neelwrites/whatpegmansaw/guatemala/historicalfiction/150words/12/06/2017

WHAT PEGMAN SAW

hosted by https://whatpegmansaw.com/2017/06/10/guatemala-city/Guatemala City

Today Pegman walks through Guatemala City

Feel free to stroll around the area using the Google street view and grab any picture you choose to include in your post.

To enjoy stories inspired by the What Pegman Saw prompt or to submit your own 150-word story, visit the inLinkz button:

GAME, SET, MATCH   (GENRE:HISTORICAL FICTION)

By Neel Anil Panicker

‘Answer me correctly and I’ll marry you.’

“Shoot,” shot back Alex Mathews, a final year exchange student from Michigan.

Today was his last day in Guatemala City. Jessica and he were at the Universidad Francisco Marroquin campus, inside the Museo Popol Vuh, gazing at the richest collections of Maya art in the world.

‘What’s that?’, she asked, pointing towards a sharp pointed conical tool.

“That”, said Alex, “is the Paleoindian stone knife. It was used way back in 9000 BC by hunter gatherers who entered the Americas from Eurasia. They built ice corridors extending…”

‘Impressive. One more,’ she said. ‘Are you the hunter or the hunted?’

Alex lowered his six foot tall frame, gazed evenly into Jessica’s eyes and replied, “With you…always the hunted”.

Her eyes turned a huge blob of lava. He imagined hot rocks bursting out of that gorgeous volcano vent of a mouth.

She whispered, ‘I’m game.’

©neelanilpanciker2017 #whatpegmansaw #historicalfiction #150words

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:

Paleo-Indians, Paleoindians or Paleoamericans is a classification term given to the first peoples who entered, and subsequently inhabited, the Americas during the final glacial episodes of the late Pleistocene period. The prefix “paleo-” comes from the Greek adjective palaios (παλαιός), meaning “old” or “ancient”.

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The Popol Vuh Museum takes its name from the Popol Vuh, one of the most important texts of the indigenous literature of the New World. Written in the western highlands of Guatemala around 1550, Popol Vuh brings together a set of myths and historical accounts of great importance for the study of the indigenous peoples of Guatemala. The names of their authors are unknown, but there are indications that it was written by prominent members of the nobility of the Quiche kingdom, which dominated a large region of the Guatemalan highlands at the time of the Spanish conquest. Written in a neat poetic style, it is also a masterpiece in literary terms. The Popol Vuh presents a mythological version of the creation of the world, followed by an account of the adventures of the twin gods, Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, in primordial times, before the creation of the human being.The triumphs of the heroes against the primordial forces and the gods of death give rise to the creation of the man from the corn. The second part of the text concentrates on the origins of the ruling Quiché lineages, their migration to the Guatemalan highlands, their conquest of territory, the establishment of their main city and the history of their kings until the Spanish conquest. The original text of the sixteenth century has been lost. It is known that it was written in Quiche language, but using the Spanish alphabet. At the beginning and end of the book, the authors mentioned that they wrote it because it was no longer possible to see a book called Popol Vuh, which existed in the past. Much has been speculated about the nature of this book, which should have existed before the Spanish conquest. It is likely to have been a pictorial manuscript similar to the postclassic codices known in central Mexico. The oldest surviving text of the Popol Vuh is a transcription of the Quiche text made at the beginning of the 18th century by the Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez, who also made the first translation known in Spanish. Ximénez presented in double column the Quiche text next to the Spanish version, and titled it “They begin the Stories of the Origin of the Indians of this Province of Guatemala” . This manuscript is in the Ayer Collection of the Newberry Library of the City of Chicago. It was extracted from the library of the National University of Guatemala by the French abbe Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, who published it for the first time completely in 1861. Since then, numerous editions and translations have been made. The word Popol Vuh literally means “book of the mat”. Among Mesoamerican peoples, mats or petates were symbols of the authority and power of kings. They were used as seats for rulers, high-ranking courtiers and heads of lineages. For this reason, the title of the book has been translated as “Council Book” . The mythological accounts of the Popol Vuh are closely related to other mythological texts collected at the beginning of the colonial period, as well as with many oral traditions that are still preserved in the indigenous communities of Guatemala and other parts of Mesoamerica. In recent decades it has been shown that they also find close parallels in classical Mayan art. In particular, the scenes painted on the polychrome pottery of the classical period in the Maya lowlands present figures of gods and mythological scenes related to the myths of the Popol Vuh. The Popol Vuh Museum houses an important set of such scenes, painted 800 years before the writing of the text that we know today.