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We now live in the Anthropocene, the first epoch of our own making. We have altered the Earth's atmosphere, landscapes, and bodies of water. The burning of fossil fuels has warmed the planet enough to change weather patterns, melt glaciers, and raise sea levels, a situation made worse by rampant deforestation and resource depletion. Many look to governments to confront these existential challenges. In
Maya Wisdom and the Survival of Our Planet, Lisa Lucero looks to the Maya, past and present.
Through the lens of the traditional Maya inclusive worldview--one in which humans are part of the world, not separate from it, and where everything is connected--Lucero provides a practical roadmap on how to sustainably address climate change and environmental degradation. She shows how the Maya collaborate with rather than try to subjugate forests, animals, soils, water, and other nonhuman entities. The Maya sustainably farmed for millennia and provided goods, labor, and services to their kings in cities. In return, kings performed vital ceremonies to the Rain God Chahk, other gods, and ancestors to replenish urban reservoirs that lasted throughout the long dry season--a balancing act that worked for over 1,000 years.
Lucero shows how approaches to tackle climate change from the bottom-up, beginning with the family or household, are just as important as top-down governmental mitigation, and how learning from traditional knowledge is vital for the survival of us all. She brings to life the tropical jungles of Central America and reveals the valuable solutions its ancient and contemporary inhabitants offer us to save our planet.
List of contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments--Thirty-Five Years' Worth
- Introduction
- 1. Setting the Stage: Then and Now
- 2. The Maya
- 3. Chahk, The Capricious Rain God
- 4. The Maya Inclusive Worldview
- 5. Relations with the Three Realms
- 6. The Maize People
- 7. House and Cosmos
- 8. Water Lily Kings
- 9. Yax Cities
- 10. The Survival of Our Planet
- Index
About the author
Lisa J. Lucero is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has been conducting archaeology in Belize for over 35 years and is the author of
Water and Ritual: The Rise and Fall of Classic Maya Rulers and co-author of
If the Past Teaches, What Does the Future Learn? and
Changing the Atmosphere: Anthropology and Climate Change.
Summary
Inspired by decades of archaeological research on the ancestral Maya, Maya Wisdom and the Survival of Our Planet provides a practical roadmap on how to sustainably address climate change and environmental degradation. The author shows how insights of the Maya--past and present--are vital for the survival of our planet and calls for collaborating with rather than dominating the nonhuman world.
Additional text
In a book that masterfully contributes to our rethinking what we know about the resilience, agriculture, and cities of the ancestral Maya, Lucero also asks us to rethink our own relationships to the water, soils, plants, and animals around us in an age of crisis.
