Sunday, March 8, 2009

Fantasy is a fantastic thing, if you've got the imagination for it.

The Ancient Mayan Culture absolutely fascinates me. Who were these geniuses that rose to such a formidable peak of civilization so much faster than anyone else? What mysteries lie behind this people! Honestly, if I only had one chance to travel back in time (clearly unrealistic, seeing as no one travels back in time, so far as I know), it would be then, and there!

WAIT! I've got it! If Doctor Who were to come and pick me up in his Tardis (a time and space traveling phone booth), I could ask HIM to take me to visit the Mayans! Naturally the Tardis would bridge any language barriers (yeah, it does that too). I’d meet them, talk to them, see their temples, discuss their fascinating calendar with them. As long as they weren’t the "kill first, socialize later" types. Being as Doctor Who is very clever, I’m sure he’d find a way to convince them not to sacrifice us to their god(s) right off the bat.

Then again, I doubt that they would try to sacrifice us, strange foreigners, to their god(s). They are thought to have preferred children, because they were considered more pure. If adult Mayans were not pure enough for human sacrifice (which involved the tearing out of the heart: yeeAUGhhhhh....) then me and the Doctor would certainly not qualify. They had a bit more respect for their god(s) than that.

The reason I say ‘god(s)’ (rather than ‘gods’) is that they had many gods that kind of blended into one. They were all sort of bondable to the other gods. Like tinker toys. The center of their collection of gods, sort of the main god, or the brain of the pieced together god tinker toy tower of deities, was the maize god (for all you normal folks out there, maize is corn)

Now the Mayan calendar? The Doctor would probably know what was up with that, and he might even know if the world really does end in December, 2012. But I can’t make sense of it even now, with wikipedia to guide me.

Perhaps my visit would help me to better understand the Mayan calendar, as well as the Mayan people. A people shrouded in that much mystery have GOT to be interesting to have dinner with (seeing as Doctor Who often gets to have dinner with famous folks like Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, I see no reason why we would not end up at a Mayan dinner table).

Ah, it’s such a shame that I have to maintain such geeky gall as to wait for a timelord to drop by in his Tardis and invite me to join him on a time traveling adventure before I can see the Mayans in first person.

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