<<(p.105-106) After this I found a set of papers that Peter Dunham, an archaeologist friend of ours, had sent me just before the Texas meetings in march. As a student, he had compiled information on a sky umbilicus in Yukatekan sources and from modern informants. He quoted an account of Creation recorded by Tozzer (1907: 153-154) as follows [BOM ****** THIS IS A MODERN STORY NOT ONE OBTAINED FROM CLASSIC MAYA THUS TELLS US NOTHING ABOUT TECHNOLOGY BEFORE COLUMBUS]

“ .. . there was a road suspended in the sky, stretching from Tuloom and Coba to Chich’en Itza and Uxmal. This pathway was called the kuxan sum or sakbe. It was in the nature of a large rope [sum] supposed to be a living [kuxan] and in the middle flowed blood. It was by this rope that the food was sent to the ancient rulers who lived in the structures now in ruins. For some reason this rope vanished forever. This first epoch was separated from the second by a flood called Halyokokab.”

We visit this over and over. The description above related by the mountain Maya talks about a real artifact and tries to explain it to a stranger from a different culture. All of what you related avoe this citation as well as the same from other posts are part of the Pupul Vul and the Mayan cosmology. It is consistent and complete. When I read this citation as part of the paperback Popul Vul I was immediately struck by its concreteness and specificity. it is entirely different than the book itself. The Maya are relating to Tozzer their information; far removed geographically; about a long disappeared physical artifact. It is not about a modern artifact post Columbus.

If the Maya were relating their cosmology they would have spoken as the book itself does. This is not a rope in the sky to?? This is a rope to A,B, and C. They are not mythological. It unites all of those sites and only those sites. It had a physical purpose. It describes its disappearance. it had a beginning and end as physical objects do. Mythology is forever.

The problem here is the modern Mayanists deconstructing the Mayan civilization to fit their preconceptions (Michael Coe was especially critial of that approach). Technology is not supposed to be so it isn't. The same for the acoustic properties seen all over the Mayan sites. If it is not supposed to be then it isn't but listen to our ears. And at Tollum. the central tower has those small holes. Curious but when a light is placed in them it defines the ONLY safe way into the beach below.

You point out the unity and consistency of the mayan cosmology. My point is that was not ALL that the Maya were about.