Archaeologist Lies About the Popol Vuh

Literally every day a new, generic article appears in a newspaper somewhere explaining that the 2012 phenomenon is nothing to worry about. And because they quote expert academics, people believe they are being told the full story.

Most experts proudly share that there is no evidence that the Mayans thought anything bad would happen in 2012. This is true, most probably due to the thousands of Mayan books that were burned by the Spanish. Yet if you read the Popol Vuh, you can get an idea of what they were probably expecting: for the gods to wipe them out.

The experts tend to conveniently forget the Popol Vuh exists, so I was surprised to read this, within an article titled It’s The End Of The World As We Know It at the Global Post:

Mary Lou Ridinger, an archeologist and board member of the Maya Conservancy, an organization that works to protect ancient Mayan sites, points out that unlike modern societies, the ancient Maya were not linear thinkers. Instead, they viewed the past, present and future as intertwined, like spirals of DNA. In the Popol Vuh, the collection of writings containing the Mayan creation myth, there is no mention of death.

“All you see in the Popol Vuh is transformation, resurrection and rebirth,” Ridinger said.

I’m wondering which translation she read, because I guess it wasn’t this one:

POPOL VUH: LITERAL TRANSLATION
By Allen J. Christenson

Pages 24-26

They first crowded with people,
They came to be here upon its face earth.
THEN therefore their end then,
Their ruin,
Their crushing as well,
They were killed then,
Effigies,
Carved wood.
Then was planned their flood by its Heart Sky.
Great flood was made, it came upon their heads,

…Before his face their Framer,
Their Shaper,
Maker of them,
Creator of them.
Thus their being killed,
They were flooded.
It came great pine resin.
There from sky.
They came Chiselers of Faces their name,
They chiseled out its seeds their faces [eyes].
They came Death Knives,
They cut off their heads.
He came Crouching Jaguar,
He ate their flesh.
He came Striking Jaguar,
He struck them.
They smashed their bones,
Their tendons.
Ground up,
Broken to pieces
Their bones.
Grinding up their faces,

And I’m guessing she didn’t read this one either:

Popol Vuh at Meta-Religion.com

Then they talked and spoke the truth: “Your figures of wood shall come out well; they shall speak and talk on earth.”

“So may it be,” they answered when they spoke.

And instantly the figures were made of wood. They looked like men, talked like men, and populated the surface of the earth.

They existed and multiplied; they had daughters, they had sons, these wooden figures; but they did not have souls, nor minds, they did not remember their Creator, their Maker; they walked on all fours, aimlessly.

They no longer remembered the Heart of Heaven and therefore they fell out of favor. It was merely a trial, an attempt at man. At first they spoke, but their face was without expression; their feet and hands had no strength; they had no blood, nor substance, nor moisture, nor flesh; their cheeks were dry, their feet and hands were dry, and their flesh was yellow.

Therefore, they no longer thought of their Creator nor their Maker, nor of those who made them and cared for them.

These were the first men who existed in great numbers on the face of the earth.

Immediately the wooden figures were annihilated, destroyed, broken up, and killed.

A flood was brought about by the Heart of Heaven; a great flood was formed which fell on the heads of the wooden creatures.