Mesoamerican Mythology

This is the mythology of the Maya lowlands and highlands, of the Mixtec and Zapotec, and behind them of the Olmec, whose iconography everyone afterwards inherited. Its survival is an accident of what was not destroyed: four Maya codices out of a library, a handful of Mixtec screenfolds, inscriptions on stone that were only deciphered within living memory.

The Popol Vuh is the great text — a K’iche’ Maya account written in alphabetic script in the sixteenth century, telling of the Hero Twins who defeat the lords of Xibalba at their own ballgame, and of the several failed attempts to make people, from mud and from wood, before maize succeeds.

Time is the recurring subject. The Long Count is a calendar built to hold millions of days, and the great cycles of creation and destruction are counted in it exactly.