Mayan God of Chocolate

I'm doing some reading in preparation for our visit to Tikal, (800 B.C. - 900 A.D.), the largest excavated Mayan site in the Americas. Just discovered they had a god of chocolate "Chokola'j". Suddenly I'm intrigued with the Mayan culture....they must have been quite advanced to be smart enough to have a god of chocolate! And, apparently they knew and used the notion of 'zero' long before other cultures of the world.


I also learned a couple of other interesting facts. The Mayan calendar is more accurate than our modern calendar, "In our Gregorian calendar -- making due allowance for leap years -- the year has 365.2425 days, results in an error of 3.02 days in 10,000 years, while the year of the ancient Mayans numbered 365.242129 days!!!. This results in an error of 1.98 days for every 10,000 years." (From http://www.authenticmaya.com/calendar.htm) Not that most of us would notice that kind of error, but it's pretty impressive precision!

In addition, the pyramid that is being excavated at Mirador is the largest one in the world, larger even than any pyramid in Egypt. A professor from Idaho State recently announced the discovery of an impressive stucco panel dated 300 B.C. that depicts the Mayan Creation Myth.


Finally, the Mayan language was one of three "original" written languages in the world along with Sumerian and Chinese. They wrote books on handmade paper around the same time the Sumerians were writing on papyrus. Unfortunately, many of the books were destroyed by overzealous Spaniards threatened by the potential heresy contained within.