[Aztlan] USA Today article on exploration of the Maya cenotes

[Bradley Russell]

Thanks for the article. 

 

But, wanted to take exception to one thing that drives me crazy in the popular media and to a lesser degree in academic circles.

 

I hate when I see comments like, "Why did the ancient Maya culture disappear more than a millennium ago?"

 

As someone that has spent nearly a decade working at the Postclassic political capital of Mayapan and years before that working Postclassic sites in Northern Belize, I constantly find myself annoyed by this notion that the Maya and their culture blinked out of existence with the so called "collapse" around 900 AD.  That could not be farther from the truth.  While the collapse did signal a major decline in the central Peten region and an accompanying change in politics, economy, religion, etc., the Maya culture continued (and continunes) to thrive in other regions.  

 

Academics have in large part written off the Postclassic period for decades.  That is a shame.  The more I work in the period, the more impressed I am with it and the accomplishments of those living through it.  I am working hard everyday to document the importance of the time period and it regularly irks me to see either the popular press or academics dismiss it out of hand.

 

Just a pet peeve,

 

Bradley Russell, Ph.D.

 
For more on my ongoing work at Mayapan please see my dissertation website:

http://mayapanperiphery.net/


 

 



 

> From: michaelruggeri at mac.com
> To: aztlan at lists.famsi.org
> Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 10:28:21 -0500
> Subject: [Aztlan] USA Today article on exploration of the Maya cenotes
> 
> Listeros,
> 
> Fellow listero Lisa Lucero is investigating the Maya cenotes in the 
> Yucatan. USA Today has an article about the investigations here;
> 
> http://www.archaeologynews.org/story.asp? 
> ID=464044&Title=Archaeologists dive deep into the lost world of the Maya
> 
> A tiny URL;
> http://tinyurl.com/nnsd7w
> 
> Mike Ruggeri
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