The Mayans Were Born on the Wrong Planet

Aside from the whole sacrificing component, the Mayan world, in general, was one filled with intense beauty. The Mayans must have known that the rest of the world was nowhere near as beautiful as where they happened to live. The Mayans must have known that they were not alone, for theirs was a culture that studied the stars. I suspect that they believed in a grander purpose for themselves; they just lacked the means to express themselves fully. Perhaps their existence was a case of being born too soon or being born on the wrong planet. The Mayans would have been fantastic interstellar neighbors had they existed in a solar system with multiple inhabited planets in contact with one another.

Part of me is of the opinion that the ancient Mayans got stuck in a psychological rut. Perhaps they got too wrapped up in pleasing their gods that they lost track of who they needed to be. I personally think they were left to their own devices for far too long. What they really needed was a heavy dose of beneficial outside influence to pull them out of their intellectual quagmire. What Europe should have done was send over their scholars, not their missionaries and murderers. Imagine what could have been gleaned from the wealth of Mayan knowledge had it not been destroyed before it was even given a chance to disseminate. The Mayans could have been so much more than they were, but instead, they went down as one of history’s greatest “what ifs.”

this is an excerpt from Time Traveled, the second book of my Memory Road Trip series, coming out soon!