Arts & Culture

With spring just around the corner, we are all thinking about warmer weather.  The Mayans were lucky enough to have a lot of warm weather, and  you can explore the fascinating culture of the Mayan civilization at Introduction to Mayan Art, a talk to be held on Thursday, April 7 at 7 p.m. in the auditorium at North York Central Library.  Elizabeth Iturbe (below left), a professor of art history from Mexico, will be presenting this talk.

Right now in Toronto, you and your family can see Mayan ceramics, like the dancer-musician figural flute above, for free at the Gardiner Museum, with a Sun Life Financial Museum & Arts Pass.  Please click on the image of the ceramic Mayan flute and the following images for more information.

The Mayans left behind mysterious hieroglyphic script carved on monuments and painted on pottery and bark books – watch Cracking the Maya Code and find out how the code was cracked, what these hieroglyphics mean and what new insights about the Mayan culture were revealed.

If you happen to like chocolate, thank the Mayans the next time you bite into a piece of it, because even before the Aztecs they were using cacao beans as currency and drinking chocolate.  You can read the fascinating story of the contribution Mayans and others made to the culinary world in The True History of Chocolate.  Here is a little taste of chocolate's history:

If you would like to learn even more about the Mayans, you might enjoy The Maya, The Maya: Palaces and Pyramids of the Rainforest and Maya: Divine Kings of the Rain Forest.