is actually essentially a lame civilization in the Stone Age, which roughly belongs to the same level as China's Liangzhu culture, please don't imagine it too beautiful.