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Learn what truly sets the UC Riverside MBA apart and how it helps in your professional growth
01 Mar 2021, 03:39
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Source:TIME
Let’s take Jared Diamond by the horns. He would like us to believe that the Maya decline was a tragic loss. I don’t care if the Maya civilization collapsed. We shouldn’t shed a single retrospective tear. I don’t care whether the decline happened because of war??/ drought??/ disease? ..... Because the Maya civilization in Mexico didn’t amount to much. ...
Now gallery owners in New York will showcase the glories of Maya art. But glamorous talk of “kings”, “lords” sounds better than a realistic description of murderous Maya chieftains who cared only about power, enslavement, and killing. Yes: the Maya wore spectacular feather head-dresses. But their hands dripped blood. As situations worsened, the Maya solution was “higher pyramids, foreign wars, more power to the kings, harder work for the masses.” ...
Is it surprising that when the American John Stephens stumbled upon the Mayan ruins in Yucatan he should have been carried away? …
“We went up to their desolate temples; and saw the evidence of their taste in arts. … We called back into life the strange people who gazed in sadness from the wall; pictured them in fanciful costumes. …”
Gazing upon the ruins Stephens conjures up in his imagination a world of “orators, warriors, statesmen.” Yet Stephens didn’t know that they weren’t so much “gazing in sadness” as contorted with pain. Jared tells us that “archaeologists believed the ancient Maya to be gentle and peaceful.” We now know that Maya warfare was chronic and unresolvable … and the sadness detected by Stephens was due to nasty customs.
The Maya, and the Aztecs, offered barbarism plus pyramids. But we expect a civilization to be ennobling, to lift us up, to look beyond the endless cyclical violence of the barbaric past, however interesting its art may be. We expect a moral and philosophical perspective on human existence. The “examined life” as Socrates put it, with the fruit of this examination religiously incorporated. Egypt, India and China had this. Not the Maya.
One needs a developed form of writing to record evidence that life has been examined, thought about, and critically assayed. It is true the Maya had a rudimentary script ... and a philosophical interest in time. … My own impression is that … Maya calendrical calculations mainly reflected a mistaken devotion to astrology and numerology – and a more sterile dead-end it would be hard to find.
What I look for in a civilization is Mind at Work. That’s what we find in ancient Greece when Heraclitus maintained that everything changes, and Parmenides retorted that nothing changes. ...
Eratosthenes used simple instruments and elementary geometry to measure the earth’s diameter as 7,850 miles – about fifty miles short of the truth. … What Pythagoras said about right-angled triangles led to the discovery of incommensurables and in Bertrand Russell’s words, his argument convinced the Greek mathematicians that geometry must be established independently of arithmetic.
In connection with Greek science, Democritus had cried: “I would rather find a single causal law than be king of Persia!” .... The civilization of the Maya never got past contesting blood-soaked patches of ground. In Greece, an enlightened tradition of political thought, had already received its quintessential expression under Pericles: “Our administration favors the many instead of the few in Athens: that is why it is called ‘democracy’”. ...
The ripples of Greek civilization spread globally, and deserved to. There were no ripples from the Maya. No enlightenment. Just art and masonry and the dried blood of sacrificial victims.
Q1. The author’s view is that the Maya civilization in Mexico didn’t amount to much. All of the following statements by other anthropologists serve to strengthen this view EXCEPT?
a) “A serious civilization has to get beyond ritual, beyond charades and dressing up and sacred mumbo jumbo and human sacrifice. You have to see Mind at Work.”
b) “There must be an attempt to move politics and economics of a geographical setting beyond the turmoil of barbarian chiefs everlastingly contesting blood-soaked patches of ground.”
c) “For any civilization to have an everlasting impact on humanity, it should enable architecture, sculpture, painting and other art forms to flourish.”
d) “It is sheer romantic fantasy to mourn the passing of an aristocracy of hypersensitive native aesthetes, but like bellicose tribal populations, the Maya did little more than strain the carrying capacity of the land, wage war with neighbours, and appease their gods.”
C
Q2. The author has a lot of reservations towards and is apprehensive about the actual contributions of the Maya civilization to humanity. Which saving grace gets admitted, directly or indirectly, by the author in the article?
a) Maya art can be appealing.
b) Ancient Maya were gentle and peaceful; but as war, drought and disease increased, the Maya became more pugnacious.
c) The Mayans’ philosophical interest in time led to phenomenal breakthroughs that has helped the cause of modern astronomy.
d) Even the Maya, in the ancient world, had a moral and philosophical explanation for human life.
A
Q3. Which of the following statements regarding some prominent Greek(s) is correct, as can be inferred from the article?
Identify all that apply and enter the corresponding number in the input box given below. You must enter your answer in increasing order only. For example, if you think (1) and (4) apply, then enter 14 (but not 41) in the input box.
a)Democritus wasted away the golden opportunity of being the king of Persia by devoting his energies to the pursuit of law.
b)Heraclitus and Parmenides, through their statements, implied that everything changes nothing and hence Mind is at work.
c)Bertrand Russell convinced the mathematicians of his day to segregate geometry from algebra.
d)Eratosthenes narrowly missed the exact measure of the earth's diameter which he had made using simple instrumentation and his knowledge of basic geometry.
e)Pericles was the first proponent of democracy in Athens
D
Q4. Which of the following would the author definitely agree with?
a) The Maya were endowed with superior knowledge of arithmetic, but increased warfare and an obsession with their own short term concerns led to their decline.
b) Mind was at work in Ancient Greece but not necessarily so in Ancient Egypt, India, China and Mexico.
c) John Stephen’s response on gazing upon the Maya ruins was a natural and wholly aesthetic response.
d) The quality and quantity of art and architecture evident in the ruins of a civilization is a direct indicator of the degree of civility in a civilization.
C
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