Archaeology of the Night by Gonlin Nancy; Nowell April;

Author:Gonlin, Nancy; Nowell, April;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Chapter 10

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Where Night Reigns Eternal

Darkness and Deep Time among the Ancient Maya

Jeremy D. Coltman

The most notable quality of night is darkness, an experience recognized in all cultures despite temporal and spatial differences. In many cases, the darkness of night is significant because it has always been there. It is therefore little wonder that many cultures have developed origin myths in which darkness or night shares generative qualities with the original creation. In late antiquity and the Western European early Middle Ages, monastic life held both theological and cosmological significance that could be traced back to Judeo-Christian mythic traditions regarding a chaotic primordiality (Helms 2004). In Genesis for instance, God creates light and separates it from the darkness, which he called night. This implies that in Judeo-Christian thought, night was always there first and by itself while light was the “divine creation” (Schnepel and Ben-Ari 2005, 153). Helms (2004, 178) notes that “darkness stands even closer than light to ultimate cosmological beginnings in that darkness is often identified in lore and legend as one of the conditions that preceded the formation of the lighted world.”

Unsurprisingly, these notions of night and darkness in Western thought are at home in the many rich mythic traditions regarding creation in Mesoamerica (figures 1.2–1.3). In colonial Nahuatl sermons for instance, the term used for darkness is not an abstract notion but a special or temporal locative that refers to a dark time or place:

in indigenous usage this could refer to the disordered time (or time out of time) before cosmic order was established with the creation of the sun. To be in a dark place or a dark time is not quite the same thing as being in a metaphorical abstract “darkness” of the soul. However, the image of Christianity as a solar order contrasting with the chaotic darkness that preceded it fit Nahua conceptions quite well. (Burkhart 1988, 243)

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