Posst 4 - Evil Spirits Live Here

Post 4 - Evil Spirits Live Here

This is Post 4.  To start at the beginning, go to Post 1.

This folklore tale explains why many of the current Mayan villagers do not go near the ancient city.  Could it also explain why their ancestors abandoned it?

I am familiar with folklore, love to collect tales told by the old oystermen of the Chesapeake Bay in the maritime town where I grew up.  I knew from experience that most folklore has a scrap of truth in it.

I suspected this ‘evil spirits’ tale began a long time ago, and it told me that something very traumatic happened to drive the ancient Mayans away from the city,  It had been retold as a warning for the many generations that followed, and is still being retold.

For a folklore tale to be retold hundreds of years is not unusual, if the event was important enough.  Perhaps I would find the scrap of truth in this ‘evil spirits’ tale.  If I did then it could reveal the secret to the famous unsolved mystery, it could tell me why the city was abandoned.  I would have loved to spend several hours, maybe days, talking to the Mayans of the village where our guide lived, perhaps they could tell me more about those ‘evil spirits’. 

But the excursion had ended, the bus driver needed to hurry us back to the cruise ship.  It would raise anchor and sail for Miami before dark. 

This Mayan Mystery fascinated me, especially the ‘evil spirits’ tale the guide told us.  I wanted to learn more, so when we returned home, I began to study Mayan history as intently as possible even though a great distance now separated me from where it all happened.  I looked for it on the internet, I watched for it on TV history channels, I read books and searched old National Geographic articles about it.  I tried to figure out why those ancient people abandoned their city.

 Several theories have been offered by researchers, but all of them have flaws, so nobody knows the answer.   We can be sure only that what happened there was sudden and unexpected, and it was complete.  When the ancients abandoned a city, they left behind cook pots and tools that are normally carried when people move, and also jewelry and even valuable jade carvings.  They must have left in a panic, and they never returned.

If none of the existing theories by researchers could possibly provide the answer to the mystery, what could?  Maybe the ‘evil spirits’ tale of the Mayan villagers would explain what the archeologists could not.  I wanted to return to Belize and learn what I could from those villagers.  If I could find the scrap of truth in that folklore tale, that could be the answer.

My Search for Evil Spirits

When we returned home, our son gave us airline tickets so we could go to Belize again.  This time we would stay long enough to visit additional historic sites and to talk with some of the people.  I especially wanted to learn what I could from the remote villagers who lived near the abandoned cities.  Many of these Mayans live in thatched homes similar to those of their ancestors.  These modern day Mayans grind their corn by hand, and they bake their bread in ovens made of dried mud and rocks and heated by burning sticks, and they still follow many of the same practices as a thousand years ago, when the city was abandoned.  I should learn much about the ancients by observing these people.

           
            The previous photo is of a thatched home recently built by a young Mayan family.  Their oven made of dried mud and rocks is behind the house, but does not show in this photo.

If I wanted to discover the scrap of truth behind that ‘evil spirits’ tale, I needed to discover what these rural Mayans know.  On this trip, we visited remote villages and caverns where ancient priests held sacred ceremonies, and we also explored additional abandoned cities.

I would stand in the plaza of an abandoned city, in front of the pyramid that was the center of their religious activities, and I would imagine the events of a thousand years ago, the time that great empire was at the peak of its achievements.   I gathered enough information that I could imagine the way those ancient Mayans lived. 

I could even visualize the way that ‘evil spirits’ tale started.  I had learned that those people worshiped spirit gods, so that explains the ‘spirits’ part of the tale.  But they depended on those spirits to protect them and make their crops grow, so why did they call the spirits ‘evil?’

They must have run away from the city because they feared those spirits.  With this scrap of truth, this knowledge of the spirits they worshiped yet feared, I began to develop a new theory for the abandonment.  However, I did not know why they feared the spirits so much they would flee the city in panic and never return.

My new theory would not dispute any of the discoveries of archeologists, in fact, it would use their findings but in a different way than the existing theories.  It would add to those findings the scrap of truth I had found in the ‘evil spirits’ folklore tale.

Go to Post 5 to learn about those ‘evil spirits.’