http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2010/01/21#maya Its accomplishments. Its rediscovery. And modern superstitions --- among its descendants; elsewhere in the world. <P>See also: <a href="pre-columbian.html">Pre-Columbian Civilizations</a> in general <ul>Recommended: <li>Michael D. Coe <ul> <li><cite>The Maya</cite> <li><cite>Breaking the Maya Codde</cite> </ul> <li>David Freidel, Linda Schele and Joy Parker, <cite>Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path</cite> [Lots of information and many interesting conjectures, delivered with rather more certainty than seems warranted, and irritating stabs at silly cultural relativism.] <li>Nelson Reed, <cite>The Caste War of Yucat&aacute;n</cite> <li>Robert Sharer with Loa Traxler, <cite>The Ancient Maya</cite> <li>John Lloyd Stephens, <cite>Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan</cite> </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Inga Clendinnen, <cite>Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517--1570</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/9780521527316">blurb</a>] <li>Arthur Demarest, <cite>Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/9780521533904">blurb</a>] <li>Arthur Demarest and Don Rice (eds.), <cite>The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands: Collapse, Transition, and Transformation</cite> <li>Lynn V. Foster, <cite>Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World</cite> <li>Thomas H. Guderjan, <cite>The Nature of an Ancient Maya City: Resources, Interaction, and Power at Blue Creek, Belize</cite> <li>John S. Henderson, <cite>The World of the Ancient Maya</cite> <li>John Lowe, <cite>The Dynamics of Apocalypse</cite> [A computer model of the collapse of the Classic Maya] <li>Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube, <cite>Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens</cite> <li>Cameron L. McNeil, David A. Burney, and Lida Pigott Burney, "Evidence disputing deforestation as the cause for the collapse of the ancient Maya polity of Copan, Honduras", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0904760107"><cite>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</cite> (USA) <strong>107</strong> (2010): 1017--1022</a> <li>June Nash, <cite>Mayan Visions: The Quest for Autonomy in an Age of Globalization</cite> <li>L. Schele and M. E. Miller, <cite>The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art</cite> <li>Dennis Tedlock (ed.), <cite>2000 Years of Mayan Literature</cite> [<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9253.php">Blurb</a>] <li>David Webster, <cite>The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse</cite> </ul>