Angie
Calgary
Age: 23
Posts: 4736
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Yes, it was Christians who burned most of Mayan books because they thought they were the product of Satan. I also tend to think that 2012 will not be the end of the world. Mayan calendar is not telling us the world will end, the Mayan calendar simply ends on December 21, 2012.
When Spanish arrived in 1519, The Mayan mistook the event for the second coming of their great leader Kukulkan. This case of mistaken identity resulted in the almost total destruction of Mayan race and culture. The impact of the European conquest of Maya culture was devastating. Within fifty years, 90% of Mayan population was lost. And because of that we don't know much about Mayan culture. The cultural devastation of Mayans arose from the revulsions the Spaniards felt towards Mayan religion and their rituals, including the elongations of infant skulls and emulation of Kukulkan, but the most sinful deed of all in the eyes of Spanish was the practice of human sacrifice by Mayans.
Elongated skull
The point of human sacrifice was that the Mayans believed that the Sun needed sustenance in order to make its passage through the sky and underneath the world as the night’s sun and the way the sun got its sustenance was through human blood. A Spanish bishop, who wrote an account of the Mayan culture, described the typical sacrifice of a victim, who was usually a child, a virgin, a slave, or a prisoner of war. His description was quite graphic because the sacrificial ritual often consisted of the living heart being ripped out of the body. This was done in the large company of people. The victim was laid on a stone and the executioner carved the heart out of the rib cage skillfully with a stone knife. Still living heart was given to Mayan priests who then passed the fresh blood onto their Gods.
Of course, sacrifice and any other similar rituals were deemed by Spanish Christians the work of the devil, so Spanish priests made it their mission to quickly and at any cost convert Mayans to Christianity. The first step to take was to destroy the things of the devil - all of Mayan written records, including codexes and hieroglyphic picture books. There was a massive burning of all Mayan books and all we have left now are four left. Had there not been the burning of those written records, we would know a lot more about Maya astronomy, Maya calendar, Maya prophecy, and general ideology of Mayan civilization.
Some sympathetic Spanish priests managed to salvage 4 Mayan books. Those were later moved to the libraries in Europe. One of them – The Dresden Codex was the main key to understanding Mayan predictions. Some people believe that these manuscripts contain the future history of a mankind and the exact date of its end.
The Kukulkan pyramid in Chichen Itza where a shadow of a dragon can be observed going down the stairs on spring equinox.
Chichen Itza is an ancient Mayan city in the jungles of Mexico Yucatan peninsula.
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