A Culture of Death?

Who were the Maya? Armed with a very elementary knowledge of a once great, enlightened and violent culture and disguised as a Caribbean vacation I was bound and determined to leave the experts to their own disheveled debate and find out for myself somewhere in the steamy, remote jungles of the Yucatan.

The little pre-trip research I did do led me to darker and darker realizations that maybe the Maya weren’t a people to be admired or for subsequent civilizations to aspire to.

So what secrets would I find buried and lost for a thousand years in an environment just waiting for the faintest chink in the Maya’s armor of obsidian to establish nature ruler of the land once and for all? And what was the source of strength for these people to overcome overwhelming odds and to thrive under the most unlikely conditions for so long?

What I found was a mixed bag of cruel truths, brilliance, incomprehensible fantasy and reaffirmation that there are many more questions than answers.