The Legend of Powerful Cock and Dragon the cheater

Once upon a long time ago in the Neverland World, chicken is the most powerful animal among others. The male  chicken or cock is the most feared. All animal respect him and treat him like a King and his kin like the highest kin of animal in all species. What make the cock most feared in history ? that’s because of his 2 sharp horn in his head. Yes….before the cock has a pair of horn right up on his head and the other one right behind the first one.There will be only one cock in the entire all cocks with long and sharp horn and the the longest horn will be the king and the leader in the entire animal.Every animal should obey and respect the King. With these horn the King fight to all his enemies and never go down except for once it was long time ago when he was fighting with the big bear. The fighting was 2 days 1 night never stop until when the sun start to rise from the east the King was knock down in his knee and fell to the ground,the bear was ready to beat him with his 2 sharp canine just right in the kings head. Bump……..big sound of two object collided hard. It was the dragon helping the King. The dragon hit the bear once again with his tail and bump…….!!! the bear bouncing and die with broken neck. The cock stand up and said

” why do you help me ? and who are you?”

” I’m Ishen the Leader from the Dragon family,i watched  you long time already my dear brave cock. I’m from the mountain on the other side of your Territory’s and sky is my playground. I want to be your friend.”

” Why i never see you till now ? i conquered all the entire animal territory included the great Lion from the North but you. i never see you.” Says the King.

” Thats because i stayed in the mountain and while you go to the mountain to conquer that place,i flew away to avoid you,we just show up only before the sunrise start. I don’t want to fight with you thats why i try to catch the moment like this time to approach you.”

” well you catch the moment very well,you saved my life.How should i thank you ? ” ask the King

” Just accept me as your friend.”says the dragon

” OK from now on you will be my friend and i want you to be under my command also. But now take me to my place,my knee hurts so much, i can’t walk properly.”

” with all my great pleasure my dear friend and my King,just come to my back and hold on tight.” Says the dragon.

So they fly away with victory in the King family again. As soon as they reach the empire the King been expected already with big welcome and applause from entire animal. They gathered in one big hall  waiting for the speech from the King after his big fight with the big bear.

The King come to the stage and give his speech.

” my dear family and all my relative and ally,i conquered already the north pole and it become my territory right now but in all that happen because someone was helping me this time. He saved my live and now he and his kin will part of our big family !!!”

The crowd cheer and yell to the King and  the dragon.

 

After that later the Neverland world live in peace and happy with 1 great leader.The King is very wise,strict and care with his citizen and all of them are very respect and obey him.

Not a long time and not that far from the King empire,theres a big cave in the mountain where the dragon live. They have a little discussion between them.

 

” The election will come in the week time,all ladies will come from west to choose the groom. We should look nice and look powerful in their eyes.” says the dragon to Ishen the leader

” I wish we have horns like the cocks does ” says the other dragon.

” Ishen,is it possible if we borrow the cocks horn ? It will be great if we had it and the ladies will fall in love to us.”says all of the dragon to Ishen

” I will try to ask the King and his also my friend so maybe will be possible to borrow it.”says Ishen

 

The next 6 days right before the election day in early morning before the sun rising up, Ishen come to the empire and have a little conversation.

 

” NO !!!  I won’t lend you my horn and my people horn !!! ” the King rejected 

” My King, how long we’ve been friend already ? I saved your live once and i will always be in your side. This is our chance to be choose by our lady from the west.” beg the dragon

” i just ask you this favor 1 time and i wont ask you again and never.” continue the dragon

The King silence for a while and think

” OK i will give you my horns and also from my kin horns,please treat it carefully and gentle. But you need to give me back  after tomorrow right after the election.” says the King.

” Thank you very much my King, i won’t forget about it”.

” If i’m not showing up yet before the sunrise just knock the ground 3 times and make your great voice for a sign.” continue the dragon.

 

So the all horns collected in every land for the the dragons that time.All cocks wondering and full of question in their mind.

The King give his little speech 

” dear my people,don’t worry about your horn because i knew Ishen will keep his promise to give us back our horns after tomorrow in the morning before the sunrise. Just knock the ground 3 times and make your great voice to the sky for their reminder.”

 

The dragon left with their horn in the sky and the King and other cocks watching from down till the Dragons disappear from their sight. 

The day after tomorrow arrive and the sun almost rising from the east but theres no sign from the dragons. The king start to get worry and ask all the cocks to knock the ground and make the voice ” kuku ruyuk !!!!!!!” Kuku ruyuk !!!! kukuruyuk !!!! ” The sound start over and over again from the all cocks but still no sign from the dragon.

The dragon cheat on the King.

The King not powerful anymore, without His great Horns no body respect him anymore as a King and all allies stay away from him. The Great Cocks and the kin forgotten already. Since that time The Lion ruled the land once again.

 

The King of cocks and his kin now become just regular animal like others and they still hoping that the dragons will give them back the horns to their hands again and conquer the world again. But it is just the dream and the dragon was long gone already without a trace.

 

Until this time in our everyday human life the chicken still doing their hope try to remind the dragons about their horns by knocking the ground 3 times and make their voice before the sunrise

 

KUKUK RUYUK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

The San Diego Harbor Bay tour

As vast as the San Diego harbor is, a simple walk
around it doesn’t do it justice! To partake in the
beauty that is San Diego Harbor, you need to take a
tour of the bay. San Diego Harbor Excursion can
help you do that, as they are the most established
tour company throughout the bay.

As a guest, they will treat you with as one of them,
helping to bring your cruise to life. There are
a few parts to the tour, ensuring that you get the
most out of your time on the cruise.

Tour of the North Bay
On your tour of the North Bay, you’ll see the North
Island Naval Air Station, Shelter Islands, and even
the Naval Sub Base. If you look closely, you’ll
also be able see the Cabrillo National Monument as
well.

The tour of the North Bay is around 12 miles in length
and lasts about an hour. This is a fine tour for
anyone interested in the Navy as well. During your
tour the guides will explain everything to you as
you see it. This way, you’ll always know what’s going
on.

Tour of the South Bay
Your tour of the South Bay consists of the Star of
India, the Naval surface fleet, Coronado Bay Bridge,
and the shipyards. This is a very busy and hectic
area, which makes a tour excellent to see everything
that this area has to offer.

The tour of South Bay is roughly 12 miles in length
and also lasts around an hour. The guides will explain
things here to you as well, ensuring that you know
exactly what you are seeing.

Tour of the Bay
Those of you who are looking to see it all should go
for the deluxe tour of the entire bay. You’ll see
everything covered in the North and South Bay, along
with everything else the bay has to offer. The tour
is around 25 miles in length and lasts around 2 hours.

To get started on your tour, all you need to do is
contact the Harbor Excursion. The price for the tour
is very reasonable, considering everything you’ll be
seeing.

If you happen to live in San Diego, taking the tour is
easier than ever. Those of you who are visiting or on
vacation should give the tour a shot as well. This way
you’ll get to experience everything that San Diego Bay
has to offer you without having to walk around. And
best of all – tour guides will explain the sights to
you – so you’ll never miss a second.

Coronado island in San Diego

Everyone in California knows that the best beaches
in San Diego are on Coronado Island. Being linked to
downtown San Diego by the Island Bay Bridge, Coronado
is home to the SEALs training center and the Naval
Air Station Coronado. A military powerhouse, the
island of Coronado always has something going on.

One of the best features to Coronado is the world
famous Hotel Del Coronado. This Victorian style
seaside hotel was established in 1888, and was easily
one of the biggest and best hotels of that era. The
hotel was hosted in the past by the infamous Marilyn
Monroe and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

The Hotel Del Coronado has some of the best service
in California, along with breathtaking views of the
San Diego area. The restaurant here is one of the
best around, and even if you aren’t staying here, you
can enjoy a great meal. Each and every year, thousands
of people visit Coronado just to stay at this world
class hotel – yes, it’s that good.

The Ferry Landing is also a great addition to what
Coronado Island has to offer. The Ferry Landing
Marketplace offers you 30+ shops, restaurants, and
art galleries. You can walk around and check out
what the marketplace has to offer, or enjoy a
visit to the Tidelands Park.

There are great places to walk and bicycle here,
with awesome views of skyline San Diego. At sunset,
this is one of the best places to be. On Tuesdays, you
can find a farmers market here as well.

The Coronado Beach is located here as well, along the
Travel Channel. North of the beach there’s the Best
Weekend Getaway Beach. Even in the summer, the
Coronado Beach isn’t crowded, giving your family plenty
of room to enjoy the splendors of one of California’s
best beaches.

From the Glorietta Bay Inn in Coronado, you can take
a walking tour. Tours leave several times a week,
showing you everything the area has to offer. This is
a great way to learn more about the area. Or, if you
like, you can let someone else do the driving and
try a pedicab tour.

For the romantic, the Gondola Cruise helps to take the
pressure out of life. A romantic spin through the
canals of Coronado Cays can be quite the break from
the ordinary.

You can reach Coronado Island from San Diego by taking
the Coronado Bay Bridge exit off I-5. By water from
San Diego, you can take the Coronado Ferry that runs
hourly from 9 AM – 10 PM. Walking from the Ferry
Landing to Hotel Del Coronado is a little over a mile.

ROAD TRIPS ARE FUN !!!!

Road trips are always fun to go http://on…usually. Nowadays, there aren’t nearly as many people taking road trips as there once was because of the high gas prices as well as the number of people who are trying to save money by not driving their vehicles as much. There are various reasons as to why road trips are good as well as why they may not be such a hot idea.

For starters, road trips often end up costing you much more money than you initially may have thought. Think about it; you have to factor into the cost of a road trip, the cost for gasoline for your vehicle, possible costs for repairs to your vehicle that may be necessary during the road trip, vehicle maintenance prior to your departure (I.e. oil change, rotate and balance tires, etc.), the cost of food for the trip, the cost of lodging along the way, the cost for fuel/gasoline during the trip, and finally the cost for entertainment along the way.

When I think about road trips, I am often reminded of my own road trips that I make from North Carolina to Long Island. I have made the trip home from North Carolina to New York so often and for so long that it is simply ingrained in me as to what time I need to leave, what I need to bring with me, as well as what stops along the way are better than others in terms of getting gasoline and food. I guess you could say that I’ve got it down to a science now. For instance, when I am traveling by myself to New York (as I often do), I only stop once exactly half way in Maryland where I fill up on gasoline, use the bathroom and get right back on the road. Additionally, investing in an EZ pass has also helped to cut down on the amount of time that I spend on the roadways. What would normally take a family or even another individual ten or more hours only takes me between 8-9 hours simply because I am familiar with the roadways, alternate routes and rest areas.

When you are taking a road trip, especially if it is a road trip to somewhere you have never been before, it is important to do your research ahead of time. Thankfully, we have the Internet where you can join forums or reach out to others who have made similar road trips and can offer up various bits and pieces of advice to help you out with the planning and execution of your road trip. As a general rule, you should always, ALWAYS pack some sort of an emergency road trip or car kit. In this car kit, you should have items such as bandages, flashlights, a first aid kit, an extra pair of clothes, sweatshirt, sweatpants, gloves, batteries, and some non-perishable food items/water. You never know when you are going to need any of these items. For instance, the other day, I was just going out to a friend’s house when I realized that my feet were probably going to get cold. That’s when I remembered that I had an extra pair of socks in my emergency car kit. You never know!

Air traveling with your DOG ?

The Challenges of Air Traveling with Your Dog

Air traveling with your dog may be a bit challenging, but there is no reason not to do it, as long as you pay attention to the important air travel details when it comes to bringing animals with you. If you are planning to take your dog on an air trip, the first thing you need to do is find out the different animal air travel policies of various airlines. Some airline may allowe animals aboard, while some may not. Some airlines may just have special rules when it comes to animal air travel. Before you start planning your itinerary, ask about animal air travel policies. It is of utmost importance that all the details of the air trip are straightened out because it is very troublesome to deal with problems when they come.

Usual Animal Air Travel Policies

When it comes to animal air travel, most airlines usually offer two options for dog owners.

Related Coverage

Traveling With Your Dog

By nature, dogs are the sort of creatures who love to be outside. They love to explore their world – take in the sights, sounds, and most importantly, the smells! If you plan on taking your pooch in the car for a long ride, there are a few things you need to know. Safe Car Travel With Your Dog

You love having your dog ride around with you in the car and he loves it too! But did you ever consider your pets safety while traveling? Here are some tips for dog car travel safety. Traveling With Your Dog And Porch Potty

Vacationing along with your furry four legged good friend is lots of enjoyable for equally of you. Most puppies love t o travel and are fantastic organization on lengthy drives. Without planning and business however, it could wind up a big disaster. Listed here are some tips to help you and your canine possess a risk-free and fun escape. Dog Travel – Practice Makes Perfect

Traveling by car with your dog may not be as difficult as herding toddlers in and out of every rest stop between your home and the theme park, but it can offer it’s own type of headaches. Try avoiding some of those problems by doing a little “dress rehearsal” before your next dog-inclusive trip.They can either keep their dogs in a carrier that can be placed under the airplane seat, or keep their dogs in the cargo area of the plane. Most dog owners would prefer keeping their dog near them in the comfortable cabin, but some dogs, especially the bigger ones, can only fit in the cargo area. If you check with your airline about their policies, don’t just decide for yourself where you want to take your dog. Make sure to ask about the specifications of the carriers that will be allowed in the cabin under your seat. If your dog is small enough to fit comfortably in the fitting carrier, then taking your dog with you in the cabin section is the better choice. If your dog, however, cannot fit in a carrier small enough to be placed under your seat, it will have to stay in its carrier in the cargo section, along with the baggages.
You may be a bit apprehensive about leaving your dog in such a place, but the best that you can do to keep it out harm is make sure that the carrier is properly locked.

Other Air Traveling Tips for Your Dog

Just like in any kind of trip, air trips can also be dangerous if you don’t take some necessary measures in keeping your dog safe. You have to factor your dog in all the decisions you need to make for the air travel. Air traveling may be stressful for your dog as well, so be sure that your dog has been through proper training before you take it air traveling. Aside from that, to keep from losing your dog in strange and foreign places, make sure that your dog has a tag or even a microchip. It will also be better if you don’t arrange stopover flights. Stick to continuous flights instead for your dog’s comfort. Finally, another important air traveling tip is to bring a lot of food for your dog during the trip, but don’t feed it before the air trip. An empty stomach will less likely act up when you’re already airborne. And before your go air traveling, don’t forget to take your dog to the groomers, or groom your pet on your own. A dog about to go air traveling should be at its best.

tHE SIx eNeMiEs !

Human….

Human is the most perfect creature in the earth,human can think,human can cry,human can laugh,human can do unbelievable things that other creatures can’t. But there’s a thing also that human can’t do the ability that other creature can such as survive in extreme weather,regenerate faster than human,fly in the open sky,etc.

Human have a very complex system in their body. They have skeletal system which is in adult human body consist 206 bones,digestive system,muscular system,nerve system,lymphatic system,cardiovascular system,reproduction system.

The most and still mysterious part in human body until now is BRAIN and its part of the nervous system in human body,the human brain still unpredictable.The scientist still put this brain experiment and investigation in a big Question. The scientist can reveal what and which part of the brain function BUT the scientist still can’t reveal the ability of the brain such as what or where it came from ( the power of future prediction,telepathic ability,the power of  curing other people,etc ). Human in the earth have a lot of process evolution since million of years ago till now and of course the brain also came a long  as a big part in this evolution.

6 ENEMIES !!

The six enemies of human being is inside of their body and its came from the brain its self.The brain can do and cost many things that you cannot guess if its out of control.The six enemies cannot be eliminated or destroyed BUT it can be controlled and they are :

1. Sexual Urge.

The sexual urge is in every creature in the earth and the most wild is in the animal. The human sexual urge can be also out of control and of course it will cost the human it self in the loss situation or bad situation IF this human always changing partners all the time. The cost of this sexual urge is a disease or even death. The way to control it is really depend on the human it self. Do learn more about yoga and do more the positive thing with partner and do only make love with 1 partner.

2. Anger

Anger is the most dangerous thing in every creature in the world. It can cost a destruction and also death. Anger is normal as long as in control. To control it very easy please try this step :

• Breathe deeply, from your diaphragm; breathing from your chest won’t relax you. Picture your breath coming up from your “gut.”
• Slowly repeat a calm word or phrase such as “relax,” “take it easy.” Repeat it to yourself while breathing deeply.
• Use imagery; visualize a relaxing experience, from either your memory or your imagination.

• Non strenuous, slow yoga-like exercises can relax your muscles and make you feel much calmer.

when you follow this step you will find a big glory for your self that you can conquer your own anger.

3. Greed

Every human and animal have the same character and that character is greed. Greedy in the human being still more flexible than animal. The human being in this earth controlled by their own greed to survive and this a normal behavior and its natural. The costs of this greed usually can harm other humans and even costs the death if it out of control. For example government. There are no government who’s not greedy in this present time. Some greedy for nice position,some greedy for money and etc. The cost of this character are the third party that they will get the bad influence from the greedy humans, just like the innocent citizen where their government did big corruption.How to control it ? Its back again to human it self how they want to control it,whether in a good way or bad way. And how about you ???

4. Temptation

This kind enemy is affiliate with greedy and sexual urge.In order to avoid greedy and sexual urge, human need to manage the temptation surround them whether they follow it or ignore it. In this world humans facing a lot of temptation such as money temptation,girl temptation,food temptation,etc.When the human fell down on it, they will be satisfied and happy but if its out of control sometime it can cost bad also for the human it self. SO HOW TO CONTROL IT ? Human need to be more careful and more selective about it and of course mind control is the priority. 

5. Ego

Humans it self has their own ego and this ego came from their pride such as proud of their self because other can’t do what they did,proud of their self because their the most rich than any other human,etc. The Ego also called as drunkenness. It mean when the human reach the most highest ability or situation that other human can’t and when they already feel this highest ability or situation,they start to look down or underestimate any other human who’s lower than them. In this live situation human facing a lot of egoism spreading between the humans it self and the human can do anything about it and of course live still goes on.

6. Jealousy

The last and the most dangerous is jealousy. WHY ITS DANGEROUS ? Jealousy affiliate with anger and if it out of control,jealous can kill other human being. Jealous create a human action and sometime can be worse and can be good also.The good thing of jealous that it will motivate the human it self to be better and to do better in the future. In the love story in human live we saw a lot of a scenario about jealousy,some human end up in jail and even worse. Jealous can make a human blind,can’t think irrational and full of anger. The way to control it is human should think positive while facing this jealous situation,be communicate and try always ask first or talk first before do the action.

Well that’s the information about the 6 enemies inside the human being, CAN YOU CONTROL IT ?

The MyStery oF mAyaN tRibE by MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Unraveling the mystery of who the Maya were, how they lived–and why their civilization suddenly collapsed

The crowd at the base of the enormous bloodred pyramid has been standing for hours in the dripping heat of the Guatemalan jungle. No one moves; every eye stays fixed on the building’s summit, where the king, his head adorned with feathers, his scepter a two-headed crocodile, is about to emerge from a sacred chamber with instructions from his long-dead ancestors. The crowd sees nothing of his movements, but it knows the ritual: lifted into the next world by hallucinogenic drugs, the king will take an obsidian blade or the spine of a stingray, pierce his own penis, and then draw a rope through the wound, letting the blood drip onto bits of bark paper. Then he will take the bark and set it afire, and out of the rising smoke a vision of a serpent will appear to him.

When the king finally emerges, on the verge of collapse, he reaches under his loincloth, displays a bloodstained hand and announces the ancestors’ message–the same message he has received so many times in the past: “Prepare to go to war.” The crowd erupts in wild cheers. The bloodletting has barely begun.

Who were the Maya, the people who built and later abandoned these majestic pyramids scattered around Central America and who enacted these bizarre rites? The question has piqued scientists across a broad swath of disciplines ever since an American lawyer and explorer named John Lloyd Stephens stumbled across something strange in the Honduran jungle. In Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan (1841), Stephens impressionistically described what was later identified as the ruined Maya city of Copan: “It lay before us like a shattered bark in the midst of the ocean, her masts gone, her name effaced, her crew perished, and none to tell whence she came, to whom she belonged, how long on her voyage, or what caused her destruction.”

More than 150 years later, the Maya seem less inscrutable than they did to Stephens, the man who discovered, or rediscovered, what they had left behind. Archaeologists have long known that the Maya, who flourished between about A.D. 250 and 900, perfected the most complex writing system in the hemisphere, mastered mathematics and astrological calendars of astonishing accuracy, and built massive pyramids all over Central America, from Yucatan to modern Honduras. But what researchers have now found among these haunting irruptions of architecture may be, among other things, reasons for admonishing today’s world: at a time when tribal fratricide is destroying Bosnia and farmers are carving through the rain forest, the lessons yielded by the Maya have a disturbing resonance.

The latest discovery, announced just this week, underscores how quickly Maya archaeology is changing. Four new Maya sites have been uncovered in the jungle-clad mountains of southern Belize, in rough terrain that experts assumed the Maya would have shunned. Two of the sites have never been looted, which will provide researchers with a wealth of clues to the still largely unsolved puzzle of who the Maya were–and the mystery of how and why their civilization collapsed so catastrophically around the year 900. Of course, considerable mysteries persist and always will. “I wake up almost every morning thinking how little we know about the Maya,” says George Stuart, an archaeologist with National Geographic. “What’s preserved is less than 1% of what was there in a tropical climate.”

Such limited and often puzzling physical evidence has not deterred growing legions of archaeologists, art historians, epigraphers, anthropologists, ethnohis torians, linguists and geologists from making annual treks to Maya sites. Propelled by a series of dramatic discoveries, Mayanism has been transformed over the past 30 years from an esoteric academic discipline into one of the hottest fields of scientific inquiry–and the pace of discovery is greater today than ever.

Among the already addicted, Mayamania is easy to explain. Says Arthur Dem arest, a Vanderbilt University archaeologist who for the past four years has led a team of researchers unearthing the remains of Dos Pilas, a onetime Maya metropolis in northern Guatemala: “You’ve got lost cities in the jungle, secret inscriptions that only a few people can read, tombs with treasures in them, and then the mystery of why it all collapsed.”

The explosion of information has led to a comparable explosion of theorizing about the Maya, along with inevitable, often vehement, disagreements over whose ideas are right. Nevertheless, a consensus has begun to emerge among Mayanists. Among the first myths about this population to be debunked is that they were a peaceful race. Experts now generally agree that warfare played a key role in Maya civilization. The rulers found reasons to use torture and human sacrifice throughout their culture, from religious celebrations to sporting events to building dedications. “This has come as something of a shock to many Mayanists,” says Carlos Navarrete, a leading Mexican anthropologist.

Uncontrolled warfare was probably one of the main causes for the Maya’s eventual downfall. In the centuries after 250–the start of what is called the Classic period of Maya civilization–the skirmishes that were common among competing city-states escalated into full-fledged, vicious wars that turned the proud cities into ghost towns.

Among the first modern Westerners to be captivated by the Maya were the American Stephens and English artist Frederick Catherwood, who started in 1839 to bushwhack their way into the Central American rain forest to gaze at the monumental ruins of Copan, Palenque, Uxmal and other Maya sites. The book Stephens wrote about his trek was an enormous popular success and sparked others to follow him and Catherwood into the jungle and into musty Spanish colonial archives. Over the next half-century, researchers uncovered, among other things, the Popol Vuh (the sacred book of the Quiche Maya tribe) and the Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan, an account of Maya culture during and immediately after the 16th century Spanish conquest written by the Roman Catholic bishop Diego de Landa. By the 1890s, Alfred Maudslay, an English explorer, was compiling the first comprehensive catalog of Maya buildings, monuments and inscriptions in the major known cities, and the first excavations were under way.

With all this data, 19th century scholars began trying to decipher the hieroglyphic script, reconstruct Maya history and figure out what caused the civilization to fall apart. In the absence of any historical context, though, speculation tended to run a little wild. Some ascribed the monumental buildings to survivors of the lost continent of Atlantis; others insisted they were the work of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, or the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Chinese, or even the Javanese.

The first half of the 20th century brought more excavations and more cataloging–but still only scratched the surface of what was to come. By 1950 the field was dominated by J. Eric Thompson and Sylvanus Morley of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Both are still revered as brilliant archaeologists, but some of their theories have been overturned by new evidence. Among their now outdated ideas: that the city centers of the Classic Maya were used primarily for ceremonial purposes, not for living; hieroglyphic texts described esoteric calendrical, astronomical and religious subjects but never recorded anything as mundane as rulers or historical events; slash-and-burn agriculture was the farming method of choice; and, of course, the Maya lived in blissful coexistence with one another.

Morley and Thompson presumed that certain practices of the ancient Maya could be deduced from those of their descendants. Modern scientists are more rigorous; besides, they have the advantage of sophisticated technology, like radiocarbon dating, which can help test their theories.

Near the Mexican border of Guatamala, in the Maya city of Dos Pilas and the surrounding Petexbatun region, Arthur Demarest’s excavations have put him at the forefront of the revisionists. He divides the history of the region into two periods: before 761 and after. Before that year, he says, wars were well-orchestrated battles to seize dynastic power and procure royal captives for very public and ornate executions. But after 761, he notes, “wars led to wholesale destruction of property and people, reflecting a breakdown of social order comparable to modern Somalia.” In that year the king and warriors of nearby Tamarindito and Arroyo de Piedra besieged Dos Pilas. Says Demarest: “They defeated the king of Dos Pilas and probably dragged him back to Tamarindito to sacrifice him.” The reason for the abrupt change in the Maya’s battleground behavior, he suspects, was that the ruling elite had grown large enough to produce intense rivalries among its members. Their ferocious competition, which exploded into civil war, may have been what finally triggered the society’s breakdown. Similar breakdowns, he believes, happened in other areas as well.

Arlen and Diane Chase, archaeologists at the University of Central Florida, believe their work at Caracol, in present-day Belize, also shows that escalating warfare was largely responsible for that ancient city’s abrupt extinction. Among the evidence they cite: burn marks on buildings, the uncharacteristically unburied body of a six-year-old child lying on the floor of a pyramid, and an increase in war imagery on late monuments and pottery. “Of course we found weapons too,” says Arlen.

While many Mayanists agree that wars contributed to the collapse, no one thinks they were the whole story. Another factor was overexploitation of the rain-forest ecosystem, on which the Maya depended for food. University of Arizona archaeologist T. Patrick Culbert says pollen recovered from underground debris shows clearly that “there was almost no tropical forest left.”

Water shortages might have played a role in the collapse as well: University of Cincinnati archaeologist Vernon Scarborough has found evidence of sophisticated reservoir systems in Tikal and other landlocked Maya cities (some of the settlements newly discovered this week also have reservoirs). Since those cities depended on stored rainfall during the four dry months of the year, they would have been extremely vulnerable to a prolonged drought.

Overpopulation was another problem. On the basis of data collected from about 20 sites, Culbert estimates that there were as many as 200 people per sq km in the southern lowlands of Central America. Says Culbert: “This is an astonishingly high figure; it ranks up there with the most heavily populated parts of the pre-industrial world. And the north may have been even more densely populated.”

One inevitable consequence of overpopulation and a disintegrating agricultural system would be malnutrition–and in fact, some researchers are beginning to find preliminary evidence of undernourishment in children’s skeletons from the late Classic period. Given all the stresses on Maya society, says Culbert, what ultimately sent it over the edge “could have been something totally trivial–two bad hurricane seasons, say, or a crazy king. An enormously strained system like this could have been pushed over in a million ways.”

What sorts of lessons can be drawn from the Maya collapse? Most experts point to the environmental messages. “The Maya were overpopulated and they overexploited their environment and millions of them died,” says Culbert bluntly. “That knowledge isn’t going to solve the modern world situation, but it’s silly to ignore it and say it has nothing to do with us.” National Geographic archaeologist George Stuart agrees. The most important message, he says, is “not to cut down the rain forest.” But others are not so sure. Says Stephen Houston, a hieroglyphics expert from Vanderbilt University: “I think we should be careful of finding too many lessons in the Maya. They were a different society, and the glue that held them together was different.”

Just how different the Maya were is clear from their everyday lives, on which archaeologists are increasingly focusing. From the contents of graves and burial caches, the architecture of ordinary houses, and scenes painted on pottery, Demarest and others are learning what an average Maya day was like.

The typical Maya family (averaging five to seven members, archaeologists guess) probably arose before dawn to a breakfast of hot chocolate–or, if they weren’t rich enough, a thick, hot corn drink called atole–and tortillas or tamales. The house was usually a one-room hut built of interwoven poles covered with dried mud. Meals of corn, squash and beans, supplemented with the occasional turkey or rabbit, were probably eaten on the run.

During the growing season, men would spend most of the day in the fields, while women usually stayed closer to home, weaving or sewing and preparing food. At the end of the day the family would reconvene at home, where the head of the household might perform a quick bloodletting, the central act of piety, accompanied by prayers and chanting to the ancestors. Days that were not devoted to agriculture might be spent building pyramids and temples. In exchange for their toil, the people expected to attend royal marriages and ceremonies marking important astrological and calendrical events. At these occasions the king might perform a bloodletting, sacrifice a captive or preside over a ball game–the losers to be beheaded, or sometimes tied in a ball and bounced down the stone steps of a pyramid. Like modern-day hot-dog vendors, craftsmen and farmers might show up for these games to set up stands and barter for pots, cacao and beads.

The Maya also had a highly devel oped–and to modern eyes, highly bi zarre–aesthetic sense. “Slightly crossed eyes were held in great esteem,” writes Yale anthropologist Michael Coe in his book The Maya. “Parents attempted to induce the condition by hanging small beads over the noses of their children.” The Maya also seemed to go in for shaping their children’s skulls: they liked to flatten them (although this may have simply been the inadvertent result of strapping babies to cradle boards) or squeeze them into a cone. Some Mayanists speculate that the conehead effect was the result of trying to approximate the shape of an ear of corn.

The Maya filed their teeth (it’s unclear whether they used an anesthetic), sometimes into a T shape and sometimes to a point. They also inlaid their teeth with small, round plaques of jade or pyrite. According to Coe, young men painted themselves black until marriage and later engaged in ritual tattooing and scarring.

Information about the Maya has come not just from physical objects but also from the elaborate hieroglyphics they left behind. Indeed, the study of Maya writing has become a coequal–and sometimes competitive–path of inquiry. For some reason it has attracted more than its share of amateurs. In the early 1970s, “discoveries came at the pace of a raging prairie fire,” writes Coe in his latest book, Breaking the Maya Code. Former University of South Alabama art teacher Linda Schele burst into the epigraphical world. On a 1970 visit to Mexico, she was mesmerized by the ruins at Palenque. Three years later, she was accomplished enough to collaborate with two others in a mind-boggling feat of decipherment: during a conference at modern Palenque, the trio took a mere 2 1/2 hours to decode the history of Palenque and its rulers from the beginning of the 7th century to its fall around the late 8th century–and got it right.

How was this possible? Because, say the professionals, deciphering glyphs depends as much on intuition and instinct as it does on knowledge of a given writing system. Insight can strike like lightning. Says Schele, now an art historian at the University of Texas at Austin: “These moments of clarity are just extraordinary. The greatest thrills of my career came in those moments when the inscription becomes clear and we suddenly understand the humans who created this legacy for the first time.”

The Palenque decipherment work began an epigraphic revolution. Since then, the field has been blessed with a number of young, gifted epigraphers, including Stephen Houston, 34, and David Stuart, 28, who began his career as a child. The son of Maya archaeologists George and Gene Stuart, he made his first trip to Maya ruins at the age of three, and by 1984, at 18, was so skilled at deciphering glyphs that he became the youngest recipient ever of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. Stuart’s next project is nothing less than cataloging every known Maya inscription, a task he guesses could take him the rest of his life. “There is at least another century of work; it will go on long after I’m gone,” he says.

Like most official records, glyphs undoubtedly contain a healthy dose of propaganda. Imagine, argues Richard Leven thal, director of UCLA’s Institute of Archaeology, that you tried to understand the Gulf War by reading Saddam Hussein’s pronouncements. Says Arlen Chase: “You get this real warped view of what Maya politics and Classic society look like if you just use epigraphy. It’s important, but archaeology is the only way to test it.” Observes Houston: “Of course it’s propaganda, but to jump from that to a blanket dismissal is preposterous.”

The argument over how to interpret Maya writing–along with arguments over just about every other aspect of Maya archaeology–won’t be resolved anytime soon. New discoveries are constantly reinventing the conventional wisdom. At Ca racol, for example, the Chases have uncovered an unprecedented 74 relic-filled tombs; their location, in living areas, supports the idea of ancestor worship, and the number of burial chambers provides evidence, the Chases think, that the Maya had a large, prosperous “middle class.”

In Dos Pilas, Arthur Demarest is turning his attention to garbage piles. “Those are the most important finds,” he says, “not the tombs, because you find everything they ate, their tools–a real cross-section of life, in really good preservation.” A colleague plans to study the chemical composition of ancient soil and pollen samples and exhumed human bones to learn more about the Maya diet, common diseases, agricultural practices and even what the climate was like.

As they excavate deeper into the Maya past, archaeologists and other scientists are still struggling to make sense of this legacy of triumph and self-destruction. And there usually comes a point when a Mayanist has to decide how to draw joyful inspiration from the culture’s destiny. “It’s a very rare thing for the past to be a source of deep-seated pessimism,” says David Freidel, an anthropologist at Southern Methodist University. So Freidel has come up with this way to think of the Maya: “When I see the past, what I see are not just the failures of human effort, of human imagination, but that unquenchable desire to make of life a meaningful thing.”

By GUY GARCIA PALENQUE–With reporting by Laura Lopez/San Cristobal de las Casas

A tour guide at the legendary ruins of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, likes to tell the story. A tourist, after staring in awe at the towering pyramids, turned to the guide and said, “The buildings are beautiful, but where did all the people go?” “Of course, she was talking to a Maya,” the guide says, shaking his head at the irony. “We’re still here. We never left.”

The exchange illustrates a living paradox at the heart of the Maya puzzle: even as scientists continue to investigate the mysterious eclipse of the classic Maya empire, the Maya themselves are all around them. An estimated 1.2 million Maya still live in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, and nearly 5 million more are spread throughout the Yucatan Peninsula and the cities and rural farm communities of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Ethnically, they are derived from the same people who created the most exalted culture in Mesoamerica. Yet the thousands of visitors who come each year to admire the imposing temples of Palenque might be shocked to know the ignominious fate of the Maya’s modern-day descendants.

Centuries of persecution and cultural isolation have turned the Maya into impoverished outcasts in their own land. At best, they are often reduced to tourist attractions; for a little money, Mexico’s Lacandon Indians, for instance, will display their traditional white cotton shikur and long black hair. But condescension is the mildest of the abuses suffered by today’s Maya. In a 1992 report on the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Amnesty International cited dozens of human-rights violations carried out by Mexican authorities against the Maya people of Chiapas: they include an incident in 1990 when 11 Maya were tortured after being arrested during a land dispute, and another one two years ago when 100 Maya were beaten and imprisoned for 30 hours without food or medical attention. In Guatemala’s 30-year-old civil war, it has been the Maya who have been the primary victims of the military’s antiguerrilla campaigns in the highlands, which have left 140,000 Guatemalans dead or missing. In some cases, government troops have burned entire Maya villages.

The systematic subjugation of the Maya dates back to the Spanish Conquest of the early 16th century, when Catholic missionaries outlawed the Maya religion and burned all but four of their sacred bark-paper books. Indians who were not killed in battle or felled by European diseases were forced to work on colonial plantations, often as slaves. Bands of Maya rebels, known to be ferocious fighters, resisted pacification for almost 400 years, first under the Spanish occupation and then under the Mexican army after Mexico became independent.

Despite this history of defiance–or maybe, in some cases, because of it–the Maya continued to be targets of abuse even after being incorporated into the family of Central American nations. As recently as 20 years ago, Maya peasants carrying chickens or peanuts to the town market in San Cristobal de las Casas were in danger of having their wares snatched away by non-Indian women, or “Black Widows.” And though the town’s economy depended on trade with the Indians, Maya found walking the streets at night would be thrown into jail and fined.

Today, despite government decrees that guarantee equal rights for Indians and the new presidency in Guatemala of human-rights champion Ramiro de Leon Carpio, indigenous peoples like the Maya remain at the bottom rung of the political and economic ladder. In Chiapas, where the natives speak nine different languages, literacy rates are about 50%, compared with 88% for Mexico as a whole. Infant mortality among the Maya is 500 per 1,000 live births, 10 times as high as the national average. And 70% of the Indians in the countryside lack access to potable water.

In these sorry conditions, many Maya have seized on their old ways to make sense of their modern lives. In the remote highlands of Guatemala and Mexico, where the rugged terrain has held the outside world at bay, contemporary Maya still practice many of the same rituals that were performed by their ancestors 4,000 years ago. Maya weavers embroider their wares with diamond motifs that are virtually identical to the cosmological patterns depicted on the lintels of ancient temples at Yaxchilan and other Maya sites. By marking their clothing with the symbols of their ancestors, the Maya artisans build a material link to pre-Columbian gods–and the indelible spirit of their cultural past. “Depictions of everyday life do not occur in the weaving,” notes Walter F. Morris Jr., a Seattle-based anthropologist and author of Living Maya. “It’s always something supernatural, something dreamt, something you can only see in dreams.”

Chiapas, Yaqui Indians follow two brothers who, guided by the spirit voices of macaws, retake the high country from the Hispanics who scorn and oppress them. In Alaska, a Yupik woman knows how to down airplanes by hexing television sets with a fox pelt. Near Tucson, two half-breed witches, elderly twin sisters, import cocaine to undermine the enemy and buy guns to store at their fortified ranch. Wherever it is shown, the white society is murderous, corrupt, mad with greed and hideously perverted. Among the white characters, and quite typical of the rest, are a federal judge who has sex with his basset hounds and a reptilian homosexual who steals the baby of a drug-soaked stripteaser for use in a torture video.

The ruling society has gone septic and sterile. Lecha, one of the twin witches, who can find lost objects and dead bodies, notices that “affluent, educated white people…sought [her] out in secret. They all had come to her with a deep sense that something had been lost…lottery tickets, worthless junk bonds or lost loved ones; but Lecha knew the loss was their connection with the earth.” Later an Indian orator picks up the theme. Spirit voices direct white mothers “to pack the children in the car and drive off hundred-foot cliffs or into flooding rivers…The spirits whisper in the brains of loners, the crazed young white men with automatic rifles who slaughter crowds in shopping malls or school yards as casually as hunters shoot buffalo.”

The author’s sentences have a drive and a sting to them. But the receptacle of her crowded, raging, enormously long book swirls with half-digested revulsion, half-explained characters and, a white elitist must add, more than a little self-righteousness. The novel’s long first half is a dull headache, because most of the dozen or more narrators, none of whom knows what is going on, are drunk, doped or crazy.

Yet angry prophets can’t be expected to write neat, button-down denunciations. Old Indian legends, the author relates, say that after a very long time, the cruel and greedy white conquerors will weaken and vanish. Her intention is to bring readers to the point at which this is about to happen, and her success is far more troubling than her failure.

Chiapas, Mexico, for instance, are not threatened by native Lacandon practices but by the more commercial agricultural practices of encroaching peasants, according to James Nations of Conservation International in Washington. Many indigenous farmers in Asia and South America manage to stay on one patch of land for as long as 50 years. As nutrients slowly disappear from the soil, the farmers keep switching to hardier crops and thus do not have to clear an adjacent stretch of forest.

Westerners have also come to value traditional farmers for the rich variety of crops they produce. By cultivating numerous strains of corn, legumes, grains and other foods, they are ensuring that botanists have a vast genetic reservoir from which to breed future varieties. The genetic health of the world’s potatoes, for example, depends on Quechua Indians, who cultivate more than 50 diverse strains in the high plateau country around the Andes mountains in South America. If these natives switched to modern crops, the global potato industry would lose a crucial line of defense against the threat of insects and disease.

Anthropologists studying agricultural and other traditions have been surprised to find that people sometimes retain valuable knowledge long after they have dropped the outward trappings of tribal culture. In one community in Peru studied by Christine Padoch of the Institute of Economic Botany, peasants employed all manner of traditional growing techniques, though they were generations removed from tribal life. Padoch observed almost as many combinations of crops and techniques as there were households. Similarly, a study of citified Aboriginal children in Australia revealed that they had far more knowledge about the species and habits of birds than did white children in the same neighborhood. Somehow their parents had passed along this knowledge, despite their removal from their native lands. Still, the amount of information in jeopardy dwarfs that being handed down.

Lending a Hand

There is no way that concerned scientists can move fast enough to preserve the world’s traditional knowledge. While some can be gathered in interviews and stored on tape, much information is seamlessly interwoven with a way of life. Boston anthropologist Jason Clay therefore insists that knowledge is best kept alive in the culture that produced it. Clay’s solution is to promote economic incentives that also protect the ecosystems where natives live. Toward that end, Cultural Survival, an advocacy group in Cambridge, Mass., that Clay helped establish, encourages traditional uses of the Amazon rain forest by sponsoring a project to market products found there.

Clay believes that in 20 years, demand for the Amazon’s nuts, oils, medicinal plants and flowers could add up to a $15 billion-a-year retail market–enough so that governments might decide it is worthwhile to leave the forests standing. The Amazon’s Indians could earn perhaps $1 billion a year from the sales. That could pay legal fees to protect their lands and provide them with cash for buying goods from the outside world.

American companies are also beginning to see economic value in indigenous knowledge. In 1989 a group of scientists formed Shaman Pharmaceuticals, a California company that aims to commercialize the pharmaceutical uses of plants. Among its projects is the development of an antiviral agent for respiratory diseases and herpes infections that is used by traditional healers in Latin America.

An indigenous culture can in itself be a marketable commodity if handled with respect and sensitivity. In Papua New Guinea, Australian Peter Barter, who first came to the island in 1965, operates a tour service that takes travelers up the Sepik River to traditional villages. The company pays direct fees to villages for each visit and makes contributions to a foundation that help cover school fees and immunization costs in the region. Barter admits, however, that the 7,000 visitors a year his company brings through the region disrupt local culture to a degree. Among other things, native carvers adapt their pieces to the tastes of customers, adjusting their size to the requirements of luggage. But the entrepreneur argues that the visits are less disruptive than the activities of missionaries and development officials.

There are other perils to the commercial approach. Money is an alien and destabilizing force in many native villages. A venture like Barter’s could ultimately destroy the integrity of the cultures it exhibits if, for example, rituals become performances tailored to the tourist business. Some villages in New Guinea have begun to permit tourists to visit spirit houses that were previously accessible only to initiated males. In Africa villages on bus routes will launch into ceremonial dances at the sound of an approaching motor. Forest-product concerns like those encouraged by Cultural Survival run the risk of promoting overexploitation of forests, and if the market for these products takes off, the same settlers who now push aside natives to mine gold might try to take over new enterprises as well.

Still, economic incentives already maintain traditional knowledge in some parts of the world. John and Terese Hart, who have spent 18 years in contact with Pygmies in northeastern Zaire, note that other tribes and villagers rely on Pygmies to hunt meat and collect foods and medicines from the forests, and that this economic incentive keeps their knowledge alive. According to John Hart, the Pygmies have an uncanny ability to find fruits and plants they may not have used for years. Says Hart: “If someone wants to buy something that comes from the forest, the Pygmies will know where to find it.”

Restoring Respect

Preserving tribal wisdom is as much an issue of restoring respect for traditional ways as it is of creating financial incentives. The late Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy put his prestige behind an attempt to convince his countrymen that their traditional mud-brick homes are cooler in the summer, warmer in the winter and cheaper than the prefabricated, concrete dwellings they see as modern status symbols.

Balick has made it part of his mission to enhance the status of traditional healers within their own communities. He and his colleagues hold ceremonies to honor shamans, most of whom are religious men who value respect over material reward. In one community in Belize, the local mayor was so impressed that American scientists had come to learn at the feet of an elderly healer that he asked them to give a lecture so that townspeople could learn about their own medical tradition. Balick recalls that this healer had more than 200 living descendants, but that none as yet had shown an interest in becoming an apprentice. The lecture, though, was packed. “Maybe,” says Balick, “seeing the respect that scientists showed to this healer might inspire a successor to come forward.”

Such deference represents a dramatic change from past scientific expeditions, which tended to treat village elders as living museum specimens. Balick and others like him recognize that communities must decide for themselves what to do with their traditions. Showing respect for the wisdom keepers can help the young of various tribes better weigh the value of their culture against blandishments of modernity. If young apprentices begin to step forward, the world might see a slowing of the slide toward oblivion.