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- [00:01]
Progressive Insurance Narrator
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Progressive Insurance Narrator
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Mallory E. Matsumoto
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Mallory E. Matsumoto
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Mallory E. Matsumoto
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Mallory E. Matsumoto
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- [02:28]
Emily Briffett
The Maya have a rich and varied story world shaped by diverse traditions and communities. In this episode of the History Extra Podcast, Emily Briffet speaks to Mallory E. Matsumoto about her recent book, the Maya Myths, to find out more. They explore stories of destruction and rebirth, journeys into the underworld, and tales of people made of maize dough, revealing a living tradition that blurs the lines between history and storytelling.
- [02:57]
Podcast Host
Mallory, thank you so much for joining me on the History Extra podcast. In this episode, we're delving into the myths and and stories of the Maya people. But first, to situate ourselves. Would you mind describing Mayan society to us? Mayan history? And who do we mean by the word Maya?
- [03:16]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
Yes, you're starting with the easy question. So what do we mean when we use the word Maya or Mayan? We mean a lot of different things, and sometimes we don't always mean the same thing, which is why it's great that you're asking this. So we're sort of on the same page to start out with. At the most micro level, the word Maya refers to one of the approximately 30 languages from the Mayan language family that's spoken, or it's the Emic word that Yucatec Maya speakers use for their own language. They call it Mayaan. But since, like, the 19th century, about the word Maya has come to be used for this whole group of communities defined less a shared ethnic identity than really just a shared linguistic identity. The speakers of Mayan languages. So we now talk about Maya peoples as having first sort of appeared, at least as far as we can trace them, in the archaeological record, about a thousand years before our current era, so about 1000 BCE. And then there are, of course, Maya peoples up through the present. But it's important to note, though, that these people who we sort of scholars use to talk about this umbrella term, they don't necessarily all identify as Maya. They primarily identify as sort of a more local identity that's attached to their specific community.
- [04:38]
Podcast Host
So when we're going to be talking about them today, we're going to be using that kind of conglomerate term.
- [04:43]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
Yes.
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Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [04:44]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
And that was sort of one of the challenges that I was sort of wrestling with when I was writing this book, is trying to, you know, necessarily generalizing for this audience, but also trying to convey that nuance of the fact that this is not one homogenous group that, you know, doesn't see itself the same way and doesn't necessarily always affiliate with this idea of my identity across space some time.
- [05:07]
Podcast Host
So obviously, we're talking about lots of different local communities. Is there anything that joins them in sense of a collective identity, or is that simply an imposed thing?
- [05:17]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
It's not an entirely imposed thing. I mean, to a Certain extent, it is imposed just because, like, we as scholars need. Need words and categories to talk about things. So in some senses, again, like, if you'd walk up to people today in these communities, most of them would not tell you. Like, you know, the first thing they would tell you is not that I am Maya. They would tell you, you know, I am from this place or I am from this particular linguistic community. And then particularly, the people who have had more access to education then might say, you know, I'm Maya. I'm part of this larger sort of pan regional identity. But it's not totally invented. Speakers of Mayan languages, first of all, they're all speaking languages that are somehow related to each other. So the Mayan language family, you can compare it to, like, the Indo European language family, where the languages that belong to it in most cases are not mutually intelligible, but they're related to each other. So they have similar vocabulary or grammatical structures. But we can also see, which I find particularly interesting in sort of the ancient past, we can see that there are regional commonalities that were shared and were sort of the basis or at least expressions of a shared identity, at least among the elite class. But it seems to not just have been unique to them. So we can see, for instance, their particular forms of artistic representation that they use. The imagery from the Maya region looks different from imagery from other cultural areas right around it. And even in their images, when sort of quote, unquote, foreigners appear, so non Maya people, they're often portrayed looking differently. So there's a sense of difference there, even if, you know, maybe they identified particular differences as more or less important than we do today. And there's also, you know, similar gods that they talk about and depicted in their imagery. There's a shared hieroglyphic writing system they used, at least in ancient times, and sort of other shared sort of cultural concepts. And so it's, in some ways, it's an imposed category, but it's not entirely artificial. There's certainly something to it, and that's sort of the best word that we have come up with now to sort of talk about the larger civilization that has, again, a lot of diversity within it, but still those shared ideas and beliefs and values.
- [07:35]
Podcast Host
Obviously, we've spoken about some of the challenges of this and some of the nuances. Is it possible to give us a sense of place and of a possible timeline?
- [07:44]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
Yes, yeah, certainly. I mean, the place part of this is a little more easily to wrestle with. That's also part of, again, like, why this Category of Maya is not totally arbitrary. That sort of the people who we have called and can identify as Maya from sort of archaeological ancient times up until the present traditionally have occupied this area of Mesoamerica, so Mexico and sort of north and Central America, basically in sort of southern southeastern Mexico, all across Guatemala and Belize and then the western parts of what are now Honduras and El Salvador. So that's really the area we're talking about now. Of course, you know, my peoples across all times have moved around places. There's also large diasporic communities today in the United States and Canada in particular. But that's still sort of where most Maya people live, and that's certainly traditionally where they're from.
- [08:36]
Podcast Host
And about the timeline as well, Would you mind telling us about this? Yes.
- [08:39]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
So timeline, again, we sort of archeologists first start recognizing features of quote, unquote, Maya civilization in the material record starting at about 1000 BCE ish. And then it goes straight up until the present day. And of course, you know, there's been a lot of change over time. People have moved around, different social systems have sort of taken root and then dissolved and been replaced by others. But it's pretty much 3,000 plus years of occupation of this part of the world. And also what's really wonderful about the Maya region in particular is that we do have a hieroglyphic writing system starting about three to 400 years BCE. And so we have over 2,000 years essentially of written historical record as well.
- [09:29]
Podcast Host
And we're here today to talk about the stories that they shared, the myths, as it's titled in your book. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about. Can we call them myths?
- [09:38]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
We can call them myths. It's useful to call them myths just because that's a word that English speakers understand. There are certain ideas we have attached to it. But I wanted to make very clear that at least in the Maya context and in the Indigenous American context more generally, myths don't mean like that word doesn't mean quite the same thing as what it may in other contexts that myths, and at least particularly in the colloquial way that we use the word in English, there's a particular truth value that we attach to a myth. And so we distinguish between myth and history. Where a myth is basically, it tends to be sort of a nice story that's, you know, fun to listen to and interesting. But we assume that it's either probably not true or it's definitely not true. You know, dismissing something as a myth as a way of saying that that's not real or that didn't really happen. Whereas history for us is an account that is maybe a little more on the boring side, but we assume that it is true, or at least is aspiring to be true. Whereas in this context, what I mean by myths in this particular story are accounts where that truth value is not really so important. And it's more the value of these narratives is really in connecting the past to the present and then looking ahead to the future as well. And so it's about creating this, which the anthropologist Frank Solomon, who coined this term mytho history, that he used to talk about these kinds of narratives in the Andes of South America, is also really useful in the Maya context as well, because it's about creating sort of these horizontal connections between time and between, you know, actors in different times, but creating this sense of sort of narrative continuity. And that's really the important part of these narratives. But certainly the stories are at least I think, entertaining and interesting as well.
- [11:29]
Podcast Host
So hopefully this is some really well needed context that listeners should bear in mind as we talk through some of the stories. One thing I wanted to ask you about is obviously we're talking about lots of different communities. So when we're talking about the story world, are we talking about one single story world or more of a constellation of lots of different stories?
- [11:50]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
It's certainly more of a constellation of lots of different stories. I mean, there was no point sort of in the history of the Maya region and sort of Maya civilization, there's never been any point where the whole region has been unified politically and certainly not sort of religiously in the sense that we have religious traditions that are really text focused, like Christianity or Judaism or Islam. There's not been a canon of religious accounts basically for the Maya region in the same way. And so although you do see a lot of patterns and motifs that appear in different stories and different times and places in the region, there's not this idea of like a standard account, which, honestly, I find it makes it a little more interesting just because you see more variation pop up. And that variation gives you an idea of sort of where different communities, different storytellers place their emphasis, or maybe how that emphasis has shifted over time as well.
- [12:46]
Podcast Host
How are these stories passed down? Was this an oral tradition or was there any sort of sacred texts?
- [12:52]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
I mean, thankfully for the Maya region, we do have this long historical record. And so we have hieroglyphic inscriptions that contain accounts of these types of narratives that go back until 300, 400 BCE. The challenge with Those, however, is that, first of all, most of the hieroglyphic texts that we have surviving don't record those kinds of narratives in them, they're really focused more on sort of political histories, sort of accounts of kings and dynasties, or they're focused more on sort of clinical information, divination practices. They're not necessarily sitting down and, like, writing out an entire myth for us. So scholars have reconstructed bits and pieces of them from the hieroglyphic narratives and tried to sort of fill them in and create a continuous narrative. But the sort of. The best, most thorough accounts we get of these narratives really starts during the colonial period when we do have some sort of continuous alphabetic texts where they actually are writing down these narratives. The Popol Vuh is probably the most well known example. It's a manuscript. The oldest copy we have is from the 17th century. It probably dates more to the 16th century in terms of the content. And then we have, of course, oral histories that have been recorded more recently by ethnographers. But certainly even the hieroglyphic accounts from, you know, a thousand, two thousand years ago, those were primarily oral texts before they were written down. And so certainly all of these accounts were born as oral texts. And then the ones that were written down or have been recorded by ethnographers are the ones that we're fortunate enough to have today.
- [14:29]
Podcast Host
Of course, we're gonna talk about some of these, but one quick question before we do is we're talking about a really long period of time here. Would the stories that people be familiar with today reflect those that were being talked about several thousand years ago?
- [14:42]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
Yes and no. I mean, today we have the interesting sort of twist that some of these older accounts have now been sort of reconstructed by scholars and have been published and translated into, at least into span, if not into some Mayan languages. And they've been even accounts that, like the Popol Vuh, that were originally written down in a Mayan language, the Popol Vukh was written down in a language called Kiche Maya, which is the most widely spoken Mayan language in Guatemala. Typed printed versions of that have now been published. And so readers of Spanish or Mayan languages can now go and, like, read these books in the library. And so, you know, that's sort of bringing some of these older histories back into circulation. Now, some of these accounts certainly never went away and stayed in circulation through that whole period. But now more people have access to sort of the older accounts that maybe had not been circulated for a while, too. Yes. On the one Hand, you have this long line of tradition. But as within any sort of text tradition, you know, some information inevitably gets left behind. Along the way, new stuff comes in. And now we have this sort of feeder of sort of older things that are being brought back into circulation because of publication and better access to that type of information.
- [15:56]
Podcast Host
Amazing. That's incredibly cool that it's such a long history and such a rich history over such a long period of time. So I would like to get into some of the stories. Obviously you've said that we can't exactly do this sort of the greatest hits of the Mayan people's sort of account of this. But I'm hoping we can at least discuss some of the big themes that would offer a small glimpse into their worldview history historically. I suppose we should really start right at the beginning. Could you perhaps tell us about the origins of the cosmos?
- [16:26]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
Yes, well, I mean, so one of the challenges with this book was sort of choosing what myths to put in. In some ways it's nice that there was no standard canon, so I had some freedom in terms of what came in. But I also really wanted in some ways to highlight narratives that maybe people don't know about as much, also to give a sense of just the great diversity. And so the origin of the cosmos. I mean, the narratives I chose to highlight, particularly in the first chapter, the first one, the primary one, originates from the northern Yucatan Peninsula, from sort of the Yucatec tradition. So, I mean, it certainly contains a lot of themes though, that you would see in accounts from other areas. But this is not the only way that Maya peoples have thought about how their world came to be. But certainly some of the themes that it raises that you see across the region are this idea of, you know, the gods, where basically they are first creating this world. The idea that it wasn't, as opposed in the judo Christian tradition, it wasn't just like a total blank slate with nothing there, that there was land and water at least to start out with, and the gods were also there to begin with. And certainly also this idea that time is a really important concept from the very beginning, that the birth of the world is also associated with the birth of time. The movement of the planets starting to kick in. And then of course, like as a corollary of that, the birth of the calendar and the way of tracking time.
- [18:01]
Progressive Insurance Narrator
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- [20:19]
Home Depot / 7-Eleven Advertiser
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- [20:49]
Podcast Host
of the things I found quite striking as I was reading your book was about. The Maya seemed to have sort of a cyclical understanding of things. So even about the creation of the world, how it was created and then would be destroyed. And so the past iterations are destroyed to make way for the new. Perhaps you could tell us about some of those stories. I was curious about the tale of the wooden and the Reid people.
- [21:12]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
Yes, that's certainly another feature of sort of Maya creation stories. Is this ideal idea, again, very different from the Judeo Christian tradition, that there is more than one creation, and that, like us, the people who occupy this current tradition or this current creation, we are not the first people. We're probably not gonna be the last people either. And so in that sense, we're not as unique as we maybe like to think we are. This idea of multiple creations, you can find that in a lot of different accounts from across the Maya area. And the one with the wooden and reed people, that's. That's sort of a classic version. The best known version of that comes from the Popol Vu, this text that I mentioned earlier. And it basically conveys this idea again, that there were different people who occupied the world before we got here, and that they were made out of different stuff. People today are thought of as being made out of maize or maize dough, but past peoples maybe were made out of wood or reeds or some other materials. And the gods basically were experimenting and experimenting with making people out of different stuff, making people that sort of behaved in different types of ways, and eventually they just were dissatisfied with how the reed and wooden people were running things and decided to just start over. So in some ways, that does sort of suggest that maybe we should get our act together, at least try to treat the gods nicely and treat our world nicely so that we can continue living here.
- [22:40]
Podcast Host
One thing that people might be familiar with coming to sort of the Mayan calendar is that idea of 2012, the end of the world, that kind of thing, the end of our story. Are there any stories about the end of our world specifically that are documented or we know about?
- [22:56]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
I mean, there are some accounts of that, but there are often more accounts of how past creation ended, essentially as giving clues as to how and why our creation would certainly end. You made this point earlier about this sort of cyclical or repetitive clinical system that the Maya had. In this sense of time, it's less cyclical or circular, rather. When I'm telling my students about it, I like to tell them it's sort of like an upward spiral, that it's sort of, you know, things don't repeat themselves. And certainly, like, people aren't sort of reborn in the sense that they may be in different traditions, but in the Maya conception, sort of the past is really important to understand because it gives you sort of a template or an idea of what might happen in the future or even in the present, and how ones should behave in the present as well, that ancestors sort of are replaced by, particularly, like grandparents are replaced by their grandchildren, essentially. And so there's this sense of renewal. And so the idea of a creation or being destroyed or a person dying, for instance, is not quite the same strong cut with the life that we're living now, because it sort of continues on in this forward progression of society that's always carrying with it a piece of itself from the past into the future.
- [24:14]
Podcast Host
Would you say that it's quite a reflective way of thinking?
- [24:19]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
It's very reflective. I think it's also, frankly, much more nuanced than the way that we, or at least I, grew up thinking about, of creation and destruction, of this idea that destruction of something is also an opportunity. And that's also necessary because renewal can't happen without destruction. Society cannot keep moving forward without the ancestors passing on the current crop or the current harvest cannot be planted without the plants that are already on the land being burned down. And so there's much more of this sense of innate hope or promise contained in these acts of destruction.
- [25:00]
Podcast Host
I suppose we've mentioned how in one understanding of this, about previous destruction of previous iterations of the world, we should maybe come on to talk about how groups thought about how Mayan peoples came to be. Their origins as well.
- [25:16]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
Yes. So they came about in sort of the same ways that the previous people came about. These wooden ored peoples are, you know, people who basically preceded us in the world that the gods were trying to populate their world with beings who would, one, take care of it, but two, also take care of the gods in a certain sense. There's certainly a sense of reciprocity, obligation that the gods made us the people. And so we are expected, one, to sort of, like, take care of what they've given us, but also two, to also feed the gods through sacrifices, through giving to them, basically, and to reciprocate basically the many things that they have given us as well. And so in these creation stories, that's often how this relationship is portrayed from the very beginning at the creation of the people. And again, the sort of the most famous the Popol Vuh account and as well as. And other accounts from across the Maya region, the people who inhabit the earth today sort of us were made out of maize dough. And, you know, we're not perfect, but we're at least holding on there for the time being.
- [26:25]
Podcast Host
Maize seems to be quite important in the story. From what I read in your book, there's a mention of a Maize God as well. Yes, yes.
- [26:32]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
The Maize God has many faces and many different ways in which he appears. And we have a lot of beautiful imagery of him, particularly from the sort of pre colonial period of the Maize God and all of his different. I mean, maize in this part of the world was and is the staple crop, similar to how, you know, wheat or rice have had that same function in other parts of the world. And so you can really see there's a lot of stories that point back to this idea, not just in the Maya region, but across all of Mesoamerica, that maize really is sort of the substance of people as well. And that consuming maize, consuming this staple crop, is really tied up with all these other ideas about what it means to be human, what it means to be Maya, and what it means to be from a particular place or community.
- [27:17]
Podcast Host
Could you maybe tell us about some of these stories that exist around this foodstuff?
- [27:21]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
There's two that sort of come immediately to mind. There's the one account in the book that's retold about sort of the cycle of the Maize God, or the life of the Maize God, essentially. And then there's other much more recent accounts of basically how humans came to have this stuff that we called maize now. And the Maze God story is interesting because he's really a figure who is very prominently represented in pre colonial imagery from the Maya region and also in some of the hieroglyphic inscriptions, too. And so we can sort of reconstruct his account mostly based on images and on some hieroglyphic texts. But that, again, the Maize God himself embodies the sustenance of the people and sort of the sustenance that keeps the world going. But he also embodies this idea that I mentioned before of sort of the cycle of renewal and destruction and rebirth. Because the Maize God, with every planting cycle is essentially born. Sprouts like bears, fruit is harvested and then is destroyed to create the fertile ground for the next crop cycle. And so, again, really, this idea of destruction is paving the way for renewal and rebirth and is really necessary for life to continue that the Maze God himself really embodies that. And you can see that in his account. And then in terms of the stories of how the people came to have maize. I mean, there are an endless number of these types of stories from across the Bay Region, right. And so in some ways, the ones that I chose to put in the book were kind of arbitrary. But I really enjoyed this particular set of accounts because they all come from one area of the western Guatemalan highlands in the department of Huehuetenango, and they're all from communities that are not particularly far apart from each other. And so there's some very obvious similarities between the accounts, but they all are slightly different in their details. In broad strokes, the story goes that basically one day a man finds maize and thanks to some animal helpers, is able to obtain it and start to cultivate it. And that's sort of the beginning of maize agriculture. But there's different variations. The animal helpers essentially, are not always quite the same constellation of characters. The location of where this mountain is varies depending on what community is telling the story. You know, sometimes they'll say, it's the mountain right next door to us. And then the community in the other valley will be like, no, it's this mountain that we can see from our backyard. So it really, again, illustrates this nice sort of, like, balance between diversity and similarities. But certainly that's another theme that runs throughout these stories, is that humans are not alone in this world. And that sort of these creatures that we refer to as animals are, like, not maybe quite as different from us as we like to think they are.
- [30:09]
Podcast Host
I was going to say about this. A few of the stories that you tell in your book, animals are really prominent within them. So we've got rabbits, you've got macaws. What symbolic role do they play in this story?
- [30:22]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
Certainly in all of the accounts, at least the ones that appear in the book, and really the most of the ones that I'm familiar with, like, humans are still the main protagonists of these stories, but animals are very important, either allies or enemies or sort of, you know, additional characters within the cast. And I think a way of expressing, again, this idea that humans, we are somehow distinct in the way that we are dressed and the way that we behave and whatnot, but again, the world does not just belong to us, and we're, again, this. This. The. This idea of reciprocity between relationships. It's not just because between humans and gods, it's also between humans and animals and humans and plants and the land and sort of this idea of like, you give me something and I will give something back. And so certainly you see, humans are getting a Lot of help from animals in all of these accounts, which, again, suggest that, like, we can't always just do it by ourselves. We need some help along the way.
- [31:19]
Podcast Host
With that in mind, we've mentioned, obviously, the Maize God, but were there any other particular deities? I don't know if that's quite the right word that could be called upon or. Or perhaps should be called upon if in need. And how could people hope to communicate with them?
- [31:36]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
I mean, certainly that's the role of diviners or ritual specialists even in my community just today, as they are the ones who really have the skill set and the knowledge and the relationships basically to be able to mediate between the other community members and the gods and ancestors. And so in some ways, that type of communication and those relationships can happen always on an individual level. But there are also certain community members who are more or less gifted in navigating those relationships. And sort of in the ancient past, too, we saw that Maya kings during the Classic period, which is basically most of the first millennium ce, they were the ones who were considered sort of the primary mediators between the people and the gods and ancestors. That was a huge source of their authority as well.
- [32:26]
Podcast Host
Was there any sense of having to please them? You know, actually not just being diplomatic, but actually we might have to appease for fear of divine retribution, say, oh, absolutely.
- [32:38]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
I don't know if divine retribution. I mean, it's not quite the same way that, like, at least I think about divine retribution when I hear that phrase. But certainly if the gods were not happy, then things started to destabilize. Maybe the next harvest didn't turn out particularly well, or a war breaks out, or there's a drought. And then, you know, the first reaction is to think, okay, there's something that I, or we are not doing correctly in terms of our treatment to the gods. Let's make another round of sacrifices, let's perform another round of rituals to see if this sort of fulfills what the gods are asking for. And so that was. Yes, I mean, that was also a huge liability for these kings and queens in ancient times too, is that if the people got the feeling that their sovereign was not doing a great job of mediating that relationship, then the next thought was, of course, okay, we need to replace the sovereign, because we certainly can't replace the gods.
- [33:38]
Podcast Host
Okay, instead of looking perhaps towards deities and the gods, what about the underworld? How did you manage the earthly relationship with. With below stairs, essentially?
- [33:48]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
Certainly the underworld pops up in several of these stories. And the creatures that inhabit the underworld that are also gods, and they're, again, very important to what's happening above World two, and they interact with it. But the creatures of the underworld are often portrayed as, you know, kind of dirty or sick or otherwise, like, kind of unsavory. It's certainly not comparable to this idea of a Christian hell, for instance. It's not a place where ancestors are condemned to go when they've, like, behaved poorly. But it is this place that you need to be very careful about and that, you know, sort of like every interaction with the gods that you have to tread carefully and be respectful and sort of know what you're dealing with. But the underworld is also a place that can be accessed from the world that we inhabit, particularly through mountains and caves, and that comes across in these accounts as well, is that you have people and gods basically in and out of the underworld for various reasons.
- [34:47]
Podcast Host
It sounds like as problematic relationship and as deadly a relationship as you might initially expect. Are there any particular cases that really bring this to light?
- [34:57]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
Certainly the most important, or at least the most famous account, the one that also appears in this book, is one that's again told from this manuscript I mentioned called the Popol Vuh that really gives really excellent account of interactions with the underworld. Particularly, there's these two protagonists in the Popol Vuv that are sort of colloquially referred to now as the hero twins because they are two twin brothers who do heroic things. And these hero twins essentially are summoned down to the underworld by the underworld gods. This can happen too. You can be summoned down into the underworld. And so they are essentially expected to go through a series of trials that they manage to pass all of them because they are very clever. And they do sort of stumble at one point. There's this one trial in the Bat House where they sort of lose focus a little bit, and one of them loses his head as a result of it, but they're able to recover. The guy gets his head back and it's all fine. But that is a really illustrative account, again, for sort of how these interactions with the gods looks like. Also, it illustrates a motif that you see throughout sort of the Maya narrative tradition of these sort of younger heroes who maybe seem like they're disadvantaged, actually overcoming their opponents, who, you know, superficially appear to be stronger. And they often do so by using cleverness or ingenuity rather than brute force. And the hero twins are sort of the archetype or the archetypal example of that.
- [36:33]
Podcast Host
Well, we've said about relationships with celestial realms, with the underworld what about with the world around them, outside of their community, with those peoples, not from their local community? Do we have stories of these? Certainly.
- [36:46]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
And I mean, again, this sort of again brings back to this point that you mentioned of humans and animals. There's this one account from southern Mexico, the La Condon tradition in the Mexican state of Chiapas, where essentially there's this guy who couldn't find a wife. You know, also we have this problem, the 21st century. There's people looking for a partner. And so he ends up getting himself a vulture wife. And so she basically moves in with him and is trying to acclimatize herself to human culture. There's this struggle. One point of marital strife between them is that she really wants to continue eating rotten meat all the time, which he doesn't really approve of. So that's a point of tension. And then essentially there children sort of are the next generation of humans, even though, you know, clearly they have this mixed background. And so it's a really interesting case of one just sort of again, thinking about what it means to be human or to be Maya is that you eat maize and you particularly, you eat tortillas, you eat tamale, you eat atole, you eat these things that are maize based. You don't eat meat as your primary staple, and certainly not rotten meat. But he's just trying to get her to eat maize throughout much of the account. And that's also when their children are born. That's also sort of the first thing that they begin doing for their father is preparing his maize based food for him every day when he's coming back from working in the fields. So on the one hand, it's a sort of a fantastical story of how to incorporate an outsider and how this community was able to keep going despite. Despite sort of the lack of humans. But it's also a really excellent window into again, what it means to be part of this community and how identity is made.
- [38:35]
Podcast Host
How did conquest and colonization shape these stories that were told? Did they at all?
- [38:42]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
They certainly did, but they certainly didn't erase them. And they basically introduced a new set of ideas that could come into interaction with the sort of pre colonial Maya narratives. They blended with each other in really interesting ways. In some ways you also see, of course, there's accounts that may be more familiar to people from the Judeo Christian texts, just because the Spaniards also brought with them Catholicism and they were introducing this religion along with sort of other cultural ideas. And then you see in some books, such as there are these set of books called the Books of Chilam Balam from the northern Yucatan Peninsula, from the Yucatec tradition, that are clearly inspired by interaction with European texts or European traditions, too. And so you see this really creative impulse coming out of this contact or encounter with these European ideas and traditions as well.
- [39:38]
Podcast Host
I suppose. One other thing I should ask you is how the stories of the Maya compare with other stories of Mesoamerica. Is there a similarity? Do they contrast?
- [39:50]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
I mean, there are certainly similarities, which isn't surprising given that these cultures and the peoples of Mesoamerica have been interacting with each other for thousands of years. So it's not surprising that they have some similar ideas. And there are certain similarities in terms of maize agriculture being sort of a staple of sustenance. So that maize plays an important role in accounts told in other places in Mesoamerica as well. But some commonalities that you see also, which certainly will appear if you read Camilla Townsend Aztec Myths book, you see similar ideas of destruction, laying the ground for renewal, of destruction basically being a necessary part of life. Also of this idea of strength and heroism not coming just out of brute force, but it being sort of. The heroes tend to be clever, ingenuous, very creative in solving problems and overcoming their opponents, who, you know, may be physically stronger, but are just, like, not as smart, essentially. And you also see similar accounts of a set of twin brothers or siblings who either collaborate to achieve certain things or have a rivalry between them. And that. That explains certain dualities in the world, like how the sun is created, essentially, or where the planets come from. And so you certainly see a number of really interesting patterns and commonalities across these narrative traditions, even though there's, of course, a lot of differences and diversity as well.
- [41:24]
Podcast Host
As a final question to you, then, Malorie, we've been speaking about merely a fraction of the tales, but if you had to pick one story or one thing that you think best captures the my worldview, what would it be and why?
- [41:42]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
I think I'm gonna evade your question by answering a different one. I don't think that there is one account that sort of encapsulates sort of my civilization or my identity very well. Or I suspect that if you ask 20 people, you get 20 different answers. But the one I can speak to best is, again, really the story in this book that really best captures what I was trying to do with the book itself. And that's a story of this battle that happened in 1524 between the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado and The Eche people who were defending their territory that, you know, from the first invasion of Alvarado, along with his Spanish and mostly indigenous troops who were with him. And that account I find very interesting, not only just because it is something. I mean, this battle actually happened, and we have accounts from Pedro de Alvarado that talk about this, but at the same time, there's this particular figure, the hero on the Iche side, Tecum woman, who's now a national hero in Guatemala as well because of the role he played in this battle. There's been for years a lot of controversy among historians over whether this person even existed or not. And so for me, again, I think that at least my reading of these accounts and the way they were written down in the 16th and 17th centuries is that that that doesn't really matter because, you know, even if Takum Oman maybe didn't have that name, or if he's a stand in for two different people, or even if he actually did existed, he's fulfilling this particular role that is very important for the narrative and also is illustrative of how the Iche authors who wrote the story down conceived of themselves in that moment when colonialism was already firmly established in the region. And they were sort of reflecting on how we got here and also what this means for us moving forward. And so my reading of that is really that this story actually fits really nicely into this. Again, this idea of destruction and renewal, because, spoiler alert, Alvarado ends up winning the battle. Tekumamon, who is the leader of the K' Iche troops who are defending their territory. He is killed by Alvarado in the battle, and the rest of the K' Iche army eventually then surrenders to Alvarado. And that's sort of like Alvarado's first major victory in this part of Guatemala before he and his Spanish indigenous troops move on to continue their invasion elsewhere. But the way that it's told, and given these stories that we know from the Popol Vuh and other accounts, is that this fall of this hero doesn't necessarily mean that it's the end of the story. It might be the end of the story that's written down in these particular accounts. But we see again in the story of the hero twins in the Popol Vuh, they are called down to the underworld by the gods in sort of round two of this story, because their father and uncle were previously called down and didn't make it through the trials that the twins were also asked to go through. And the twins basically are sort of humanity's second chance. And when it's their turn, they manage to get through it and do it correctly and sort of in that sense, redeeming their father and uncle, who did not make it past that. And so this story of Tekumaman and the battle at El Pinal really leaves open that opportunity for other K' Iche descendants of Tecumamamon to step in and sort of maybe continue the work that he wasn't able to finish.
- [45:12]
Emily Briffett
That was Mallory E. Matsumoto speaking to Emily Briffett about her recent book the Maya A Guide to the Gods of Heroes and Ancestors. And if you're interested to hear more about the mythology of the Americas, we spoke to Camilla Townsend about her book on Aztec mythology that Mallory mentioned in this episode. You can find a link to that in the podcast description.
- [45:44]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
I'm not giving up. I am selling the building. The final season of FX is the Bear. The restaurant is flooded.
- [45:55]
Home Depot / 7-Eleven Advertiser
Everything's either gonna be okay.
- [45:57]
Podcast Host
Nope. Stop.
- [45:59]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
Or not. We are outgunned and we are out manned.
- [46:03]
Podcast Host
We have each other.
- [46:06]
Mallory E. Matsumoto
FX's the Bear the Final Season, all
- [46:09]
Home Depot / 7-Eleven Advertiser
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