"Maya Wisdom and the Survival of Our Planet presents the Maya way of seeing and interacting with the world that embodies lessons and provides solutions to ensure a sustainable future of Earth. This book is based on over three decades of working with Mayaassociates in Belize, Central America on the ancestral Maya as an archaeologist and approaches the future through the lens of the Maya non-anthropocentric inclusive worldview. Ancestral Maya people worked with, not against, nature. Nor did they privilegehumans at the expense of nonhumans. Their engagement with the tropical environment was expressed in a landscape of green cities, farmsteads, gardens, fields, forests, and sacred places. The Maya built green cities that drew people in through royal reservoirs, a system that lasted over 1,000 years in the southern lowlands (c. 300 BCE-900 CE). After taking the reader on a journey through Maya history, their tropical world, and how they lived in it and engaged with nonhumans through ceremonies, the book concludes with concrete solutions that bridge the past and present for the future. Conditions are not going to change but people can. Maya resilience is a testament for how to move forward, and this book provides a roadmap on how to do so"--
Inspired by decades of archaeological research on the ancestral Maya, Maya Wisdom and the Survival of Our Planet provides a practical roadmap on how to sustainably address climate change and environmental degradation. The author shows how insights of the Maya--past and present--are vital for the survival of our planet and calls for collaborating with rather than dominating the nonhuman world.
We now live in the Anthropocene, the first epoch of our own making. We have altered the Earth's atmosphere, landscapes, and bodies of water. The burning of fossil fuels has warmed the planet enough to change weather patterns, melt glaciers, and raise sea levels, a situation made worse by rampant deforestation and resource depletion. Many look to governments to confront these existential challenges. In Maya Wisdom and the Survival of Our Planet, Lisa Lucero looks to the Maya, past and present.
Through the lens of the traditional Maya inclusive worldview--one in which humans are part of the world, not separate from it, and where everything is connected--Lucero provides a practical roadmap on how to sustainably address climate change and environmental degradation. She shows how the Maya collaborate with rather than try to subjugate forests, animals, soils, water, and other nonhuman entities. The Maya sustainably farmed for millennia and provided goods, labor, and services to their kings in cities. In return, kings performed vital ceremonies to the Rain God Chahk, other gods, and ancestors to replenish urban reservoirs that lasted throughout the long dry season--a balancing act that worked for over 1,000 years.
Lucero shows how approaches to tackle climate change from the bottom-up, beginning with the family or household, are just as important as top-down governmental mitigation, and how learning from traditional knowledge is vital for the survival of us all. She brings to life the tropical jungles of Central America and reveals the valuable solutions its ancient and contemporary inhabitants offer us to save our planet.
