Maya cosmos: three thousand years on the shaman’s path

"Maya Cosmos takes this Creation myth from its first expression three thousand years ago by the Olmecs, the first civilization in Central America, to its living expression in a Ch'a-Chak ceremony held in Yukatan a few years ago. As an archaeologist, David Freidel shows how using the myth and understanding its effect on the artifacts and architecture created by the ancients help explain what we excavate from the ground. As an epigrapher and iconographer, Linda Schele reads the texts and scenes that preserve the myth for the modern world. Between them, the cosmos of the ancient Maya comes to life and reveals the core of one of the greatest traditions of religious thought known from the ancient world." "However, the great contribution of Maya Cosmos comes in the connections it makes between the ancient and the modern Maya. Neither the Maya nor their religion is dead. Invited into their world by the Maya themselves, Freidel and Schele convey their personal experiences..."