Water, Cacao, and The Early Maya of Chocóla

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Kaplan ◽  
Federico Paredes Umaña
Keyword(s):  
Control Systems ◽  
New World ◽  
Intensive Agriculture ◽  
Water Control ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Ancient Trade ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
The World ◽  
Maya People ◽  
Material Substances

Before the authors’ research, Chocolá was no more than an intriguing legend. Chocolá’s apparent political links to the greatest Preclassic southern Maya area polity, Kaminaljuyu, would make any discovery about Chocolá conceivably vital to a better understanding of Maya origins and New World archaeology, as both ancient cities are located in the Southern Maya Region. Two facts led researchers to search more specifically for the material bases for Chocolá’s rise to power: 1) Mesoamerica’s greatest rainfall, 2) cacao groves around the modern village lying atop the ancient city. Cacao was so important to the Maya that, mythologically, the cacao god was the maize god’s brother and uncle of the “Hero Twins,” conceived as the aboriginal creators of the Maya people. If water control systems have been documented archaeologically at virtually all great ancient cities around the world, cacao is uniquely a Maya “invention,” the Maya being the first people in the world to domesticate the plant and cultivate it through intensive agriculture. These two discoveries—impressive water management and cacao at Preclassic Chocolá—likely are not coincidental. A complex, hierarchical society would have been in place for arboriculture of water-thirsty cacao for long-distance ancient trade. Thus, two material substances, one necessary for human survival, the other highly valued throughout Mesoamerica as consumable and essential in Maya mythology, may explain, in part, how this and other Southern Maya “kingdoms of chocolate” may represent a “sweet beginning” for one of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world.

Materialist Factors

2018 ◽  
pp. 263-315
Author(s):  
Jonathan Kaplan ◽  
Federico Paredes Umaña
Keyword(s):  
Control Systems ◽  
Hydraulic Engineering ◽  
Ancient Maya ◽  
Complex Society ◽  
Water Control ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Ancient City

This chapter details the two principal materialist research foci of the project, water and cacao. Water control systems in Mesoamerica and at ancient Maya cities are reviewed in order to set the discoveries at Chocolá in context in an attempt to understand both functional and ideological meanings of water control at the ancient city. Chocolá’s hydraulic engineering, including stone conduits and canals, closely resembles the systems at Takalik Abaj and Kaminaljuyu, suggesting a deliberate sharing of technology and underscoring the likelihood of links between these three ancient cities and polities. Similarly, the context of cacao in ancient Mesoamerica and specifically in the ancient Maya world is explained, leading to the hypothesis of intensive surplus arboriculture—large cacao groves—that, it is proposed, underlay Chocolá’s rise to wealth and power as a complex society. In addition, a “mystery tale” is recounted, in which one of the most stunning carved monuments of the Southern Maya Region, the so-called Shook Altar, plays a central role in the authors’ theory of surplus cacao production at Chocolá and long-distance trade of the commodity.

Henry Kissinger's book World order: Reflections on the beginnings of nations and the course of history

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
Abdul Hamid Al - Eid Al - Mousawi
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
New World Order ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Global System ◽  
The World ◽  
Western European ◽  
Book World

The central idea of Henry Kissinger's latest book, The Global System, is that the world desperately needs a new world order, otherwise geopolitical chaos threatens the world, and perhaps chaos will prevail and settle in the world. According to Kissinger, the world order was not really there at all, but what was closest to the system was the Treaty of Westphalia, which included about twenty Western European states for almost four centuries.

A new species of Platymystax (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae: Cryptinae: Hemigasterini) from Mexico

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-286
Author(s):  
D.R. Kasparyan ◽  
M. López-Ortega
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
New World ◽  
Identification Key ◽  
Preliminary Identification ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
The World ◽  
A New Species ◽  
World Fauna

A new species of the tribe Hemigasterini, Platymystax xalapa sp. nov., is described from the Mexican State of Veracruz. It is the first species of the genus described from the New World. A preliminary identification key to all known seven species of Platymystax of the world fauna is provided.

MODERN STAGE IN THE FORMATIONOF POLYCENTRIC WORLD

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
А.N. MIKHAILENKO
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
New World Order ◽  
International Leadership ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

The world is in a state of profound changes. One of the most likely forms of the future world pattern is polycentrism. At the stage of the formation of a new world order, it is very important to identify its key properties, identify the challenges associated with them and offer the public possible answers to them. It is proposed to consider conflictness, uncertainty and other features as properties of polycentrism. These properties entail certain challenges, the answers to them could be flexibility of diplomacy, development of international leadership and others.

scholarly journals The Global State of Security in Industrial Control Systems: An Empirical Analysis of Vulnerabilities around the World

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Simon Daniel Duque Anton ◽  
Daniel Fraunholz ◽  
Daniel Krohmer ◽  
Daniel Reti ◽  
Daniel Schneider ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Control Systems ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Global State ◽  
Industrial Control ◽  
Industrial Control Systems ◽  
The World

scholarly journals Latin America in Global History: An Historiographic Overview

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (60) ◽  
pp. 253-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Olstein
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
World History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Global History ◽  
The World ◽  
Last Ice Age ◽  
Great Divergence

Abstract World history can be arranged into three major regional divergences: the 'Greatest Divergence' starting at the end of the last Ice Age (ca. 15,000 years ago) and isolating the Old and the New Worlds from one another till 1500; the 'Great Divergence' bifurcating the paths of Europe and Afro-Asia since 1500; and the 'American Divergence' which divided the fortunes of New World societies from 1500 onwards. Accordingly, all world regions have confronted two divergences: one disassociating the fates of the Old and New Worlds, and the other within either the Old or the New World. Latin America is in the uneasy position that in both divergences it ended up on the 'losing side.' As a result, a contentious historiography of Latin America evolved from the very moment that it was incorporated into the wider world. Three basic attitudes toward the place of Latin America in global history have since emerged and developed: admiration for the major impact that the emergence on Latin America on the world scene imprinted on global history; hostility and disdain over Latin America since it entered the world scene; direct rejection of and head on confrontation in reaction the former. This paper examines each of these three attitudes in five periods: the 'long sixteenth century' (1492-1650); the 'age of crisis' (1650-1780); 'the long nineteenth century' (1780-1914); 'the short twentieth century' (1914-1991); and 'contemporary globalization' (1991 onwards).

Carnival Poetics of B. Vasilyev’s Story «Tomorrow Was the War»

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-45
Author(s):  
Valentina Kovaleva ◽  
Oleg Pokhalenkov
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
State Machine ◽  
Hierarchical System ◽  
New World Order ◽  
The World ◽  
Inside Out ◽  
Usual Order ◽  
Better Than ◽  
The Revolution

The article deals with such categories of carnivalization as a free familiar contact, eccentricity, profanation, carnival ambivalence, crowning, and debunking the carnival king. Taking these categories to the analysis of B. Vasilyev’s story «Tomorrow Was the War» into consideration allows not only to reveal the features of the carnival poetics of the work, but also to understand more deeply the atmos-phere of total Stalinist terror reigned in the country on the eve of the war. Turning to the theory of carnivalization helps to draw a conclusion about how heavy was the atmosphere of suspicion, informers, and unjustified repression created by the NKVD with the support ofthe state machine. B. Vasi-lyev makes the reader wonder whether the new world order that is being estab-lished can be considered better than the old one that has been swept away by the revolution. Thus, the main goal of the carnival is realized in the story–to turn inside out the usual ideas about the world as a reasonable hierarchical system, to turn the usual order of things upside down, to ridicule everything familiar and frozen, so that through denial, ridicule (symbolic death) to promote the re-vival and renewal of the world.

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