This fascinating history explores the cultural roots of our civilization’s obsession with the end of the world. Busting the myth of the ancient Maya prediction that time would end in 2012, Matthew Restall and Amara Solari build on their previous book, 2012 and the End of the World, to use the Maya case to connect such seemingly disparate historical events as medieval European millenarianism, Moctezuma’s welcome to Cortés, Franciscan missionizing in Mexico, prophetic traditions in Yucatan, and the growing belief today in conspiracies and apocalypses. In demystifying the 2012 phenomenon, the authors draw on their decades of scholarship to provide an accessible and engaging explanation of what Mayas and Aztecs really believed, how Judeo-Christian apocalypticism became part of the Indigenous Mesoamerican and modern American worlds, and why millions continue to anticipate an imminent Doomsday.
Matthew Restall and Amara Solari are specialists in Maya culture and in colonial Mexican history and art history. Both teach at the Pennsylvania State University, where Restall is a Sparks Professor in history and anthropology, and Solari is professor of art history and anthropology. His books include Maya Conquistador, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, and When Montezuma Met Cortés. Her books include Maya Ideologies of the Sacred and Idolizing Mary. They recently coauthored The Maya:AVery Short Introduction.
List of Figures
Introduction: You Really Can Survive
1 The History of the End of the World: The Maya Prediction
2 They Deserve Better: The Maya Evidence
3 God Is Angry: The Millenarian Mother Lode
4 The Moctezuma Factor: The End of the World Comes to Mexico
5 Apocalypto: The Millennium Comes to the Maya
6 We Are Always Almost There: Why People Believe
Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading
About the Authors
Just as each generation believes it has discovered the truth about the past, each generation rewrites prophecy. Having exposed the colonial origins of the 2012 Maya Apocalypse at its vespers, Restall and Solari return to the scene of the crime with a decade of perspective to show how millenarianism or the belief in calculable cosmic destruction and renewal has been both a perennial Western project and a frequent Western projection onto other civilizations. The Maya, thanks to key factors described with clarity and humor by Restall and Solari, are simply among the most recent victims of such backward projection. And yet apocalyptic thinking has also escaped the grasp of Western culture, as any student of cargo cults knows. This is a penetrating and playful examination of an alarming phenomenon that ends with a hard look in the mirror. You may not like what you see, but you’ll love what you read.
Restall and Solari’s brilliant book solves a mystery: Whence came the world’s widespread conviction that the Maya had foreseen the coming of the apocalypse in 2012? First the authors look for clues in the Mayan world they know so well. They then turn and look across the sea—and there, among Western traditions, they find the ‘millenarian motherlode.’ It is rare to find a book that is both erudite and crystal clear, but these two have written one.
-Listen to Matthew Restall’s BBC History Extra’s podcast on the Maya at https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-histotry/maya-everything-you-wanted-know-podcast/