Analysis: Creation Story of the Maya, from the Popol Vuh

Date: c. 1554–58

Geographic Region: present-day Guatemala

Author: Unknown

Translator: Allen J. Christenson

Summary Overview

The Popol Vuh of the Maya is the story of creation that was told and retold among the K'iche' Maya—the Maya people of the region that is today Guatemala. Though Mayan beliefs had developed over millennia, the writing of the Popol Vuh took place late in Mayan history—around the mid-sixteenth century, shortly after Europeans first appeared and conquered Central America. It represented the Mayan efforts to accommodate Christian beliefs, as it had become apparent by the mid-sixteenth century that the ancient Mayan beliefs and practices would not be allowed by the Spanish. The Popol Vuh tells of events that happened before the beginning of time. The stories of the mythical characters formed the basis of the origin story, religion, and ethical beliefs of the Maya.

Defining Moment

The Maya can be traced in the region of present-day Guatemala to about 1800 BCE, when they established small agricultural settlements and grew beans, squash, and maize. They developed a pottery tradition and used basic stone tools. Like other Central American civilizations (notably the Aztecs), the Maya were the successors to the Olmec people, from which they adapted much of their religion and culture, including the calendar, for which they would become famous in modern times. During this early period, before 250 CE, they developed much of the culture for which they would become known, including the construction of pyramids and stone monuments. From Olmec hieroglyphics, the Maya developed a system of writing that was more advanced than any other used by indigenous American populations.

The classic period of the Maya stretched from about 250 to 900 CE. During this time, the Mayan population may have been as high as 2 million people, divided into around forty cities. During this period, the Maya made discoveries in science and mathematics, including the concept of zero—long before Europeans learned of it from India—and the 365-day year. The Mayan writing system also took shape; it was one that could be used to express much more complex concepts than anything that had come before in the Americas. With it, they wrote of their history. Their art would be renowned for generations. Their calendar traced time to 3114 BCE and was used to predict events far into the future. A polytheistic people, the Maya worshipped gods of the corn, rain, sun, and moon. The Mayan kings claimed to be related to the gods and mediated between the gods and the people atop their stone pyramids. The cultivation of maize was the basis of many of their rituals, which were tracked on their calendar.

Around 900 CE, the Maya gradually abandoned many of their large cities. Civil wars took place around 1000 CE and 1400 CE, by which time the powerful position of the Maya had been superseded by other peoples, such as the Toltecs. By the time the Spanish arrived in the early sixteenth century, the Maya were far less powerful than they had once been, but they still managed to resist conquest for twenty years. Warfare and European diseases took a toll on the population, however, and much of the Mayan culture was suppressed by their Spanish Catholic conquerors. The Mayan priests were killed, and their books burned. The Spanish destroyed much of the ancient heritage and knowledge of the people, setting the stage for much of what remained of their oral tradition to be captured in the Popol Vuh.

Author Biography and Document Information

Nothing is known about the authors of the Popol Vuh, except that they were Maya living in present-day Guatemala during the mid-sixteenth century. The Spanish priest that first translated the book, Father Francisco Ximénez (1666–1729), considered it to be the product of the work of a number of different authors. In the early twentieth century, anthropologist Rudolf Schuller (1873–1932) credited the authorship to a Mayan writer who had been given the Spanish name Diego Reynoso—one of the only Mayan writers of the time who worked with and was educated by the Spanish. However, the evidence of Reynoso's authorship is minimal. Modern scholars have largely given up trying to determine who wrote the Popol Vuh.

Document Analysis

The Popol Vuh represents less a Mayan holy book than an attempt by the Mayan people to capture, in writing, their creation story before it was completely erased by their Spanish conquerors. It tells the story of what took place before the first “true dawn” and delivers the account of the creation of the first “true people,” the Maya. Internal references disclose that the Popol Vuh was based on earlier sources and should be hidden so that they would not be destroyed by Catholic priests. It was written as a single, long poem without any breaks, in the K'iche' language used by the descendants of the ancient Maya.

The first of the four books of the Popol Vuh, from which the present excerpt comes, describes the creation of the world and animals, as well as the first attempts of the gods to create humans. The animals are created first, but lack the ability to speak and express praise to the gods; they could only squawk and howl. As a result of their inability to praise the gods, the animals are condemned to live lives of subservience to beings able to praise the gods. The gods then attempt to create a being with the ability to praise them (a human) out of mud and earth. This will not hold its shape and is only able to speak nonsense, so the gods dissolve it. The gods next attempt to make humans out of wood, creating “doll people,” but they simply walk about and do nothing. Therefore, the gods summon a huge rainstorm and the animals of the forest force the doll people to flee into the woods, where they become monkeys.

Finally, in the fourth book of the Popol Vuh, the gods successfully create humans out of maize. These humans can speak and have the potential to possess as much knowledge as the gods. The gods introduce mortality in order to prevent that from happening. They also introduce females to make the males happy, so that they do not seek the higher knowledge that might make them as great as the gods. The Popol Vuh then gives a brief account of Mayan history, concluding with Kukulcan's migration of the Maya into Guatemala.

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Demarest, Arthur. Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Forest Civilization. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.

Estrada-Belli, Francisco. The First Maya Civilization: Ritual and Power before the Classic Period. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print.

Florescano, E. “Chichén Itzá, Teotihuacán and the Origins of the Popol Vuh.” Colonial Latin American Review 15.2 (2006): 129–42. Print.

Foster, Lynn. Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.

Tedlock, Dennis. Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life. Rev. ed. New York: Touchstone, 1996. Print.