Show ft A bloodletting BLOOD LETO LETTING mw CEREMONY IN OLD YUCATAN 1290 YEARS AGO Y rig mcw W p X 4 xv T 41 is ta Z lk V the photo Is copied from the vol ume Bi ologia cantrall Cen trall americana Ameri cani cant archeology by A P maudslay lon don 1894 1902 it depicts the in vitiation of a neophyte to the priestly order of the mayas the beginner Is sitting before the head priest and Is drawing across his tongue a rope set with flint knives with which he silts slits his tongue freely symbolically that henceforth he will use speech only to expound the times of the revolutions of the heavenly great ones to whose study he Is now con sec secreted rated the high priest Is richly adorned with a magnificent headdress with in the feathers of which are eight glyphs with a string of tour four more to the left of hia his right hand no doubt those glyphs tell something of the ceremony through which the young er man Is now passing of his con se cration to the service of the gods and the study of their movements in their houses of the sky the height of priestly lore among the maya though a flattened Platt ened forehead yet filled with astronomical skill note the profile of the standing head priest flattened forehead done when he was an infant by ty ing the head between two boards and artificially shaping it to the mark of beauty and distinction among the maya just as the deform ed toot foot marked the aristocratic and high born chinese lady or the long fingernail with the siamese marks that the wearer was so high bred as not to have to use the menial hand or toot foot in the sordidness of getting a living but that the one so eged was above that baseness note too in the head priests nose a nose plug unless one scrutinizes carefully that may be overlooked As an added mark of distinction the honored ones among the maya silt slit the nose and through it a bar of priceless jade that most treasured of all possessions was worn thus further setting its owner apart as a man superior to his fellows the marks on the face are thought by some to be tattoo marks which also was affected by the upper class if not it was an ornament pendant from the forehead dropping down over the ear and tailing falling upon the tape mayhap of the yellow sun metal which the spaniards so cov sought but not tor for spirit ual ends headdresses of feathers were much worn by the maya the volume the temple of the warriors by earl H morris shows in natural colors so well preserved were some of the numbers of such head dresses marvels of skill and beauty and evoking our admiration even at ter the lapse of all the centuries since their time note the long ceremonial wand or longer than a wand a feather tip UP ped lance not tor for warfare but soft ly tipped for the more peaceful work of consecrating this young man s life to sun moon and planets and to making computations of their periods of revolution the maya were fond pond of tattooing and dressed in magnificent bobes robes note the tattoo marks on the head man mans s right arm and just above the wrist of each hand a ot of heavy fabric about his neck lies a necklace ot of polished jade balls down to the wand he Is holding about his waist a much folded loin cloth which tails falls fore and aft in a pendant of which the back one drops to his knees whereas the one in front Is briefer then about the lower leg a highly placed garter ef feet with ball pendants for sandals he wears a richly or lamented namen ted pair of shoes coming well up above the ankle fancy and sometimes with a rather heavy sole much like the chinese soft soled cloth footwear che neophyte bitting it fit the teet leet ot of the blaster master let us now turn our attention to the other personage the young man sits at the feet of the master to be admitted to the study of the gods and their move ments in the maya thought their sun god lived in the sun the moon god in the moon and great kukul kan in the brilliant mansion in the skies which we call venus in the younger man s hands Is seen a rope into which are set at in sharp cutting edges of flint or obsidian he puts his tongue out and draws the rope across it until the jagged knives draw the blood symbolically his tongue hence forth was made unfit tor for the low plane of vulgar ends and was to be used solely in the science of the great ones being admitted to the priestly or der was no foolishness those days any more than was participating in the sun dance a thing of pleasure among those north american in deans who stoically stood the tor ture of the dance until the flesh gave way in their back and loosed them thereafter marked with a badge for fortitude and endurance the younger man in turn has also a magnificent headdress and in his ear lobe is a bar of jade for which a hole had been pierced and no small hole at that note about his neck a great wide banded encircling necklace in the center boss of which Is an image of the sun god about his left wrist the bov en gauntlet a cloak front of braid ed pattern protects his chest it Is all very interesting put the flatheads knew their astronomy to a T somewhere about A D be fore we had arabic numerals and a symbol for zero the maya computed that true years were 1 days today we multiply using the factor of x 2 25 86 4 1 getting 1 not so easy even to us with our borrowed since that time system of POSITION and ZERO what must it have been to the copan academy of science who did it with a string pretty hard for them wasn gasn t it ita no wonder we have to imagine a whole lot of what Is unknown to us but fact Is tact fact pause just a moment while I 1 throw some more mathematical dust in your eyes the maya didn dian t deal in fractions tractions nor in decimals our computation had the carry over of divide that by and it gives of a day there are 86 seconds in twenty tour four hours mul 86 by thus 86 7 00 8 0 TOTAL 16 seconds just under 17 seconds go so the maya 1200 years ago corn com d buted the length of the year with in SEVENTEEN SECONDS from the simple tying of the string on the moons the be ginner was to arrive in after years to the moon formula 19 5 0 equals 19 true sun positions that he was to discard tor for Us its better 1 2 13 0 days equals moons and giving a moon factor of 29 we get 29 and that exactitude with all the handicaps they had hadi it seems impossible frank beckwith sr |