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Maya: The Blood of Kings (1995) | Ricardo Higuera | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Maya: The Blood of Kings (1995)
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Summary
Core Theme
The Classic Maya civilization, a remarkably advanced society in the Americas, mysteriously vanished, leaving behind magnificent ruins and unanswered questions about their sudden abandonment of cities, which is now understood to be linked to their complex belief system centered on divine kings and ritualistic sacrifice.
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we are entering a world shrouded in
mystery where nothing is as it first might
seem it is a sacred world where a game
ad we do not know the rules or how many
played but this is No Ordinary
contest they played this
lives more than a thousand years ago the
men who played and the crowds who
watched would all
vanish leaving the
arena and all their magnificent cities empty
today only Mysteries remain [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
they were called the classic
Maya they built the greatest
civilization of the
Americas when Europe was still in the
Dark Ages they produced artists and
Astound when London was just a town of
wood shacks and dirt streets the Maya
were building mighty cities of stone in
the heart of the Central American [Music]
[Music]
rainforest this is the greatest of them all
taba a thriving Metropolis of 40,000
people it reached its peak around 750 ad
Manhattan less than a century Cy later
empty it's a mystery that touches
everyone because we're all existing in
civilizations and we feel the fragility
of civilization when we see something
like the Maya ruins when you see how
high a civilization can develop and
Achieve and how dramatically it can
unlike so many other civilizations the
mayad did not fall to famine invading
armies or terrible
disease Maya cities were deserted more than
than
destroyed the Maya who once inhabited
these streets just walked away into the
today descendants of the Maya still live
in the land of their
ancestors yet their empire is no
more but
why why did the Ancients leave their magnificent
cities it is a question that has haunted
historians and and archaeologists for
ages only by exploring the deepest
beliefs of a people who died a thousand
years ago can we attempt to understand
who they
were and why they left deserted all they'd
created the trail is cold
but Clues can still be [Music]
[Music]
found Clues hidden in massive pyramids of
of [Music]
[Music]
stone Clues written in a hieroglyphic
forever Clues contained in ancient Tales
of Mighty Kings and dangerous gods in a
world founded in ritual and sustained by
Tales still told by old men to
Children descendants of an Empire that
ago the origins of the Maya lie in the
Forgotten histories of the first
immigrants the Asiatic people who walked
across the Bearing Sea from Siberia
during the last ice age and settled the
Americas more than 15 th000 years
ago thousands of years would pass before
the Primeval Maya established themselves
America then in a period lasting from
250 to 900 ad the sophisticated
civilization we call the classic Maya would
flourish hundreds of cities were built
the vast territory that is now Southern
Mexico Biz Guatemala and Honduras became
Maya they thrived for more than six
centuries then it was over all across
[Music]
for almost 1,000 years their ruins lay
lost and
forgotten it wasn't until the 19th
century that the world would ReDiscover
May in
1839 travel writer John Lloyd Stevens
and illustrator Frederick catherwood
[Music]
their work captured the romance and
mystery of the Mayo World while
providing the first serious Clues to the
origins of this Lost
Civilization explorers before them had
theorized the Maya were descendants of
the Greeks a lost tribe of Egypt or even
fugitives from the Mythic land of
Atlantis but these men believed otherwise
unless I am wrong we have a conclusion
far more wonderful than that of
connecting the Builders of these cities
with the Egyptians or any other
people it is the spectacle of a people
possessing cultivation and
refinement John Lloyd Stevens [Music]
[Music]
1840 Stevens understood this exotic
civilization had not been developed
elsewhere by others and brought across
the Atlantic the Maya he suggested were [Music]
[Music]
unique his writings marked a turning
point a new era of exploration had
begun adventurers and eccentrics came
from all over the
world one French explorer arrived in
Mexico with 4,000 lb of
luggage and there was only one way to
[Laughter] [Music]
[Music]
not even the dense and dangerous
rainforest deterred them more than the
promise of buried treasure Lord these
men into the unexplored reaches of Central
Central
America they were seeking answers to the
Civilization they found treasure in
abundance but an understanding of the
elusive archaeologists probed the jungle
for decades discovering great monuments
and astounding
profusion most intriguing of all
hundreds of pyramids that like sacred
mountains reared up from the jungle floor
[Music]
but the purpose of these pyramids
mystery then in 1957 it would all
change the place was the classic Maya
city of
pelen the great Mexican archaeologist
Alberto ruse had spent 4 years
Excavating the most impressive
impressive pyramid at the site the
Temple of
inscriptions now he stood at the
threshold of [Music]
[Music]
Discovery I entered the mysterious
chamber with the strange sensation
natural for the first one to tread the
entrance steps in a thousand
years I wanted to eph facee the
centuries and hear the vibrations of the
last human voices meath these massive
vaults across the impenetrable veil of
time I sought The Impossible bond
hours in the center of the burial
chamber was an enormous Stone
tomb his men worked feverishly to raise
I was gazing at the death phas of him
for whom all the stupendous work the
Crypt the stairway the Great Pyramid
built this rare film shows Ru moments
after his dramatic Discovery but a
ruined skeleton and a precious Jade m
ask only raised further questions that
nobody not even Roose could
he what happened in his life that his
ceremony who was the man behind the
[Music]
the Maya did leave Clues but they are
cryptic coded and [Music]
[Music]
opaque only by deciphering this evidence
can we understand the meaning of their
sacred temples the personality of the
men and women who built them and the
reason for their sudden disappearance
abandon a century and a half ago John
Lloyd Stevens predicted that the strange
indecipherable Engravings on their
Monument walls held the key to the
Maya he was right but only now after one
of the greatest codebreaking Feats of
all time can the secrets of these silent
[Music]
the sacred world of the classic Maya
should never have become a
mystery they left after all an abundant written
record an independently invented writing
system incredibly one of only five
produced in the history of the [Music]
[Music]
world these were texts imbued with
magical power descriptions of their
beautiful fragile documents they were a
truly remarkable
achievement a unique and totally
original written language as momentous
[Music]
Egypt they bear witness to the birth of
the first written language in the new [Music]
world is [Music]
[Music]
the importance of these texts was
recognized by the first European
Invaders centuries
ago in 1562 a devout Catholic priest
named Diego danda convinced one of the
last surviving Maya scribes to translate
the Spanish alphabet into Maya Landa
fervently wanted to bring Christianity
to the
Maya he felt learning their language was
his best hope of reaching the people he
yearned to [Music]
[Music]
convert Landa dedicated his life to
understanding the Maya and to saving their
their
souls still his memory is not revered
rather it is [Music]
[Music]
reviled L was dest brought I think maybe
even destroyed when he discovered that
people that he believed and had come to
know had been converted to Christianity
and he found them continuing to practice
Pagan rituals he just he lost it he went
absolutely crazy and he began to try to
root out and extrap any remants of
in a single night this man of God burned
hundreds of precious books books
containing their science their
lives as the Maya looked on it was as if
every copy of their Bible and
throughout the Spanish Conquest
burned of the prolific output of Maya
scribes only four books escaped the
but four did
remain and from this scant evidence
would come remarkable insights into
Ancient Maya
culture at first only their
sophisticated mathematical system was
decoded Maya math was tied closely to a
complex system of
astronomy their detailed observations of
the night SK Sky were recorded with astonishing
astonishing [Music]
accuracy in the 1950s the great mayia
archaeologist Eric Thompson would
conclude these were a people dedicated
to studying the heavens and the meaning of
of [Music]
[Music]
time a thousand years before the first
first computer they recorded celestial
past but why such fantastically complex astronomical
astronomical [Music]
[Music]
calculations Thompson thought he
knew myia Society was practically
utopian he concluded a peaceful people
who worshiped
time a world run by tranquil priests and
timekeepers a place of sacred
observatories devoted to the tracking of the
the
stars in the Maya Thompson saw an
idealized world of sacred beliefs and
Higher Learning his vision was as
flawed certainly the proof seemed all
around him the Maya built pyramids that
were giant Stone calendars and Sund
dials El Castillo the Great Pyramid of
chichin has 365 steps and platforms to
Mark the days of the
year their alignment and design is so
precise that once each year they cast a
unique shadow that records the Spring Equinox
like the star charts of an astrologer
their codices mapped the positions of
come the Maya calendar was unlike any
other these great gears illustrate their
time the hieroglyphs on the larger wheel
Mark the 365 days of the solar year
those on the two smaller gears represent
the 260 days of the priest's sacred
calendar together this Maya time machine
identifies the astrological significance
day using this calendar Maya priests
predicted the precise time and place of solar
solar
eclipses for the average Maya it must
have seemed seemed as if their leaders
heavens the accuracy of Maya astronomy still
still
astounds the cycles of the moon were
mapped so precisely that today 1,500
years later their calculations are off
even the moment of Maya creation some
5,000 years ago is a fixed point in the sacred
calendar
forbiddingly so too is the end of this world
according to the Maya
calendar this cycle of creation will
cease to
exist at precisely 4
aha 3
Ken Sunday December
today many Maya continue to await this
day with
Dread in the highlands of Guatemala the
few remaining Maya shamans and the last
calendar priests still calculate the
formulas it has not slipped one day in 25
centuries Maya texts revealed the Hidden
World of their mathematics and
astronomy but other much more startling
Revelations were to come [Music]
Justin Kerr is a photographer who found
a way to take pictures of Maya vases as
they rotate in front of his camera
effectively unrolling The Continuous
phase when I put the vase down on the
turntable and watch it turning in front
of the camera I hope it talks to me
sometimes it doesn't sometime the
message is so obscure that it's very
very hard to get to but sometimes it
and those Revelations have created an
entirely new understanding of the Ancient
Ancient
Maya K's photographs reveal a people
obsessed with the fearful and bloody
gods of the underworld world the hellish
place the Maya called
calba some of these guys are are very
very gruesome the god of decapitation
for example is a skeletal God he very
often uh is holding a decapitated head
either by its hair or he has them uh the
head in his palms he is generally
portrayed with having large volutes of
for the Maya the underworld was an
ominous place but to our eyes many
customs and rituals in their daily lives
seem equally unsettling and
bizarre children's skulls were
deliberately deformed to create the
flattened brow line the Maya found so
pleasing myo women had their teeth
drilled without known anesthetics and
then set with precious stones
the use of mind-altering drugs was
encouraged and
condoned powerful intoxicants were
smoked the Maya got high the Maya took
lots of drugs but I think their drug of
preference was fundamentally alcohol and
when they were so drunk that they were
throwing up they were then taking it as
an enema which would be a very intensive
even more intoxicating effect to take B
or some kind of fermented drink as an
drunk Eric Thompson was aware of such
grotesque and bizarre
practices but he refused to let them
Maya then American filmmaker Giles
Healey ventured into the jungles of Mexico
Mexico [Music]
[Music] in
in
1946 Healey was led to a secret ruin by
a lacondon Indian named Chan [Music]
[Music]
Bor there he made a discovery that would
expose a Savage
truth and alter forever the world's
Chan Bor brought Healey and his camera
to a Maya ruin the outside world knew nothing
nothing [Music]
[Music]
about when Giles Healey walks into this
room he's got a a whole form notion of
what the Maya are like he's imagining
that they were Priestly timekeepers a
few wonderful noble men maybe like the
very y himself childes Healey class 25
for he imagines that they are going to
be men like
him instead what Healey found painted on
the temple walls was a detailed
depiction of the Maya not as peaceful
stargazers but as Fierce
Warriors devout Believers and bloodthirsty
bloodthirsty
sacrifice it was a portrait of the Maya
unimaginable I think in fact there is
probably no more single powerful
painting of warfare and of bloodletting
in the world than this
battle it's full of sound and trumpets
and screaming and guys who are all
painted and pumped
up some of them are already slain like
decapitated head this other hunk of Flesh
and the key point is right over in the
corner of the paintings where this guy
is ripping out the fingernails of that
particular captive and his face is
collapsing he seems to be almost
burbling something out of his mouth or
maybe it's blood dripping from where
they've ripped out a tooth or two and
the rest of these captives seem now sunk
right into their laps their
hunches they look at their fingers blood
this was an image of the Maya neither
Eric Thompson nor The World At Large
could easily
accept even these shocking scenes didn't
immediately overturn the cherished ideal
of the peaceful Maya it was like a
parent overlooking some obvious flaw in a
child when Giles hilly walked into this
room I'm not sure that he knew what to
make of it but but when Thompson walked
into this room he didn't see Warfare he
saw a nasty little raid in fact he even
wondered what was going on the Maya
wouldn't rip out fingernails he thought
perhaps there was some pot of red paint
over here that people were dipping their
it childes Healey eventually finished
his film he focused on the lacondon
Indians who had been his guides
descendants of the Maya they too were
portrayed as peaceful people in total
harmony with [Music]
[Music]
nature about the Eerie scenes of
GES Healey had cleaned the grime of
centuries from the bonmac murals but he
could not bring himself to reveal the [Music]
[Music]
truth it would take years before
Thompson would acknowledge his mistake
but a continent away another Discovery
provided a new set of Clues by pure
accident in a most unlikely setting a
begin May
1945 Berlin has been invaded by the
Russians the National Library is on fire
defeated from the thousands of books
burning in the ruins a Soviet officer
casually plucks a random souvenir from the
Flames his name is Yuri kosov the book
codices Kor roof immerses himself in
Maya studies
and the alphabet Bishop Landa had
attempted to
transcribe his great breakthrough was
realizing Maya hieroglyphs were much
more than a simple system of numerical [Music]
[Music]
signs his work was Amplified by another
Russian Tatiana PR kurakov a superb
illustrator in
archaeologist her Keen Eye detected
patterns in the dates carved in stone
where others had seen only numbers and
signs Tatiana read the entire span of human
human [Music]
lives based on her findings the code
Breakers went to work they began to read
the carvings on Temple walls like
tombstones in a
cemetery much more than mere calendars
the images commemorated the entire
Reigns of kings and queens [Music]
[Music]
the deciphered glyphs revealed the names
of Maya royalty 18 rabbit smoke
Jaguar stormy sky and Lady
shellstar the lives of these rulers
their ancestors and their
conquests all the stories locked within
the glyphs could finally be told
15 years after discovering the skeleton
with the Jade mask Alberto Rose would
[Music]
identity he was Lord
pen the 10th in a line of rulers that
stretched back three centuries he ruled
for almost 70 years
Lord pakal was one of the most powerful
Americas these were monarchs who
commanded complex cities large
populations and vast areas of land they
ruled over their citizens with arrogance and
and
disdain but what was the source of their Authority
Authority
why did their subjects submit to such tyrannical
rule we keep looking for the underlying
source of the power of the Kings
searching for economic and political and
scale but the power isn't based in
controlling resources or manipulating the
the
economy um or U mounting large armies
it's based upon
belief that is the power of the mayia
Kings and it was a great one and it
things the power of the Maya
Kings to understand it we must follow a
blood a knife made from a stingray
spine a rope of [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Music]
thorns these are the keys to
comprehending the Maya and the sacred
kings every portal of every Maya temple
inside this Temple it is the duty of
both king and queen to reenact the
Creation in myth it was the blood of
gods that gave life to
man this was the original Act of
and blood is the price of power the debt
to the gods that must be
repaid myths and symbols will not
shed and royal blood drawn from the
tongue and from the genitals from his
Queen and from
himself for ever bound that sacrifice of
[Music]
man as his subjects watch the bloody
sacrament of the Kings spirals upwards
to the
Gods in return for the sacrifice of
Royal Blood the crowd believes the gods
will cause the sun to rise the rains to
grow for art historian Linda Shey these
maab bloodletting rituals provide the
final key to understanding the
Maya in the new
world people believe that your
soul the most potent part of you the
part that's indestructible the part that
you will pass on to your grandchildren
and to your great-grandchildren
uh the the thing that is eternal resides
in your
blood so if you wish to give an offering
that is the most precious and Powerful
blood when the king gives his blood he's
first of all giving the most powerful
substance on Earth because his
blood because of his ancestry because of
where he comes from because of the
amount of time that he travels to the
other world and comes back his blood is
remember that the Kings had to do
rituals of genital bloodletting and self
laceration uh on a regular basis so that
kind of keeps you honest you know if I
think if we had some genital
bloodletting in modern politics it would
thin out the herd and uh might be a good
politicians in fact all Maya gave
blood the difference between them and us
is we have it
easy we say you can tithe you can give
money out of your pocket you can give
something that doesn't hurt something
anything the Maya don't let you make
that sort of surrogate sacrifice you
blood and there were other even bloodier
offerings skull racks commemorate War
captiv sacrifice to ensure the
even the ball game served a deadly [Music]
[Music]
purpose the contest in fact is not a
game at
gods the Maya reveled in this Terror
even recording the brutality for
posterity this sacrificial victim still
emits an eternal howl of unimaginable
pain he has been scalped disemboweled
his hands and feet
mangled the wood bound to his back is
[Music]
today Maya Shaman still practice blood [Music]
sacrifice but now it is the blood of
chickens that is
shed the ancient faith is intact but
only as a pale reflection of the the
Maya sacramental blood still feeds the Maya
Maya
imagination but the context of belief has
changed Christianity may have been
forced upon the Maya but once there it
cord the Christian concept of a Divine
King who shed his blood BL for the
benefit of
them for the ancient Maya the blood of
Kings was the mortar that bound all life
together the king's sacrifice ensured
the stability of the Mayo World
guaranteeing the sanction of the Gods
he stood at the center of the Maya
Universe remove the king and the whole
down for Arthur demerest the crisis for
the classic Maya began the moment they
lost faith in their
kings the source of power is is this
ritual this display this ceremony the
theater the
Charisma and when real problems occur
when a military defeat occurs uh even
between centers it can be devastating in
in a way that it shouldn't have to be
but the authority is based upon belief
belief in the king and failure is
unacceptable if this really is a holy
Lord who can manipulate the forces of
the universe then failure undermines the
[Music]
for the problems Maya Kings faced as
their Authority eroded were not unique
but their solution was more ritual more
sacrifice more blood but it didn't
work and you can genitally bloodlet and
you can build temples as high as you
want it isn't going to make the soil it
isn't going to stop erosion it's not
going to prevent invading enemies from
winning because they have better weapons or
tactics and eventually there were losses
in war overpopulation in cities failures
responsible if the blood of the king
held the world to together when that
world fell apart it was the king's blood
them when you begin to understand from
the inside the way the Maya thought and
the way their civilization was
constructed it's amazing that they
maintained it for long as long as they
did the mystery should not be the
mystery of the Maya collapse but the
mystery of how the Maya for 2,000 years
civilization the
Maya they Rose stone by Stone out of the
Jungle self-made and
self-contained unique and wholly
[Music]
world but ultimately the great dynasties
and the great achievements of the Maya
kings and queens all their formidable
Powers were built upon the faith of the people
and when crops failed or enemies
prevailed the people no longer
believed and when the people lost
power and when that power
vanished the Maya abandoned their great
cities and the
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