[Este mismo cuento en español.]
I have discussed how the early Chorti Mayans of coastal El Salvador and Guatemala discovered or highlighted the discovery of soaking corn in ash in about 1500 BC, and their promotion of this discovery led to one of the fastest civilization expansions in the history of the pre-modern world.
However, this expansion was only possible with an ideology or theology attached to it. By about 1700 BC, the Chortis were rapidly advancing due to improved agriculture from constantly improving corn and bean production through selective hybridization. In addition, their efficiency at fishing and ocean harvesting was greatly enhanced by their discovery of the 13 to 14 day tidal cycle, which led to the creation of the Tzol'kin calendar.
Finally, their correlation of eclipses with 52-day periods of slack tides and very poor fishing, allowed them to begin long trade journeys to central Mexico, the Veracruz coast, the Peten, and the Yucatan without missing out much on the best fishing. On these trade trips, the Chortis, the master agriculturalists, were always pushing the latest corn hybrid and encouraging more corn production. Corn seed from the most recent harvest was likely one of their major trade products on these trips.
Yet, by 1500 BC or just before then, they faced a major crisis in the legitimacy of their leadership. That was because the very same Chorti elite, those who consumed the most corn, were becoming diseased. They became weak and they became lesioned, with bloody sores all over their bodies. Not only that, but the people in their communities and the people who they convinced to give up hunting and gathering and produce more corn were also becoming diseased. They didn't know yet about pellegra (also called pellagra), the disease caused by niacin deficiency common among those who rely on corn as a staple in the diet.
But due to this disease, throughout Mesoamerica people were rejecting Mayan leadership, rejecting corn and the agricultural lifestyle, and reverting to hunting and gathering. Neighboring peoples who relied on hunting were defeating the weakened Mayan and mocking their diseased leaders. No doubt, civilization was delayed by hundreds of years by pellegra. The Chortis had discovered what seemed to be a cure, but many did not believe them. That is, they did not believe until the Mayans developed a story, a narrative, that explained meaning and truth, despite the scourge of pellegra. This narrative is best described by the Popol Vuh, the sacred text relayed by the Quiche after the arrival of the Spanish.
The early chapters of the Popol Vuh read like a description of the symptoms of pellegra and in each case the conclusion is that the creator beings failed. That is, it wasn't the fault of the people who became diseased nor was it the fault of the Mayan leaders who promoted a new lifestyle. One chapter describes humans who were dry, with no sweat and no blood. Dry is also a word meaning extreme skinniness in Mesoamerica and weight loss and weakness is one symptom of pellegra. Another chapter describes the rain washing away the substance of the skin and organs of the humans - a symptom of pellegra is the wasting away of the skin.
Yet another chapter goes into horrid detail of symptoms of dementia, with the animals speaking back to the humans, even the corn grinding stones - the metates and manos - speaking back and saying that they would grind up those who usually did the grinding. Dementia is one of the advanced symptoms of pellegra.
The Popol Vuh explains that all of these attempts to create human beings failed. A new attempt to create humans was made and it was successful. In this way, the Mayan creation story is parallel to the Poton Lenca creation story of central and eastern El Salvador that I have already described. Ixbalanque, one of the hero twins (the other is Hunahpú) in the Popol Vuh, represents the diseased leader who had lesions all over his body.
By associating this hero, Ixbalanque, with the jaguar, the most powerful animal in the Mesoamerican ecosystems, but also an animal with spots (similar to lesions), the Mayans were legitimizing their diseased leadership. The jaguar people are the powerful people with the lesioned leadership. Many people had to die before the gods revealed the secret of corn soaking, thus the concept of sacrifice was incorporated into the cosmology.
Most importantly, the Popol Vuh reassures people that it is not the fault of the people in the first agricultural villages that they were hearing voices, that they were lesioned, that they were weak and dying. Nor is it the fault of the corn or the agricultural way of life. Rather, it was the fault of the creator beings. Now they had finally succeeded with a new being, a being made of corn dough, corn that has been cured of the disease by soaking it in ash. The narrative of the Popol Vuh helped to convince both the Chorti Maya villagers and neighboring peoples to trust the diseased Chorti leadership and to accept the strange new practice, sent by the gods, of soaking corn in ashes.
[PostScript, Jan. 27, 2010. To remember those who died in this epidemic and to give thanks for the one true answer to overcoming it, the Mayans put a touch of ash on their foreheads.]
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