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Bloodletting was the ritualized self-cutting or piercing of an individual’s body that served a number of ideological and cultural functions within ancient Mesoamerican societies, in particular the Maya. The Maya civilization is a Mesoamerican Civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the Pre-Columbian Americas The Maya peoples constitute a diverse range of the Native American peoples of southern Mexico and northern Central America. As unique and spectacular as any Ancient Egypt, Greek or Roman architecture, Maya architecture spans several thousands of years The Maya calendar is a system of distinct Calendars and Almanacs used by the Maya civilization of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and by Human sacrifice is the act of Homicide (the Killing of one or several Human beings in the context of a Religious ritual ( ritual killing Maya mythology is part of Mesoamerican mythology and comprises all those Mayan tales in which personified forces of nature deities and the heroes interacting with these play the main The Maya peoples constitute a diverse range of the Native American peoples of southern Mexico and northern Central America. Nowadays the Maya religion of Chiapas and Yucatan (Mexico Guatemala Belize and western Honduras is full of tensions between the traditional ancestral religion the 're-invention Maya society shared many features with other Mesoamerican civilizations for there was a high degree of interaction and Cultural diffusion throughout the region Knowledge of Mayan textiles is limited mostly to Elite ceremonial costumes nonetheless their clothing has significant representation in the complexities of their culture The Music that was central to Pre-Columbian Maya culture still remains a bit of a mystery today During the height of the Maya civilization, trade was a crucial factor in maintaining cities The Maya script, also known as Maya hieroglyphs, was the writing system of the Pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica, presently The Classic Maya Collapse refers to the decline and abandonment of the Classic Period Maya cities of the southern Maya lowlands of Mesoamerica between the The Spanish Conquest of Yucatán was the campaign undertaken by the Spanish Conquistadores ' against the Late Postclassic Maya states and A ritual is a set of actions often thought to have Symbolic value the performance of which is usually prescribed by a Religion or by the Traditions An ideology is a set of beliefs aims and Ideas especially in politics Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate" generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic Mesoamerica or Meso-America (Mesoamérica is a Region extending approximately from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua, defined The Maya civilization is a Mesoamerican Civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the Pre-Columbian Americas When performed by ruling elites, the act of bloodletting was crucial to the maintenance of sociocultural and political structure. Elite (also spelled Élite) is taken originally from the Latin, eligere, "to elect" Bound within the Mesoamerican belief systems, bloodletting was used as a tool to legitimate the ruling lineage’s sociopolitical position and, when enacted, was important to the perceived well-being of a given society or settlement.
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Description
Bloodletting was performed by piercing a soft body part, generally the tongue or penis, and scattering the blood or collecting it on paper, which was subsequently burned. The tongue is the large bundle of Skeletal muscles on the floor of the Mouth that manipulates Food for chewing and swallowing (deglutition [1] The act of burning the sacrificed blood symbolized the transferral of the offering to the gods via its transformation into the rising smoke.
Piercing was accomplished using using obsidian prismatic blades, stingray spines, or shark's teeth. Obsidian is a naturally occurring Glass formed as an extrusive Igneous rock. In Archaeology, a prismatic blade is a long narrow specialized Lithic flake with parallel margins Dasyatidae is a family of rays, cartilaginous marine Fishes related to Skates and Sharks Dasyatids are common in tropical Under some circumstances, a rope with attached thorns or obsidian flakes would be pulled through the tongue or earlobes.
Jade or stone spines and teeth have been found in the archaeological record. Jade use in Mesoamerica was largely influenced by the conceptualization of the material as a rare and valued Commodity among Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican Some of these jade artifacts have rather dull points but might have been used once the initial cut was made, or might be purely ritual objects not used in actual bloodletting. [2]
The location of the bloodletting on the body often correlated with an intended result or a corresponding symbolic representation. For example, drawing blood from the genitals, especially the male sex organs, would be done with the intent of increasing or representing human fertility.
Ritual performance
Ritualized bloodletting was typically performed by elites, settlement leaders, and religious figures (e. g. , shamans) within contexts visible to the public. The rituals were enacted on the summits of pyramids or on elevated platforms that were usually associated with broad and open plazas or courtyards (where the masses could congregate and view the bloodletting). Mesoamerican pyramids, pyramid-shaped structures are an important part of ancient Mesoamerican architecture. Plaza ( / latin america) is a Spanish word related to "field" which describes an open urban Public space, such as a City square. This was done so as to demonstrate the connection the person performing the autosacrifice had with the sacred sphere and, as such, a method used to maintain political power by legitimizing their prominent social, political, and/or ideological position. SACRED was a Cubesat built by the Student Satellite Program of the University of Arizona. Political power ( Imperium in Latin is a type of power held by a group in a Society which allows administration of some or all of
While usually carried out by a ruling male, prominent females are also known to have performed the act. The El Perú tomb of a female (called the "Queen's Tomb") contains among its many grave goods a ceremonial stingray spine associated with her genital region. El Perú (also known as Waka') is a Pre-Columbian Maya Archeological site occupied during the Preclassic and Classic For the New York prison see The Tombs. A Tomb is a repository for the remains of the dead. Grave goods, in Archaeology and Anthropology, are the items buried along with the body
One of the best-known lintels from Mesoamerica, Yaxchilan Lintel 24 (right), shows Lady Xoc drawing a barbed rope through her tongue. Yaxchilan (also sometimes historically referred to by the names Menché and City Lorillard) is an ancient Maya city located on the Usumacinta River Lintel 24 is the designation given by modern archaeologists to an ancient Maya limestone carving from Yaxchilan, in modern Chiapas, Mexico. Lady Xoc (pronounced ‘Shoke’ was a Maya Queen consort in Yaxchilan and is considered to have been one of the most powerful and prominent women in Maya civilization In front of her, her husband and the ruler of Yaxchilan, Shield Jaguar, is shown holding a torch. Yaxchilan (also sometimes historically referred to by the names Menché and City Lorillard) is an ancient Maya city located on the Usumacinta River Itzamnaaj B'alam II was a Maya king who ruled in Yaxchilan from 681 until he died in the year 742
Ideological undertones
- See also: Maya mythology & Maya religion
Among all the Mesoamerican cultures, sacrifice, in whatever form, was a deeply symbolic and highly ritualized activity with strong religious and political significance. Maya mythology is part of Mesoamerican mythology and comprises all those Mayan tales in which personified forces of nature deities and the heroes interacting with these play the main Nowadays the Maya religion of Chiapas and Yucatan (Mexico Guatemala Belize and western Honduras is full of tensions between the traditional ancestral religion the 're-invention Mesoamerica or Meso-America (Mesoamérica is a Region extending approximately from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua, defined Sacrifice (from a Middle English verb meaning "to make sacred" from Old French, from Latin sacrificium: sacr, "sacred" "Symbolic" redirects here For other uses see Symbolism (disambiguation and Symbolic (disambiguation. Various kinds of sacrifice were performed within a range of sociocultural contexts and in association with a variety of activities, from mundane everyday activities to those performed by the elites and ruling lineages with the aim of maintaining social structure.
At its core, sacrifice symbolized the renewal of divine energy and, in doing so, the continuation of life. Divinity and divine (sometimes 'the Divinity' or 'the Divine' are broadly applied but loosely defined terms used variously within different faiths and belief systems — Its ability of bloodletting to do this is based on two intertwined concepts that are prevalent in the Maya belief system. The first is the notion that the gods had given life to humankind by sacrificing parts of their own bodies. This is a name list of Maya gods and supernatural beings, mainly taken from the Books of Chilam Balam (CHB Lacandon ethnography (LAC Landa (L and Popol Vuh (PV The second is the central focus of their mythology on human blood, which signified life among the Maya. Blood is a specialized Bodily fluid that delivers necessary substances to the body's cells such as nutrients and oxygen—and transports Waste products Within their belief system, human blood was partially made up of the blood of the gods, who sacrificed their own divine blood in creating life in humans. Thus, in order to continually maintain the order of their universe, the Maya believed that blood had to be given back to the gods.
Depictions of bloodletting in Mesoamerica cultures
Unlike later cultures, there is no representation of actual bloodletting in Olmec art. However, solid evidence for its practice exists in the jade and ceramic replicas of stingray spines and shark teeth as well as representations of such paraphernalia on monuments and stelae[4] and in iconography. Jade use in Mesoamerica was largely influenced by the conceptualization of the material as a rare and valued Commodity among Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican A stele (from Greek:, stēlē, ˈstiːli plural stelae,, stēlai, ˈstiːlaɪ also found Latinised singular stela [5]
A proposed translation of the Epi-Olmec culture's La Mojarra Stela 1, dated to roughly AD 155, tells of the ruler's ritual bloodletting by piercing his penis and his buttocks, as well as what appears to be a ritual sacrifice of the ruler's brother-in-law. Epi-Olmec culture was a Cultural area in the central region of the present-day Mexican state of Veracruz, concentrated in the Papaloapan River La Mojarra Stela 1 is a Mesoamerican carved monument ( Stela) dating from the 2nd century CE [6]
Bloodletting permeated Maya life. Kings performed bloodletting at every major political event. Building dedications, burials, marriages, and births all required bloodletting. [7] As demonstrated by Yaxchilan Lintel 24 and 25, and duplicated in Lintels 17 and 15, bloodletting in Maya culture was also a means to a vision quest, where fasting, loss of blood, and perhaps hallucenogenics lead to visions of ancestors or gods. A vision quest is a Rite of passage in some Native American cultures.
Contemporaneous with the Maya, the south-central panel at the Classic era South Ballcourt at El Tajin shows the rain god piercing his penis, the blood from which flows into and replenishes a vat of the alcoholic ritual drink pulque. Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica into a number of named successive eras or periods from the earliest evidence of human habitation El Tajín is a Pre-Columbian archaeological site located in the present-day municipality of Poza Rica, in the Mexican state of Veracruz. Pulque, or octli, is an Alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of the Maguey, and is a traditional native beverage [8]
See also
Notes
- ^ See Joyce et al. According to "Western" philosophical history sacrifice was a deeply Symbolic and highly Ritualized activity among the ancient Maya of Pre-Columbian The Vision Serpent is an important creature in Pre-Columbian Maya mythology. , p. 2.
- ^ Taube, p. 122.
- ^ This particular artifact, from the Snite Museum of Art, is labelled as a bloodletter. There is some disagreement, however, in this identification: Justin Kerr, for example, tentatively identifies similar Maya implements as "symbolic jade versions" of a paint container for a scribe (see "Where Do You Wear Your Paint-Pot?".
- ^ Two apparent perforators hang across the chest of the figure in Monument 6 of Laguna de los Cerros. Taube, p. 123.
- ^ Icons which represent bloodletting are thought to include a fish zoomorph. See Joyce et al.
- ^ Kaufman (2000) and Justeson and Kaufman (2001).
- ^ Schele and Miller, p. 175-176.
- ^ Wilkerson, p. 66.
References
- Demarest, Arthur (2004) Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization, Social Science, 390 pages.
- Evans, Susan Toby Ancient Mexico & Central America.
- Herndon, Julia A. ; Rosemary A. Joyce (2003) Mesoamerican Archaeology: Theory and Practice, Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology, Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 978-0631230526.
- Joyce, Rosemary; Edging, Richard; Lorenz, Karl; Gillespie, Susan (1991) "Olmec Bloodletting: An Iconographic Study" in Sixth Palenque Roundtable, 1986, ed. V. Fields, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma.
- Justeson, John S. , and Terrence Kaufman (2001) Epi-Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing and Texts.
- Kaufman, Terrence (2000) "Early Mesoamerican Writing Systems" on University of Pittsburgh Department of Anthropology website (accessed January 2008).
- Kerr, Justin, "Where Do You Wear Your Paint-Pot?", accessed April 2008.
- Schele, Linda; and Mary Ellen Miller (1986). Linda Schele ( 30 October 1942 - 18 April, 1998) was a noted expert in the field of Maya Epigraphy and Iconography Mary Ellen Miller (b December 30, 1952) is an American Art historian and academic at Yale University. The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. George Braziller. ISBN 0-8076-1278-2.
- Tate, Carolyn E (1992) Yaxchilan: The Design of a Maya Ceremonial City 320 pages.
- Taube, Karl (2004), "The Origin and Development of Olmec Research", in Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D. C.
- Wilkerson, S. Jeffrey K. (1991). "Then They Were Sacrificed: The Ritual Ballgame of Northeastern Mesoamerica Through Time and Space", in Vernon Scarborough, David R. Wilcox (Eds. ): The Mesoamerican Ballgame. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press. ISBN 0-8165-1360-0. .
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