"These, therefore, are our roots, our existence": Ancestral Roots as the Embodiment of Identity in K'iche' Maya Society

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the Title of Totonicapán, a sixteenth-century K’iche’ Maya text, the authors declare that the founders of their royal lineage were the “roots” from which they grew and were nourished, as a maize plant draws its sustenance from its roots: “These, therefore, are our roots, our existence” (Christenson 2022:87). In this passage, roots are not merely the source of their bloodline, but of their very existence. When migrating from one locale to another, the text notes that they “brought the roots of trees and the roots of bushes” (Christenson 2022:97). These “roots” serve as a metaphor for the people themselves. In early highland Maya texts, founding ancestors are consistently described as roots, an essential part of a plant that cannot be severed away from the living plant without destroying it. As a Tz’utujil Maya colleague once told me: “As the old people say, when the Spaniards came, they broke off the branches of our world. They even burned the trunk. But the roots remain and they can never reach the roots. We will never die because the roots have power. We draw strength from our ancestors.”

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37744.0