By Samuel Bridgewater
Belize's Chiquibul wooded area is among the biggest last expanses of tropical wet woodland in significant the USA. It types a part of what's popularly often called the Maya woodland. Battered by way of hurricanes over hundreds of thousands of years, occupied by means of the Maya for hundreds of thousands of years, and logged for centuries, this surroundings has validated its awesome ecological resilience via its persevered life into the twenty-first century. regardless of its background of disturbance, or perhaps partially due to it, the Maya woodland is ranked as a big nearby biodiversity sizzling spot and gives the various final neighborhood habitats for endangered species equivalent to the jaguar, the scarlet macaw, Baird's tapir, and Morelet's crocodile.
A average background of Belize offers for the 1st time a close portrait of the habitats, biodiversity, and ecology of the Maya woodland, and Belize extra commonly, in a structure obtainable to a well-liked viewers. it's dependent partially at the study findings of scientists learning at Las Cuevas learn Station within the Chiquibul woodland. The booklet is exclusive in demystifying some of the giant clinical debates with regards to rainforests. those contain "Why are tropical forests so diverse?"; "How do wildlife evolve?"; and "How do species interact?" via concentrating on the ecotourism paradise of Belize, this booklet illustrates how technology has solved the various riddles that after at a loss for words the likes of Charles Darwin, and likewise exhibits the way it might help us in handling our planet and woodland assets correctly sooner or later.
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Additional info for A Natural History of Belize: Inside the Maya Forest
A boy was not considered a man until he had shown that he could produce a crop on his own. This meant that he was ready for marriage and family responsibilities. Corn, the local community, and performing service for it, were at the heart of the commoner’s worldview, along with the two main threats to their successful accomplishment: crop failure from any source and disease. In learning and fulfilling these duties, a person’s sustaining power entered more fully into their bodies. During the colonial and into the national periods, everyone in Maya communities underwent hardships as their economic base was greatly reduced by loss of land and the requirements of the forced labor laws and other taxes.
Summary This chapter has presented a synthetic construct, an ideal type, a model of what the author considers a predominant logic of the traditional Maya worldview and how it was used to incorporate Catholic elements after the defeat by the Spaniards. This worldview provides a metaphysical viewpoint from which to understand other aspects of Maya thought and behavior. Anthropologists have used various semantics to describe such metaphysical descriptions: “deep, generative roots” (Gossen 1986: 4–5); “underlying foundation,” “cognitively deep” (Fischer 2001: 17–20); “durable transposable dispositions” (Bourdieu 1977: 22, quoted in Fischer 2001).
The different Maya groups with their tribal gods waged war against each other, sometimes to obtain a vassal group that would supply tribute and slaves to the conquering group. Some of the slaves would be used for ritual sacrifice. Such warfare was a clash of gods as well as men because of the tribal nature of the gods. This was how the battles with the Spaniards were conceptualized, leading to the adoption of the Spanish gods (Early 2006). Maya communities are careful to lock and secure their churches at night for fear that neighboring communities might attempt to steal their saint images.