miller's crossing

NYT: "A detail from a vivid Maya mural depicting scenes of the creation story and, at the center, the maize god, who crowns himself king. The 30-foot-long mural was uncovered at the San Bartolo site in Guatemala." (photo: Kenneth Garrett © National Geographic)

The New York Times has a story on an old Mayan mural recent discovered. Scientists have dated the painting at about 100 B.C. It is apparently much older than other examples of Mayan painting that have been discovered.

From the Times:

"In Western terms," said William Saturno, an archaeologist at the University of New Hampshire who is a research associate at Harvard, "it's like knowing only modern art and then stumbling on a Michelangelo or a Leonardo."

In a statement released by the National Geographic Society, a supporter of the research, Dr. Saturno wrote, "The mural shows that early Maya painting had achieved a high level of sophistication and grace well before the great works of the Classic Maya in the seventh century."

It seems to me that modern Western culture's ideas about progress and advancement inhibit our ability to recognize that the humans who lived centuries, if not millennia, before us were not the blunt, insensitive beings that are often implied. There is no telling the level of intelligence and comprehension possessed by earlier men and women. It's fairly well known and acknowledged that the Mayans were great astronomers. I'd argue that their calendar system is more sophisticated than our present one. Not only was it reckoned to the sun and moon, but also Venus.

I've been reading about early Christianity lately. Their level of debate over Genesis, for example, seems more nuanced than what we currently are seeing. ... Maybe it's comforting to know these kind of theological disagreements have been going on a long time. However, as someone who also believes that we need to have some serious cultural evolution happening, it might not be all that comforting a thought.