In most of Western civilization, we’ve elevated reductionism and ambivalence to the status of state religion. We write off cultural myth as merely fanciful storytelling (or worse, literal truth); reduce vital political debates to the competitive give-and-take of a football game; entertain the idea that formal education is little more than cultural repression; even at times chuck out the concept of personal responsibility, reducing the meaning of one’s actions (or inactions) to the status of pointless drama. All the while, congratulating ourselves for our equivocating, Cracker-Jack-prize incredulity.
Reductionism is everywhere in our society, the marauding anti-ideology that shames thoughtful discourse in favor of surface-appealing just not giving a fuck.
So I love it when we occasionally discover that, yes, somewhere behind personal opinion and emotional diatribe and superficial and unthinking belief, there is actually a meaningful reality that we can see and touch and appreciate. That some things are actually just true.
This is exactly the kind of story that I seriously dig (no pun intended), from Reuters:
Portal to mythical Mayan underworld found in Mexico
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican archeologists have discovered a maze of stone temples in underground caves, some submerged in water and containing human bones, which ancient Mayans believed was a portal where dead souls entered the underworld.
Clad in scuba gear and edging through narrow tunnels, researchers discovered the stone ruins of eleven sacred temples and what could be the remains of human sacrifices at the site in the Yucatan Peninsula.
Archeologists say Mayans believed the underground complex of water-filled caves leading into dry chambers — including an underground road stretching some 330 feet — was the path to a mythical underworld, known as Xibalba.
According to an ancient Mayan scripture, the Popol Vuh, the route was filled with obstacles, including rivers filled with scorpions, blood and pus and houses shrouded in darkness or swarming with shrieking bats, Guillermo de Anda, one of the lead investigators at the site, said on Thursday.
If you’ve done much reading about underworld myth, you’ve encountered the arduous-journey-to-hell story before. Sort of the inverse of the Campbellian hero’s journey, normally presented as some sort of Jungian archetype arising out of the collective human unconscious. Nothing to see here; simple answers; just kinda cooked it up around the campfire and doesn’t much mean anything.
Except, at least in the Mayans’ case, the “road to hell” was an actual thing. Found. With temples and artifacts dating as far back as two thousand years. And apparently they weren’t alone - according to the story, Mayan groups throughout southern Mexico and northern Guatemala and Belize had their own tunnel systems to the underworld,
I read something like this and immediately think of the Spanish conquerors who went back home with condescending dismissals of “savage” religions. Not worth thinking about. Just misguided faith. Nothing to see here.
Except there was.
Sometimes, it’s worth digging. Worth caring. Because you never know what you’ll find when you’re willing to get past what everyone thinks, to find the truth under all the myth. You may discover in the end that the only fiction involved was the one you arrived with.
