http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=744c175350a628
576adb345eb348eabf


For the Maya, the News From Mars Is Not Good

Commentary, Louis E.V. Nevaer,
Pacific News Service, Mar 30, 2004

Editor's Note: Recent discoveries on Mars, combined with crackpot theories
about space aliens and Mayan pyramids, have some residents of Mexico's
Yucatan bracing for a New Age invasion.

MERIDA, Yucatan--When NASA announced recently that Mars once harbored the
conditions necessary for life to exist, those of us who live in the Yucatan
-- especially the Maya -- let out a collecctive groan. We fear another
crackpot invasion.

Ever since Erich Von Daniken published his best-selling "The Chariots of the
Gods" in 1968, many misguided people around the world believe the Maya are
the descendants of ancient space travelers. And so they flock here, usually
to poke around Mayan ruins looking for telltale signs of alien visitation.

"What NASA's space rover had done is confirm what I have argued," wrote
Hoger Isenberg, a German proponent of the idea that the Maya are the
descendants of distant Martians fleeing their dying planet, in an online
forum recently. "The city (he claims exists on the Martian surface) might be
one of the seven legendary cities on Mars."

The theory offered goes something like this: An advanced Martian
civilization despoiled its environment so completely that Mars began to die.
Desperate to save themselves, Martians constructed spaceships and fled to
the nearest inhabitable planet, Earth. They landed in the Yucatan and built
the pyramids with their "extraterrestrial" technology.

For most of the world, the musings of these fringe voices are harmless. But
we in the Yucatan fear the onslaught of tens of thousands of lunatics fired
up by the recent discoveries -- NASA now thinks oceans of water once existed
on Mars -- and determined to make "pilgrimages" to ancient Maya ceremonial
centers.

A lunatic influx happened before, in 1987, when thousands gathered around
the pyramids for a "Harmonic Convergence." At that time, using the Maya
calendar, Jose Arguelles, a Latino charlatan from Oregon, created a frenzy
when he claimed the world was ending. "Harmonic Convergence refers to the
converging of all aspects of reality in a great, all-unifying harmony,"
Arguelles argued. "Prophecy of the Thirteen Heavens and Nine Hells, Harmonic
Convergence, Kin 55 and 56, Magnetic Moon 22-23, August 16-17, 1987."

"I hope it's not like last time," says Alberto Ek Can, a retired bank
accountant and Maya who translates folk tales from Yucatec Maya into
Spanish. "The New Agers look on everyone with disdain."

There were so many fools running around in 1987 that I wound up sheltering
two young adults, both of them students at Stanford University, in my house.
Expecting the world to end, they hadn't brought along enough cash to get
home. They needed a place to sleep while their parents made arrangements for
a Western Union wire transfer.

"I'm not sure what they believed in," Lupita Cantu, our Maya housekeeper,
said after they left. "But I know they didn't believe in wearing clean
clothes. They smelled bad."

Since the Harmonic Convergence follies, the "science" of this line of
inquiry has changed. In 1996, Ernest Orlando, a researcher at Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory, patented a hand-held device to detect
radiation, and shortly thereafter, "amateur" researchers began to trek the
pyramids and wander through the ceremonial centers throughout the Yucatan
looking for "proof positive" -- radiation from the spacecraft that they
claim brought the Martians to the Yucatan.

It would all be funny if it weren't so offensive.

Those who believe that Martians landed here in the distant past devalue the
achievements of the Maya civilization. They implicitly suggest that the Maya
were incapable of raising cities graced with elaborate ceremonial centers,
or creating a complex writing system, nuanced philosophy, codified laws and
structured economies.

Like it or not, any claim that these are the achievements of ancient space
travelers denigrates the intellect of the Maya. More important, such ideas
deny the Maya of their very humanity -- if they are descendents from ancient
space travelers, then they aren't fully human, right?

There are more than 1 million Mayas in the Yucatan. Those of us who live
among them know them as part of humanity, and the brilliance of their
civilization is part of mankind's cultural heritage.

"There are some people who can't tell the difference between astronomy and
astrology," Alberto Ek Can says. "St. Augustine reminded us that sometimes
the greatest truths are the simplest. Some people forget that. Some people
get the facts mixed up with their wishful thinking."

Then again, what does he know? He's probably from another planet.

PNS contributor Louis E.V. Nevaer (nevaer1@hotmail.com) is an author and
economist who edited Mesoamerica, a journal on Maya culture, from 1986 to
1994. His most recent book is "The Rise of the Hispanic Market in the United
States" (M.E. Sharpe Inc., 2004).