Lessons From the Ancient Mayans

Townhall.com ^ | January 31, 2013 | Emmett Tyrrell

[Kaslin]

Guatemala -- Where is that, you ask? Generally this column comes to you from Washington, D.C. or New York City. Occasionally it comes from London or Paris. Today it carries the dateline of a seaport in Guatemala, and if it were written a day ago or two days hence it would carry the dateline of Belize. It is freezing up north. The inclement weather has driven me to tropical parts. Global warming sounds more and more agreeable to me and, frankly, if you have your wits about you, to you, too. The frozen remains of palm trees have supposedly been found in the melting ice of the poles. Well, that is good news. Bring together a village of Eskimos and notify them of the so-called perils of global warming and, my guess is, they would all become vociferous advocates of anthropogenic climate change. Think of it? Wearing a bikini in the North Pole. That is progress!

I am aboard the cruise ship "Yorktown," once again. Last summer we took an amiable crowd of National Review and American Spectator readers on a tour of the Great Lakes. This winter we have taken mainly AmSpec readers on a tour of the Mayan ruins in Belize and Guatemala with stops along the way to inspect the barrier reefs, fish life and even to partake in snorkeling. Also, we are doing a good bit of basking in the sun and snickering at our friends up north.

Of particular interest is the Mayan civilization. It flourished in the jungles of these parts from roughly 1500 B.C. to A.D. 1521, whereupon it ceased. Gone, fini, vanished -- just like that! Neither war nor pestilence nor plague has been detected by modern scholars seeking to explain its passing. There remain great stone edifices: temples, palaces, living quarters -- even evidence of sacred altars for human sacrifice. However, there is no extant evidence as to why Mayan civilization ceased. It was highly advanced with a written language and astronomical literacy. Yet no word has been found that anything was amiss before A.D. 1521 when it utterly ceased to function. There are Mayans around today, but none seems to know why he is not living atop a ruin in the jungle, perhaps with colorful feathers sticking in his hair and a fancy wand or whatever those sticks are that his ancestors are pictured carrying. I doubt it has occurred to a modern-day Mayan to reclaim a palace or one of the splendid temples in the jungle even for an occasional ritual sacrifice. Perhaps they are too polite.

American Indians make all manner of extravagant claims on the federal government, some of which have resulted in extravagant restitution. The modern-day Mayans make no such claims down here in Belize or Guatemala. They seem to prefer hanging out at the gas station to taking over a temple or palace. Why does not a local Mayan huckster with a huckster's gift for dramaturgy and eloquence simply take over a Mayan ruin and declare it his own? Maybe he could even collect taxes. Surely he could take his case to the United Nations or the World Court. Possibly today's Mayans have suffered a huge failure of the imagination. Possibly it began back in A.D. 1521 when the Mayan civilization went (SET ITAL) poof (END ITAL). Have modern scholars detected in the records of the ancient Mayans any signs of an awareness of mounting economic problems, of an accumulating unsustainable national debt or of entitlements leading to bankruptcy? The Mayans boasted a rich hieroglyphic language. Is there a word in old Mayan for entitlement? How in Mayan would one spell Obamacare?

The other day, as I tripped over a Mayan ruin, some dismal thoughts did occur to me. Could we go the way of the Mayans? Well, I doubt we would leave no evidence of the cause of our demise. True, our godlike leader has never fretted about the problems of entitlements or of unsustainable national debt. If he ever thought seriously about the IOUs being wrung up by the government, he would never have wasted years trying to bring down on us yet another unsustainable entitlement, Obamacare. But there are other leaders in other branches of government who are immensely worried about the perilous state of our economy and about the drift of our leaders away from the Constitution. In the courts, in the House of Representatives and in the states, there is mounting concern that the Progressives in Washington are en route to national decline, if not the end of civilization as we know it.

I had better get back to Washington. There is work to be done.

[RetSignman]

[No — they let them grow up first. Then they cut their hearts out.]

Well, you got me there, snatching the most innocent of the innocent out of the womb for ‘convenience’ is much more civilized.

Over fifteen million ‘pesky problems’ solved and counting.

[lentulusgracchus]

Over fifteen million ‘pesky problems’ solved and counting.

We are going to pay for that someday, maybe someday soon. At least we have the consolation that, even after Jezebel made a tophet in Jerusalem, the God of the Israelites didn't turn totally away from them. But I wonder if that had something to do with the Assyrian conquest and the punishment of the Babylonian Captivity.