CDHM The Miniature Way
June 2011, Issue 17
Dollhouse Tourism, Guatemala
Page 13

flourished during their golden age. Using calendars and hieroglyphics from their predecessors, the Olmecs, the Mayan developed a complex calendar and the most elaborate form of hieroglyphics in America. Their writing was the only writing in the Americas capable of expressing all types of thought. Their glyphs either represent syllables or whole concepts, and were written on long strips of paper or carved and painted on stone. They are arranged to be red from left to right and top to bottom in pairs of columns.

But it is the calendar that fascinates modern people as the clock ticks inevitably to Dec. 21, 2012, the last date Mayan vision serpent, ca. apprx. 2000 years ago written on the calendar and allegedly the end of the world as we know it. The Mayan calendar begins around 3114 BCE, predating the Mayan culture itself, and measured time well into the future. They Guatemalan folk art toys wrote detailed histories and used their calendar to predict the future and astrological events.

The first period of Mayan civilization occurred at the same time as the Golden Age of Greece and the conquests of Alexander the Great. And like the Greco-Roman civilization, the Mayan civilization was