The year 2000: What will our secrets reveal?

Just A Note by Sue Odegard, News Reporter

As I travel to Tulum on the Mexican Caribbean coast, I learn it was once one of the Maya's most important maritime trading centers.

I envision trade routes being established to central Mexico, the Chiapas highlands, Guatemala, El Salvadore, Costa Rica and Panama.

I see the Maya people laboring to transport vanilla, rubber, feathers, jaguar skins, tobacco and honey. I imagine brown, bare-chested men loading shells, dried fish and pearls into boats. I see women with baskets, others preparing bread, still others mending fishing nets - many with small children nearby.

I climb to the top of a Maya structure overlooking the aqua sea. It is blazing hot.

The Maya culture dates back to 500 B.C. and was made up of family groups that shared the same language, customs and territory. The people gathered to cultivate the land, to fish, hunt and collect food for survival. Later when their agricultural system was better developed, irrigation systems were built and crops diversified.

The people developed a complex system of hieroglyphic writing. They preserved texts and calendar information in murals to record history, myths and the genealogy of their rulers.

All of this I learn on a recent trip to Mexico. Traveling with my family, I discover a people I had only studied from afar. Standing on the sites of their once-thriving villages, I feel the essence of who the Maya people were and still are today.

I am traveling deeper into the Mexican archaeological sites of the Maya people. I have just passed the tollbooth at the highway entrance to the Yucatan peninsula. It is hotter than it was at Tulum, where the sea breezes made the afternoon sun tolerable.

I enter the ruins at Chichen Itza. In the ballcourt I learn of a Maya game. A solid rubber ball was propelled by the hip movements of the players, sparring from one side of the expansive court to the other. I am told by my guide the object was to shoot the ball through a stone hoop jutting from a stone wall high above the heads of the players.

The ball represented the movement of the stars in the sky and the two opposing teams symbolized the struggle between day and night. The game often ended with the ritual beheading of the captain of the winning team or the members of the opposing team.

The Castillo is the most outstanding structure at Chichen Itza. It features high platforms, sloping walls, staircases with serpent heads and altars decorated with skulls.

There are 92 steps to the top of the Castillo. They are very, very steep.

I climb up the shady side and descend in the sun, hanging on to a guide rope going from top to bottom. The climb is well worth the effort. I am rewarded with a spectacular view of the archaeological site.

This time my imaginings include a starry night, a stadium of ballgame revelers, a winning goal, and the bloody ceremony that follows.

The Mayas noted the appearance and disappearance of celestial bodies in different seasons. They recorded the annual cycle of the sun as 365 days and accurately noted the cycle of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the moon.

They left behind unique examples of sculpture, pottery and paintings. Their ancestors have kept the culture alive by passing down the traditions from generation to generation.

As I leave the Maya sites, I contemplate a people so technologically ahead of their time. Although I don't embrace their religious beliefs, I admire their intelligence, tenacity and strength.

And I wonder, what will future generations say about the people who lived in western Wisconsin during the dawn of the 21st century?

What will our legacy be?