From the ancient traditions of the Lacandón Maya comes an Indigenous model for a sustainable future. Having lived for centuries isolated within Mexico’s largest remaining tropical rainforest, the Indigenous Lacandón Maya now live at the nexus of two worlds—ancient and modern. While previous research has focused on documenting Lacandón oral traditions and religious practices in order to preserve them, this book tells the story of how Lacandón families have adapted to the contemporary world while applying their ancestral knowledge to create an ecologically sustainable future. Drawing...

Drawing on his 49 years of studying and learning from the Lacandon Maya, James Nations discusses how in the midst of external pressures such as technological changes, missionary influences, and logging ventures, Lacandon communities are building an economic system of agroforestry and ecotourism.

New understandings of how Maya people expressed timekeeping in daily life This book discusses the range of ways the ancient Maya people made time tangible through their architecture, arts, writing, beliefs, and practices. These chapters show how the Maya incorporated cyclicality and expanded dimensionality into the built environment, embedding notions of time in shared political and economic institutions, religious and philosophical traditions, and mythology. Beginning several millennia ago, the Maya observed and calculated the solar year cycle and scheduled collective activities that...