The Mayan senses. More than meets the eye... and the nose.
"...a kind of “synesthesia” that resorted to visual signs to indicate a non-visual experience: censers, flowers, and stews “breathed.”
Hello, welcome to another installment of a series dedicated to exploring the human senses beyond what they teach us at school, or what we think they mean for everybody else. So far, I have done an introductory post (Sensorially Speaking) with some ideas of what I wanted to discuss in this series, and another post on the notion of Sensorial Connectedness. In this post I will be sharing some of my findings about how the ancient Mayans saw the world. If you enjoy this, and it gives you some valuable content to navigate your own physical literacy, for intellectual purposes, or for entertainment consider subscribing (it is Free), sharing this with others, and joining the conversation by hitting like and leaving a comment. At the end of the reading, I leave you with a sensory activity/game to explore your senses of smell, and hearing.
Throughout history, every society has had their own beliefs and ideas about the human body; what it is, what it is made of, where it comes from, and how it works. We all have skin that touches just like everybody else’s, eyes that see the same colors, ears that listen to the same sounds, and muscles that move under the same fundamental laws of human biomechanics. How is it that for as long as we have been the same species, experiencing the world through the same body and senses, we still see things differently? We always have!
What we know as our senses, while real, are also the result of cultural influences that keep their capacities, meaning, and significance within a frame. What if we have more than five senses, or less? What if each of our senses has extended capabilities (dormant potential) that allow us to connect with the cosmos itself? Culture has a lot of weight in how we perceive things and the meaning we give to those perceptions and, therefore, influences our own functionality and performance.
The meaning of sound and speech
The ancient Maya used to give a lot of importance to the notion of Synesthesia (the experiencing of one sense through another) and believed that the senses were an “invisible phenomena that invested life and meaning into space”, considering how sound resonated in everything, even the spirits.
Different ranks in their hierarchies would take different spots in distance, and space, depending on their social or spiritual status during rituals and other social events. For example, how far a receptor would be from the king, or priest, etc. would have a difference in how the ear would perceive the message, and what it meant.
As a result of the importance of sound in Mayan culture their architectural design was created with space in mind. How their voices resonated with the environment was considered, not just in the surrounding aspect but in the aspect of how they sounded their voices and how different inflections manifested. The Mayans felt that Speech, yet another sense for them, had the power to awaken or appease deities depending on the tone of their voices.
Their considerations for architectural design and the resonating of sound were beyond what they built. For a mystical culture connected with all, through their beliefs, the Mayans were deeply knowledgeable about how things worked in a very scientific way.
The material buildings were made of, the nearby mountains and their distinctive heights and echoes, and sounds of running water (among many other factors) were kept in mind when designing spaces. The design, shape, style, material, and positioning of everything had religious significance.
They were masters of sound, giving importance to how their jewelry, their instruments, and how the masses were placed would help them connect with mother earth, one another, and with other existences.
Smelling beyond sight
Each species adapts its senses (and their meaning) according to the environment they settle in, and humans are not different.
Mayan culture expanded through vast territories, covering different ecosystems. For those who settled in the low tropical lands of Mesoamerica, where visibility was limited by too much flora, the olfactory sense played a huge role in their survival and interpretation of reality.
In an article about the sense of smell in the classic Maya, the authors talk about how they (the Mayan) gave importance to aromas and odors in their paintings, saying that:
“Mayan imagery offers abundant representations of these smells, both aromatic and pungent. Through combinations of cultural features and artistic conventions, the Mayans not only painted the sources of smells, but true olfactory experiences. Visual signs of smell and emanation marked the presence and nature of olfactory stimuli, in a kind of “synesthesia” that resorted to visual signs to indicate a non-visual experience: censers, flowers and stews “breathed.” The aromas emerged as symmetrical pairs of elements that curve outward, sometimes taking the shape of the virgules of the word and other times the shape of the symbol ik', wind. This indicates the expansive, all-encompassing nature of the smell.” (Houston & Newman).
Could this be the reason for their obsession with the perfect nose? While I didn’t find a direct connection between this physical requirement (having the perfect nose) with their mystical use of the sense of smell I read that for Mayans, “If nature did not provide the ideal nose, many Maya resorted to a removable artificial nose bridge to give their nose the right hook shape.”
I can only assume that there is some connection between these two things, but don’t quote me on that.
I base my assumption on what I have been finding lately about the human senses, and how the culture around them is expressed in scriptures, paintings, and sculptures. I have noticed that many cultures tend to represent sensorial experiences in levels of importance, highlighting one way or another the sensorial organ that has been most important in their survival (including their ideas of pleasure and beauty of course).
Finding connections that I wasn’t looking for.
The world of the senses is made of many slopes and tangents that can take us through time, space, and even through ideas. This post for example was going to be about the Mayans and Tibetan Buddhists’s perceptions of the world, but as I read and found more about the Mayans, I felt an ancestral calling.
My findings stimulated an auditory memory from university when a history professor mentioned something about Tainos being connected to the Mayans according to a theory, so I am heading that way.
If this is indeed true, I want to find the connection between how the Mayans, the masters of Sound and Smell, relate to how my Taino ancestors, the inventors of Barbecue, experienced the world.
I will be taking a tasting angle for this trip. If you find any information that connects these two cultures, sensorially speaking send it my way to juanbaez@substack.com, Substack DM, or down in the comments.
But while I prepare to go down that slope (I am looking for sources, and possible interviews) for my next stop in this series, I will be writing about the senses in Tibetan Buddhism.
Sensory activity. Playing with the senses
We live life in constant acceleration, and we do not take the time to experience things and our senses fully. Play with your senses to see how much more you can appreciate them. This activity is not a workout type -with rules, standards, and expectations- but one of exploration and reconnection with your senses. The purpose is to play, not work.
Play with your voice in different spaces and listen for the smallest differences you can. Go to the woods, outside your house, into a small room, etc. Listen to the acoustics of the area.
Play with your sense of smell and try to learn how things smell without allowing what your culture dictates to influence you too much (easy to say). For example, don't assume that dirt smells bad because everyone says it's dirty, and it's used as a negative reference. On the contrary, get close to the ground, or grab a handful of dirt, sand, leaves (you name it) and appreciate its smell without judging.
Report your experience with these activities below in the comments and invite other people to participate. It would be interesting to see the diversity of experiences and reflections regarding these.
Thak you for reading!