I spent a month living with a Mayan family in the Guatemalan highlands. Around just one lake in Guatemala there are three different Mayan languages in use — K'iche', Kaqchikel and Tz'utujil.
Everyone spoke Spanish for tourists, but for the most part it was not the primary language people spoke.
I was quite surprised at how completely Mayan the culture was. I had expected it to have been completely subsumed by Spanish Catholicism over the centuries, but there is a substrate of the old religion and rituals everywhere, even in supposedly catholic festivals.
The impression you have from casual knowledge of the history is that Mayans used to be in Central America and then the Spanish came and they all died out, but that is far from the case. It’s a culture that is very much still alive.
If this interests you, I highly recommend visiting Guatemala. Book a flight to Guatemala City, take a bus to Antigua and from there you can find buses that go all throughout the Mayan highlands — lake atitlan, xela, Tikal. It’s a beautiful country with beautiful people and not at all what you would expect from the way people talk about it.
I was with a bunch of pre-med students from california that were doing a free clinic down there, and a few of them had parents from the area, and spoke spanish.
We were on a bus tour back from tikal, driven by a couple of Mayan tour guides from Lake atitlan, and they started telling ghost stores in spanish while one of the pre-med students was translating for everyone else.
They told this story of a backpacker who had brought a ouija board with them to their town and how they had accidentally opened up some kind of portal and let spirits loose that cursed the town or something like that, and then eventually some old woman in the town discovered that it had been the ouija board that was the source of it, so the town all went to the backpacker's hostel and burned him.
Or at least that was how it was translated and then after everyone in the car was like "WHAAAA" they clarified that "lo" meant "it" and not "him" and that they had burned the ouija board-- gender in spanish can be a little confusing.
I'd have nothing to say after reading this if I'd read it 5 years ago while deep in addiction and still big into the capitalist game. I'm a Cajun from Louisiana who never connected with my roots, since I was escaping from the world when the opportunities were presented to me. So the value being lost from people being unable to preserve their culture would've been of little concern to me.
However, after hearing native storytellers around where I live share their ancestral stories, I can say what I think is at stake here, and it's incredibly important to our collective well-being.
I recognized lessons in their stories as universal lessons, ones I've had to learn about how to meet our needs and to be in the world. These were lessons I was learning in recovery for myself from various sources, and none of them were coming from what I was seeing of mainstream society. Mainstream society in the US, as far as I've been able to see, is typically teaching the opposite.
I don't know what my ancestors' stories teach. If they're like the indigenous teachings I've heard, then I may have had useful guidance through my past struggles. The loss of such generational collective knowledge slows us all down.
A question of import would be are they applicable in a modern world?
Religions go through transformation to fit and remain relevant. But never the less fewer people call themselves religious, because for many it’s less relevant and applicable in a modern world.
Education is the same. What was applicable and relevant in the 1900s isn’t the same as what’s relevant today. Of course math remains a constant.
Some people enjoy the stories of the past. I'm not religious, but I find joy in reading the myths and legends from bygone eras - regardless if Prometheus isn't particularly applicable to today's modern world.
I don't know what you mean by math being constant - I think you'll find the Mayans had a different understanding of math than we do.
I agree they are fine as myths and mythology. They can be illustrative and entertaining. But not sure they can tell us about navigating the modern aspect of today’s world (there are constants like interpersonal relationships, duties and such).
To be clear - we're getting off topic - these woman are actually recording their modern poetry in the Tzotzil language.
Why does it have to be relevant to navigating all of the modern world? They of course won't have details on how to maximize your side hustle, but the constants, like interpersonal relationships, are still the majority of our worldly interactions.
I think that’s a worthy cause for sure. Preservation for posterity is a good thing. However I was responding to @crawfordcomeaux‘s take on some his own experiences. He may be right of course. I was seeking discourse on his take.
I'm a recovering information addict who used to perceive myself as having a deep need to know things, which was actually anxiety around and fear of uncertainty or not knowing.
In recovery, I've learned there's very little I need to know, learning to tap into my intuition, instead.
One indigenous story dealt with exactly this.
I used to think of myths and mythology as ancient outdated beliefs. I now view them as learning opportunities. I've found it useful to view literally everything this way, which is another teaching I've encountered in indigenous stories & I learned on my own beforehand. I now view beliefs as tools for configuring cognitive biases and can find many useful ways to prime my brain this way.
So yeah...crazy useful and totally counter to modern society's teachings, probably because these lessons work against the more toxic/limiting aspects of modern life.
Thanks for asking! There are timeless teachings about how nature works (at least until nature evolves away from them) in indigenous cultures, which includes how to care for ourselves. That's stuff that was for sure missing from my upbringing and education.
Also, here's another example of how what I consider Western science is only just now catching up to some indigenous teachings: https://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2015/11/08/ornithogenic...
The local indigenous tribes in that area told of birds that were setting fires. People considered the stories a myth. Nope...just observations of nature being passed down generationally through stories. I've heard some indigenous folk refer to it as their form of scientific documentation. That perspective also makes it much easier for me to find value in the stories.
The only thing this article lacks is a concrete way for those of us impressed with what these women are doing to help them continue their important work.
It is not uncommon for a submission to get that many points and zero comments. No voting ring is implied. The votes on this submission look perfectly legit to me. Probably they were from users who found the article interesting but don't have anything substantive to say about the topic.
Threads are sensitive to initial conditions, so could you please email hn@ycombinator.com with concerns like this instead of making it the first comment in a thread?
Everyone spoke Spanish for tourists, but for the most part it was not the primary language people spoke.
I was quite surprised at how completely Mayan the culture was. I had expected it to have been completely subsumed by Spanish Catholicism over the centuries, but there is a substrate of the old religion and rituals everywhere, even in supposedly catholic festivals.
The impression you have from casual knowledge of the history is that Mayans used to be in Central America and then the Spanish came and they all died out, but that is far from the case. It’s a culture that is very much still alive.
If this interests you, I highly recommend visiting Guatemala. Book a flight to Guatemala City, take a bus to Antigua and from there you can find buses that go all throughout the Mayan highlands — lake atitlan, xela, Tikal. It’s a beautiful country with beautiful people and not at all what you would expect from the way people talk about it.