The Mayan civilization was born at the end of the III millennium before our era. This town reached its apogee in the 9th century BC, before abandoning, under diverse and varied influences (climates, conquest), everything that represented its greatness: pyramids, cities, etc.
Its ruins gnawed by the Amazon forest made their reappearance in the nineteenth century, so, thanks to excavations and meticulous work, little by little, the Mayan writing, its history, its temples, its knowledge in mathematics, astronomy and architecture would be progressively deciphered. . This brilliant civilization has not revealed all its mysteries, so after that excavations continued to discover its secrets.
Thus, in the year 2000, archaeologists had the pleasant surprise of discovering in the tombs a unique and ancestral art, based on sculptures and funerary masks made of jade mosaics, dating from the neoclassical period from 250 to 900 years of our era. . These fascinating masks, which were later exhibited in different cultural venues around the world, were primarily intended for the ruling elites.
By symbolizing plant motifs to the God of corn, the reference to the sacred mountain, among others; these masks were not used for decorative or even symbolic purposes. Indeed, archaeologists realized that these Mayan masks allowed the soul of men to metamorphose. Likewise, these masks represented, for the Mayans, the vital essence of their wearer. they expressed his identity and immortalized his soul.
The Mayan masks were true representations of the kings and great lords on which they have been found. Thanks to these masks, the high dignitaries were consecrated to eternity. This is why in certain cities, Mayan states, the masks have been found totally broken. According to the hypotheses of the archaeologists, the masks of the defeated dignitaries were broken and scattered so that their souls would disperse and they would die twice.
For the Mayans, the gods were always present and were part of their daily culture.. It is for this reason that the masks were confused with their effigy and their wearer. The symbols were founded on the human face. These masks could even be worn by the living time of the dignitary. It was the case of the priests, who at the time of a ceremony, wore their mask in order to join the divine substance, to become God in a certain way by the contact between their face and the divine symbols.
Thus, thanks to these rituals, the Mayans established ties between the kingdom of the living and that of the dead. The highly consecrated character explains that these masks would have been made of a noble material: jade. For the Mayans, jade was an exceptional stone, which belonged to the first constituents of the Universe. In it, resided the creative Gods of the world. Jade had the value of perenniality, humidity, renewal, rebirth, breath and vital essence. It was a smooth, reflective stone, like obsidian or pyrite. For the Mayans, this reflected supernatural worlds considered as points of passage to other planes of the universe.
Jade had the value of perenniality, humidity, renewal, rebirth, breath and vital essence.
The Mayan civilization covered a large part of Central America, including the Mexican Southeast (Yucatan and Campeche specifically), Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. Mayan jade masks have mainly been found in cities located near jade deposits, in the southern highlands.
Why did the Mayans believe that jade embodied the divine breath?
At night, jade is a stone that cools very quickly. And in the morning, when the sun came to reheat the jade, it exhaled steam. The Mayans then had the sensation that the stone breathed, that it lived. It is because of this «magical» breath that the Mayans thought that the stone lived. It is also the reason why the Mayans chose this stone for their masks, since this mineral literally lived for them.
The masks prepared the dead for their new condition: to become a God. It was often K’awiil, the Maize God who was chosen. On the other hand, the Mayan elite was from birth prepared to embody this God. Reason for which the cephalic deformation of infants was practiced, in order to give the head an «oblong» shape like that of an ear of corn. Mayan children were thus dressed with two tablets that compressed their skull. This had the consequence of also deforming the orbital cavities that created a convergent and divergent strabismus. This is why today you can still see a large number of Mayan representations with this pronounced strabismus, for them, this was a sign of absolute elite.
The grandeur of the Mayan culture represented by its rituals, beliefs, masks and invaluable jade, have left an important legacy for humanity, preserved under the ruins of its imposing cities that jealously hide all their secrets from beyond the grave.