Plot summary
Giraut and Margaret, now married, are sent on a diplomatic mission to the politically turbulent planet Briand, a distant Outer Sphere colony cut off from the rest of humanity for centuries until instantaneous travel became possible with the springer. Not only is Briand a very hot, high gravity planet, but the oppressive environment is matched by the increasing hatred between the two proud local cultures which have been forced to live in close proximity as a result of a volcano disaster—the Tamil Mandalam culture of New Tanjavur (based on an interpretation of Sangam literature) and the Maya culture that has been forced to live in the slum of Mayatown and the newly-grown city of Yaxkintulum after the destruction of their native Kintulum (based on an interpretation of pre-Columbian Maya civilization), have strained relations to the point that the Council of Humanity fears that full-scale war or ethnic cleansing may envelop Briand. Giraut and Margaret are given orders by Shan, their Office of Special Projects supervisor, to find the real power brokers of each culture in order to defuse the headline-grabbing daily ethnic attacks and steer the planet clear of all-out war. They must do this under the nose of Ambassador Kiel, a high ranking ambassador from Earth on Briand, who believes strengthening elected government officials is the only way to address a crisis.
Giraut and Margaret arrive as their marriage is falling apart, but focus on their work and establish contact with key Tamil people. They are assigned a Tamil assistant, Kapilar, with whom they both spend a lot of time. They are at first unable speak directly to the reclusive Mayans, except for Tz'iquin, the Mayan contact in New Tanjavur. After a small mob attacks Paxa Prytanis, another secret agent sent by the Office of Special Projects, an invitation by the Maya comes unexpectedly. Giraut, Kapilar and Tz'iquin travel to Yaxkintulum in the latter's flying yacht, as the Mayans have officially refused to adopt the springer as well as other technological conveniences, and rely on simple subsistence farming in order to preserve their cultural heritage. Giraut meets Tz'iquin's grandfather, Pusiictsom, the most powerful and influential priest in Yaxkintulum, who, despite being in charge of the traditionally conservative Center Temple, is a reformer working on reconciliation with the Tamils behind the scenes. A plan is put into motion where Pusiictsom's nephew is raised to the position of prophet under the name "Ix," with a plan to move to Yaxkintulum and start a cult movement of tolerance, modernization and truth about the founding of the two cultures. The plan calls for the new cult to be brutally oppressed by Mayan authorities, and Giraut, Kapilar, Ix and Tz'iquin stage an escape to New Tanjavur.
Through a series of public appearances, Ix begins to recruit Mayans and some Tamils to his cult. He starts dating Auvaiyar, a notable and famously attractive Tamil critic several years his junior who had previously been involved with Tz'quin, Kapilar and Kannan, a deeply bigoted Tamil critic and poet who heads the avant-garde movement and hopes to create a Fourth Sangam. The rumor that Ix has an affair with a Tamil causes mass riots, which Ix unexpectedly ends by confessing in public, despite Pusiictsom's protests, that his prophecy began as a ploy by his family, the Peccaries. Tz'iquin breaks into tears during his uncle's speech, revealing to Giraut his jealousy at his uncle's upcoming marriage to his former girlfriend. Just prior to Ix's next speech, however, Auvaiyar is found dead, her heart and lungs missing. Ix reacts calmly to the discovery, and decides to show the corpse to the crowd during his speech. Giraut and Kannan bring her body to the central plaza, before the temple of Murukan where Ix was going to wed Auvaiyar. As the prophet speaks to the mixed Tamil/Mayan crowd, he uses his pain, her murder and his forgiveness to whoever did it as a starting point for reconciliation between the two cultures.
Tz'iquin comes forth, confesses Auvaiyar's murder (saying that he ate her heart, as Tohil is known to do), and shoots his uncle in the head with a maser. Kannan goes on a murderous rampage against the Mayans as a full-scale race war erupts. Giraut and Kapilar run back to the Embassy, where the former is ordered to evacuate it immediately. Almost everyone in the embassy is evacuated through springers to Earth, but Ambassador Kiel is captured by Tamils, and Kapilar refuses to go, choosing instead to join the fighting to honor his Vellala heritage.
Giraut, Margaret and Shan watch the civil war unfold from a space station in the Inner Sphere. Mayan forces invade New Tanjavur through Pusiictsom's secret springer, an attack that the Peccaries had been planning for at least a year. Illegal anti-matter weapons are used by both sides, completely destroying both Yaxkintulum and New Tanjavur. The habitable areas of Briand are devastated, and with no springers left intact, the planet becomes isolated from the rest of humanity until a springer ship can arrive in several decades' time.
Giraut finds out from Margaret that she had been having an affair with Kapilar since the mission began, and was ordered to not break it off by his friend and boss Shan, who hoped he could acquire valuable intelligence through Kapilar. The failure of the Office of Special Projects on Briand forces the secretive agency into the limelight, and they brace for public scrutiny and oversight. Giraut opts to take his one-year-long leave on the Hedon culture of Söderblom to try to salvage his marriage and to get away from Shan, but after that one year, he wants back into the Office of Special Projects to continue the important mission of integrating humanity to provide a united front for possible alien contact.
Maya or Mayan mythology is part of Mesoamerican mythology and comprises all of the Maya tales in which personified forces of nature, deities, and the heroes interacting with these play the main roles. The myths of the Pre-Hispanic era have to be reconstructed from iconography. Other parts of Mayan oral tradition are not considered here.
The Mayan languages form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica, both in the south of Mexico and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million Maya people, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognizes eight within its territory.
Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a K'iche' Guatemalan human rights activist, feminist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting Indigenous rights internationally.
The Maya peoples are an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. The ancient Maya civilization was formed by members of this group, and today's Maya are generally descended from people who lived within that historical civilization. Today they inhabit southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. "Maya" is a modern collective term for the peoples of the region, however, the term was not historically used by the indigenous populations themselves. There was no common sense of identity or political unity among the distinct populations, societies and ethnic groups because they each had their own particular traditions, cultures and historical identity.
KEO is the name of a proposed space time capsule which was to have been launched in 2003 carrying messages from the citizens of present Earth to humanity 50,000 years from now, when it would re-enter Earth's atmosphere. Its name represents the three most frequently used sounds common to the most widely spoken languages today,, , and. Everyone was invited to contribute to the time capsule, and the organizers encouraged everybody to gather messages from children, senior citizens, and the illiterate so that every culture and demographic on Earth was represented. Moreover, the organizers were committed to not filtering the messages, stating "all the messages received, without undergoing any censorship, will be embarked aboard KEO." The launch has been delayed several times due to major geopolitical shakeups, including 9/11 and the restructuring of the ESA. As of 1 January 2021, no launch date has been confirmed.
Tzolkʼin is the name bestowed by Mayanists on the 260-day Mesoamerican calendar originated by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
LAGEOS, Laser Geodynamics Satellite or Laser Geometric Environmental Observation Survey, are a series of two scientific research satellites designed to provide an orbiting laser ranging benchmark for geodynamical studies of the Earth. Each satellite is a high-density passive laser reflector in a very stable medium Earth orbit (MEO).
A Million Open Doors (1992) is a science fiction novel by American writer John Barnes, the first book of his Thousand Cultures series. The story is told from the perspective of a maturing adult from a parochial culture who encounters many obstacles in a different and even more parochial culture which causes him to become a fully engaged citizen in the Interstellar culture. A Million Open Doors is a study of the effects of globalization.
José Argüelles, born Joseph Anthony Argüelles, was an American New Age author and artist. He was the co-founder, along with Lloydine Argüelles, of the Planet Art Network and the Foundation for the Law of Time. As one of the originators of the Earth Day concept, Argüelles founded the first Whole Earth Festival in 1970, at Davis, California.
The Tzʼutujil are a Native American people, one of the 22 Maya ethnic groups that dwell in Guatemala. Together with the Xinca, Garífunas and the Ladinos, they make up the 25 ethnic groups in this relatively small country. Approximately 100,000 Tzʼutujil live in the area around Lake Atitlán. Their pre-Columbian capital, near Santiago Atitlán, was Chuitinamit. In pre-Columbian times, the Tzʼutujil nation was a part of the ancient Maya civilization.
City of Pearl is a science fiction novel by British writer Karen Traviss. Published in March, 2004, it is the first book of the Wess'Har Series. Among the main characters are Shan Frankland, the hardened cop and forceful commander; Josh Garrod, the devout Christian and gentle leader; Aras, the lonely Wess'har, outcast by his horrible disease; and Lindsay Neville, the Marines Commander dealing with an unplanned pregnancy. City of Pearl is a book that deals with morals, especially concerning environmentalism, and keeps action sequences to a minimum.
The traditional Maya religion of the extant Maya peoples of Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and the Tabasco, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Campeche and Yucatán states of Mexico is part of the wider frame of Mesoamerican religion. As is the case with many other contemporary Mesoamerican religions, it results from centuries of symbiosis with Roman Catholicism. When its pre-Hispanic antecedents are taken into account, however, traditional Maya religion has already existed for more than two and a half millennia as a recognizably distinct phenomenon. Before the advent of Christianity, it was spread over many indigenous kingdoms, all with their own local traditions. Today, it coexists and interacts with pan-Mayan syncretism, the 're-invention of tradition' by the Pan-Maya movement, and Christianity in its various denominations.
The Rose Center for Earth and Space is a part of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The Center's complete name is The Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space. The main entrance is located on the northern side of the museum on 81st Street near Central Park West in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Completed in 2000, it includes the new Hayden Planetarium, the original of which was opened in 1935 and closed in 1997. Neil deGrasse Tyson is its first and, to date, only director.
The Merchants of Souls is a 2001 science fiction novel by John Barnes and the third book in the Thousand Cultures series.
The Armies of Memory (2006) is a science fiction novel by American writer John Barnes, the fourth book of his Thousand Cultures series. The story is told from the perspective of a middle-aged special agent named Giraut. The Armies of Memory explores the intermingling of artificial and human intelligence as an alien threat is on the horizon.
The pre-Columbian Maya religion knew various jaguar gods, in addition to jaguar demi-gods, (ancestral) protectors, and transformers. The main jaguar deities are discussed below. Their associated narratives are still largely to be reconstructed. Lacandon and Tzotzil-Tzeltal oral tradition are particularly rich in jaguar lore.
The 2012 phenomenon was a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events would occur on or around 21 December 2012. This date was regarded as the end-date of a 5,126-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, and festivities took place on 21 December 2012 to commemorate the event in the countries that were part of the Maya civilization, with main events at Chichén Itzá in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala.
Mayan Americans are Americans of Indigenous Mayan descent. Most Mayan Americans originate from western Guatemala and Chiapas.
MayaQuest: The Mystery Trail is an educational computer game created by MECC and inspired by the actual MayaQuest Expedition. It is a spin-off title of The Oregon Trail series, featuring the lands of Mexico where the Mayan People once lived. While travelling across the lands by bicycle, the player learns all about the ancient culture and history of the indigenous people. The game also contains some Spanish language for additional learning.
