De Landa Research Paper

Over five hundred years ago, cleric Diego de Landa approached an abandoned society lost in the jungles of Central America. His findings led him to make assumptions of these people he marked as savages. De Landa denounced these people as “idolatry, divorce, sacrificial, and slave traders” (qtd. in Gibson 13). Nearly three centuries after de Landa’s account, the U.S explorer John Lloyd Stephens noted his discovery of an altar among the ruins of a Central American city called Copán, with the company of British architect Fredrick Catherwood (Gibson 13). They had rediscovered the ruins described in de Landa’s works, only Stephens and Catherwood contradicted de Landa’s statements by stating “our findings gave us the assurance that the objects we found were interesting, not only as the remains of an unknown people, but as works of art, proving, like newly-discovered historical records, that the people who once occupied the continent of Southern America were not savages” (qtd. in Gibson 13). None the less, each explorer never knew how important the inhabitants of this ancient society would be to later understandings of the …show more content…
During those one hundred and fifty years, more researchers have went into these abandoned cities and unearthed many artifacts that were left behind. Over time, scholars have uncovered and learned an astonishing amount of information about the people who constructed these cities: the ancient Maya. During the most recent studies of the Ancient Maya culture, researchers found more than they had ever expected to find from the remains of a jungle-people society. The ancient Maya practiced and achieved tasks beyond what could have been performed during their existence. Many ancient astronaut theorists believed they could not have successfully achieved such great things by themselves, but with the help of