Days and nights past seventeen days four weeks eight years and to cut to the fifth llama out of the six shool three animals. Of the royal blood of wasnt thrown upon the jaguar thrown in the white stone house. It is a long time since i wrote those words the citys crime in the late seven century by christian reckoning. Most of this great center of my in culture had long been reclaimed by the forest when here now and cortez made his way across mexico and so the spanish passed a lengthy unsuspecting there was nothing left to destroy anyway. The jungle remained until in the eighteenth century the major buildings were cleared in my inscriptions first studied. Here where the forest ag. Operas highlands meet the moist plains of tabasco the capital of the western mayan civilization once flourished. The renowned great powers could be seen from afar it was the rulers residence an Administrative Center a complex of buildings that were one hundred twenty years in the construction at the heart was the white Stone Building that housed the jaguar through. Our ruler and high priest observe the heavenly bodies closely doubtless from the tower from them he learnt the will of the gods over the millennia my in astronomy had acquired great expertise our calendar was complex and measured time in various cycles with a greater precision than anything known to europe astronomers were able to calculate when solar eclipses would take place they set the dates for sawing in sacrifice and predicted with absolute gods would return. On july the twenty third six months in the christian calendar mars where our listeners. Conjunction new temples were consecrated in ceremonies that lasted for days the temple of the sun of the tree of life and of the little cross had three entrances and three chambers to the rear sacred to the through sand of the mother. As city scribe i was extremely busy on those days other mayan cities states made inscriptions on styli in the squares but we recorded our history on stone tablets in the inner sanctums of our sacred buildings writing was special. Fire and particularly proud of the work i did on the temple of the inscriptions. Our greatest ruler commanded it to be built he wished to be worshipped there after death and united him with the gods for one six hundred seventeen tablets i recorded the most important events in the college life and his ancestors including the gods and mythological heroes. It was earlier succeeded through the christian era after a reign of almost seventy years that col stepped over into the realm of the dared in the temple we conceal his route to the underworld under islam steps led down to park house crypt in the base of the pyramid the tombs of our kings were rarely found and it was a long time to archeologists discover the remains of. Their whereabouts remained a secret until one thousand nine hundred forty nine by there he had long been among the immortals and the vessels containing provisions for his journey to the realm of the shades were of course empty. On the side of parkour sarcophagus lid i recorded the dates of his birth and death and the dates when his father died his grandfather and seven of his predecessors on the throne. This stucco head pretoria is the king at the height of his reign. But how more a death mask crafted of jade over his body lay a heavy slab and on it i inscribed words the truth of which we took for granted col the naming shield by the power of his divine ancestors vanquishes the lords of the underworld. Which was true because son john bathroom window into what trends and his spirit journeyed to the realm of the dead very his father pock all gave into his keeping the rearward head of the two headed serpent as a symbol of power. At least that was what he later dictated to me. John by clue who was now the new ruler it was he who had the three temples built and it was my task to record our kings good relations with the gods. The office of scribe was an important one but without the expertise of the Master Builders and their workers i should have had no suitable place to display my own skills openwork facades were a specialty of blankies builders. Between the temples to the altar stone where human sacrifices were me. We believe the gods would have been angry if we had not shed the blood of our prisoners to appease them not was the world we lived in it may seem alien now perhaps but it was coherent and clear. In this scene carl is receiving the insignia of power from his mother normally the succession followed the male line but a col had a problem with the legitimacy of his claim to the throne so i recorded his entire ancestry back to the mythical heroes who lived at the dawn of time it was an impressive lineage and convince the people that only good rulers could come from this bloodline and after all the kings mediated between the people in their gods and ancestors their practices in doing this included self mutilation and other mortifications they went into trances and salvations. The king was pulling his military overlord responsible for extending the city state influence but he also had to provide his people with captives to serve their slaves or for human sacrifice. The higher the rank of a prisoner the better and the best of all of course was to capture the ruler of an enemy city state the other mayan cities were naturally trying to do the same thing. That was the un during the transfer he was the brother of john raccoon and his successor and he waged war on neighboring tonia to provide victims for the sacrifices but it was john sure himself who was taken prisoner and sacrificed and we his people looked on helpless as his dynasty collapse. All that remained for me to do was to record the events cryptically of course since there was no need for everyone to know in our disgrace. In poland to my predecessors and i and my few successors left enough inscriptions for archaeologists to be able to decipher our and the lives though they took until the late Twentieth Century to do so the square format and were read right to left and top to bottom there were one thousand of them representing syllables or entire words most of the inscriptions are as torkel record and many of the glyphs are numbers or calendar data or the names of rulers. And lives predominate in the illiterates from the outline country were meant to understand the pictures we used phonetic symbols chiefly to record our elaborate myths writing them in brushwork calligraphy unbound raffia most of these books were later burned by the spanish. Ball games were played behind the palace partly because they were fun but chiefly because it was a ritual noble men were expected to participate in the game involved getting a rubber ball into a basket past the other side in part it was a reenactment of our myths it wasnt always dangerous to take part in the games only on special occasions where the losers sacrificed but in those matches it was clear from the start that the captives would be the losers the layout of reflected the Class Divisions in our society the Common People lived down on the plains which the jungle has now replant the nobility and officials were in the middle and at the top where they could look down on the rest where the rulers anyone who lived in a stone house was middle class the poor maya lived as their descendants still do in fact cottages with walls of wicker and clay. Maze has been ground in the same way for thousands of years it was the toil of the peasants that made possible the luxury we lived in and our cultural achievements through at times we did forget that finally it all came down to mays god in our creation myth fashioned as worshippers from dover made of maize flour. So to this day we are known as the maze people but scientists also say that centuries of amaze monoculture exhausted the soil and that too played a part in the sudden decline of our civilization after a thousand years of preeminence. He was abandoned not long after the year eight hundred the magnificent buildings were left to the elements and we few who could read and write dispersed and our skills were lost what survives of our knowledge was destroyed by the spanish and the grass court over the romans. The life of the Great Monarch but karl his deeds and his dream of immortality would have