A journey to the seven most prominent Mayan ruins is accompanied by an explanation of Maya history and culture.

Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path

Portland, Or. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Includes 16 pages of color photos, and many black and white illustrations. Freidel is an anthropologist who has collaborated for this book with art professor Linda Schele and writer Joy Parker. The creation myth is explored as the basis for government, the symbolism of political power, a description of the daily lives of the common people, instruction for the afterlife, and as the lesson at the heart of the famous Maya ballgame.

Used book in Good Condition. Draws upon translations of sacred texts and histories to examine Maya mythology and religion and unravel the question of how they have managed to preserve their sacred beliefs into modern times.

Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of The Mayan Book of The Dawn of Life and The Glories of Gods and Kings

Popol vuh, is not only the most important text in the native languages of the Americas, the Quiché Mayan book of creation, it is also an extraordinary document of the human imagination. Used book in Good Condition. It begins with the deeds of mayan gods in the darkness of a primeval sea and ends with the radiant splendor of the Mayan lords who founded the Quiché kingdom in the Guatemalan highlands.

Originally written in Mayan hieroglyphs, it was transcribed into the Roman alphabet in the sixteenth century. Touchstone Books. This new edition of dennis tedlock's unabridged, widely praised translation includes new notes and commentary, newly deciphered hieroglyphs, newly translated passages, and over forty new illustrations.

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A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya

Based on newly deciphered hieroglyphics, this account of the Maya civilization of the pre-European era examines the crucial role of monarchy Used book in Good Condition. Touchstone Books.

Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art

Used book in Good Condition. Touchstone Books. With many figs. Used book in Good Condition. 123 color plates, 4to. Xii + 335 pp.

A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya

Used book in Good Condition. A forest of kings is the story of maya kingship, from the beginning of its institution and the first great pyramid builders two thousand years ago to the decline of Maya civilization and its destruction by the Spanish. Used book in Good Condition. In this book, two of the first central figures in the massive effort to decode the glyphs, Linda Schele and David Freidel, make this history available in all its detail.

Here the great historic rulers of pre-Columbian civilization come to life again with the decipherment of their writing. Touchstone Books. William Morrow Paperbacks. At its height, who ruled for more than sixty years, Maya civilization flourished under great kings like Shield-Jaguar, expanding his kingdom and building some of the most impressive works of architecture in the ancient world.

Long placed on a mist-shrouded pedestal as austere, peaceful stargazers, the Maya elites are now known to have been the rulers of populous, aggressive city-states. Hailed as "a rosetta stone of Maya civilization" Brian M. Fagan, author of people of the earth, a forest of Kings is "a must for interested readers, " says Evon Vogt, professor of anthropology at Harvard University.

The recent interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs has given us the first written history of the New World as it existed before the European invasion.

Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru: New Discoveries and Interpretations

Until inca times just before the Spanish Conquest. Touchstone Books. Used book in Good Condition. Elizabeth benson's essay provides a summary of sacrificial practices. Used book in Good Condition. Mary frame, offers rich new interpretations of Paracas burial garments, who is a weaver as well as a scholar, and Donald Proulx presents a fresh view of the nature of Nasca warfare.

Major contributions come from the recent archaeological fieldwork of Steve Bourget, and Alana Cordy-Collins, Anita Cook, as well as from John Verano's laboratory work on skeletal material from recent excavations. William Morrow Paperbacks. Propitiating the supernatural forces that could grant bountiful crops or wipe out whole villages through natural disasters was a sacred duty in ancient Peruvian societies, as in many premodern cultures.

Ritual sacrifices were considered necessary for this propitiation and for maintaining a proper reciprocal relationship between humans and the supernatural world. The essays in this book examine the archaeological evidence for ancient Peruvian sacrificial offerings of human beings, animals, as well as the cultural contexts in which the offerings occurred, and objects, from around 2500 B.

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The Incas and Their Ancestors: The Archaeology of Peru Revised Edition

The spread of andean agriculture is related to fresh data on climate, and protracted drought is identified as a recurrent contributor to the rise and fall of civilizations in the Cordillera. Described as a "masterly study" and an "outstanding volume" on its first publication, The Incas and Their Ancestors quickly established itself as the best general introduction to the cultures and civilizations of ancient Peru.

But this glittering culture only obscured the rich and diverse civilizations that had preceded it: Chavin, Tiwanaku, Moche, Nazca, Huari, and Chimu. William Morrow Paperbacks. Used book in Good Condition. New discoveries over the last decade are integrated throughout. In 1532, towns with great palaces and temples, graced by gold masterpieces, the Inca realm was one of the largest empires on earth, when Pizarro conquered Peru, and an impressive network of roads.

225 black-and-white illustrations Used book in Good Condition. Architectural models accompanying burials provide fresh interpretations of the palaces of imperial Chan Chan, while the origins of the Incas are given new clarity by a spate of modern research on America's largest native empire. The results of recent excavations enliven understanding of coastal Moche and Nazca societies and the ancient highland states of Huari and Tiwanaku.

Touchstone Books. The occupation of peru's desert coast can now be traced back to 12, 000 BC and ensuing maritime adaptations are examined in early littoral societies that mummified their dead and others that were mound builders.

Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path

William Morrow Paperbacks. A masterful blend of archaeology, maya comos tells a constellation of stories, and lively personal reportage, astronomy, anthropology, from the historical to the mythological, and envokes the awesome power of one of the richest civilizations ever to grace the earth. Touchstone Books.

Used book in Good Condition. Used book in Good Condition. Used book in Good Condition.

The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art

Used book in Good Condition. 122 color plates, 300 drawings and 50 black-and-white illustrations Used book in Good Condition. William Morrow Paperbacks. Used book in Good Condition. Used book in Good Condition. A work as remarkable for its text as for the photographs and drawings that illustrate it. Octavio paz, ritual warfare, the new york Review of Books A comprehensive guide to the Maya which reveals kingship rites, with a vast array of color plates and drawings.

Touchstone Books.

Jungle of Stone: The Extraordinary Journey of John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya

And yet by the time the spanish reached the “New World, ” the Maya had all but disappeared; they would remain a mystery for the next three hundred years. Today, if sometimes misunderstood, the tables are turned: the Maya are justly famous, while Stephens and Catherwood have been nearly forgotten. Seized by the reports, greece, guatemala, the holy land, and rome—sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood—both already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, and Mexico.

Used book in Good Condition. Enduring disease, architecture, stephens and catherwood meticulously uncovered and documented the remains of an astonishing civilization that had flourished in the Americas at the same time as classic Greece and Rome—and had been its rival in art, and the torments of nature and terrain, war, and power.

Used book in Good Condition. Touchstone Books. Within a few hundred years the structures took on a monumental scale that required millions of man-hours of labor, and technical and organizational expertise. Over the next millennium, some with populations larger than any city in Europe at the time, dozens of city-states evolved, each governed by powerful lords, and connected by road-like causeways of crushed stone.

The maya developed a cohesive, unified cosmology, an array of common gods, a creation story, and a shared artistic and architectural vision.