Popol Vuh
Popol Vuh is a cultural narrative that recounts the mythology and history of the Kʼicheʼ people who inhabit the Guatemalan Highlands northwest of present-day Guatemala City. The Popol Vuh is a creation narrative written by the Kʼicheʼ people before the Spanish conquest of Guatemala preserved through oral tradition until 1550 when it was written down; the survival of the Popol Vuh is credited to the 18th century Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez who made a copy of the original text in Spanish. The name "Popol Vuh" translates as "Book of the Community", "Book of Counsel", or more as "Book of the People"; the Popol Vuh includes the Mayan creation myth, beginning with the exploits of the Hero Twins Hunahpú and Xbalanqué. As with similar texts, a great deal of the Popol Vuh's significance lies in the scarcity of early accounts dealing with Mesoamerican mythologies due to the purging of documents by the Spanish Conquistadors. In 1701, Father Ximénez came to Santo Tomás Chichicastenango; this town was in the Quiché territory and therefore is where Fr.
Ximénez first redacted the mythistory. Ximénez translated the manuscript in parallel Kʼicheʼ and Spanish columns. In or around 1714, Ximénez incorporated the Spanish content in book one, chapters 2–21 of his Historia de la provincia de San Vicente de Chiapa y Guatemala de la orden de predicadores. Ximénez's manuscripts remained posthumously in the possession of the Dominican Order until General Francisco Morazán expelled the clerics from Guatemala in 1829–30 whereupon the Order's documents passed to the Universidad de San Carlos. From 1852 to 1855, Moritz Wagner and Carl Scherzer traveled to Central America, arriving in Guatemala City in early May 1854. Scherzer found Ximénez's writings in the university library, noting that there was one particular item "del mayor interes". With assistance from the Guatemalan historian and archivist Juan Gavarrete, Scherzer copied of the Spanish content from the last half of the manuscript, which he published upon his return to Europe. In 1855, French Abbot Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg found Ximénez's writings in the university library.
However, whereas Scherzer copied the manuscript, Brasseur stole the university's volume and took it back to France. After Brasseur's death in 1874, the Mexico-Guatémalienne collection containing Popol Vuh passed to Alphonse Pinart through whom it was sold to Edward E. Ayer. In 1897, Ayer decided to donate his 17,000 pieces to The Newberry Library, a project that tarried until 1911. Father Ximénez's transcription-translation of "Popol Vuh" was among Ayer's donated items. Father Ximénez's manuscript sank into obscurity until Adrián Recinos discovered it at The Newberry in 1941. Speaking, Recinos receives credit for finding the manuscript and publishing the first direct edition since Scherzer, but Munro Edmonson and Carlos López attribute the first discovery to Walter Lehmann in 1928. Allen Christenson, Néstor Quiroa, Rosa Helena Chinchilla Mazariegos, John Woodruff, Carlos López all consider the Newberry's volume to be Ximénez's one and only "original." It is believed that Ximénez borrowed a phonetic manuscript from a parishioner for his source, although Néstor Quiroa points out that "such a manuscript has never been found, thus Ximenez's work represents the only source for scholarly studies."
This document would have been a phonetic rendering of an oral recitation performed in or around Santa Cruz del Quiché shortly following Pedro de Alvarado's 1524 conquest. By comparing the genealogy at the end of Popol Vuh with dated colonial records, Adrián Recinos and Dennis Tedlock suggest a date between 1554 and 1558, but to the extent that the text speaks of a "written" document, Woodruff cautions that "critics appear to have taken the text of the first folio recto too much at face value in drawing conclusions about Popol Vuh's survival." If there was an early post-conquest document, one theory ascribes the phonetic authorship to Diego Reynoso, one of the signatories of the Título de Totonicapán. Another possible author could have been Don Cristóbal Velasco, who in Titulo de Totonicapán, is listed as "Nim Chokoh Cavec". In either case, the colonial presence is clear in Popol Vuh's preamble: "This we shall write now under the Law of God and Christianity. Accordingly, the need to "preserve" the content presupposes an imminent disappearance of the content, therefore, Edmonson theorized a pre-conquest glyphic codex.
No evidence of such a codex has yet been found. A minority, disputes the existence of pre-Ximénez texts on the same basis, used to argue their existence. Both positions are based on two statements by Ximénez; the first of these comes from Historia de la provincia where Ximénez writes that he found various texts during his curacy of Santo Tomás Chichicastenango that were guarded with such secrecy "that not a trace of it was revealed among the elder ministers" although "almost all of them have it memorized." The second passage used to argue pre-Ximénez texts comes from Ximénez's addendum to "Popol Vuh." There he states that many of the natives' practices can be "seen in a book that they have, something like a prophecy, from the beginning of their days, where they have all the months and
Mesoamerican ballgame
The Mesoamerican ballgame was a sport with ritual associations played since 1400 B. C. by the pre-Columbian people of Ancient Mesoamerica. The sport had different versions in different places during the millennia, a newer more modern version of the game, ulama, is still played in a few places by the indigenous population; the rules of the game are not known, but judging from its descendant, they were similar to racquetball, where the aim is to keep the ball in play. The stone ballcourt goals are a late addition to the game. In the most common theory of the game, the players struck the ball with their hips, although some versions allowed the use of forearms, bats, or handstones; the ball was made of solid rubber and weighed as much as 4 kg, sizes differed over time or according to the version played. The game had important ritual aspects, major formal ballgames were held as ritual events. Late in the history of the game, some cultures seem to have combined competitions with religious human sacrifice.
The sport was played casually for recreation by children and may have been played by women as well. Pre-Columbian ballcourts have been found throughout Mesoamerica, as for example at Copán, as far south as modern Nicaragua, as far north as what is now the U. S. state of Arizona. These ballcourts vary in size, but all have long narrow alleys with slanted side-walls against which the balls could bounce; the Mesoamerican ballgame is known by a wide variety of names. In English, it is called pok-ta-pok; this term originates from a 1932 article by Danish archaeologist Frans Blom, who adapted it from the Yucatec Maya word pokolpok. In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, it was called tlachtli. In Classical Maya, it was known as pitz. In modern Spanish, it is called juego de pelota maya, juego de pelota mesoamericano, or pelota maya, it is not known when or where ōllamaliztli originated, although it is that the game originated earlier than 1400 BCE in the low-lying tropical zones home to the rubber tree.
One candidate for the birthplace of the ballgame is the Soconusco coastal lowlands along the Pacific Ocean. Here, at Paso de la Amada, archaeologists have found the oldest ballcourt yet discovered, dated to 1400 BCE; the other major candidate is the Olmec heartland, across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec along the Gulf Coast. The Aztecs referred to their Postclassic contemporaries who inhabited the region as the Olmeca since the region was identified with latex production; the earliest-known rubber balls come from the sacrificial bog at El Manatí, an early Olmec-associated site located in the hinterland of the Coatzacoalcos River drainage system. Villagers, subsequently archaeologists, have recovered a dozen balls ranging in diameter from 10 to 22 cm from the freshwater spring there. Five of these balls have been dated to the earliest-known occupational phase for the site 1700–1600 BCE; these rubber balls were found with other ritual offerings buried at the site, indicating that at this early date ōllamaliztli had religious and ritual connotations.
A stone "yoke" of the type associated with Mesoamerican ballcourts was reported to have been found by local villagers at the site, leaving open the distinct possibility that these rubber balls were related to the ritual ballgame, not an independent form of sacrificial offering. Excavations at the nearby Olmec site of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán have uncovered a number of ballplayer figurines, radiocarbon-dated as far back as 1250–1150 BCE. A rudimentary ballcourt, dated to a occupation at San Lorenzo, 600–400 BCE, has been identified. From the tropical lowlands, ōllamaliztli moved into central Mexico. Starting around 1000 BCE or earlier, ballplayer figurines were interred with burials at Tlatilco and styled figurines from the same period have been found at the nearby Tlapacoya site, it was about this period, as well, that the so-called Xochipala-style ballplayer figurines were crafted in Guerrero. Although no ballcourts of similar age have been found in Tlatilco or Tlapacoya, it is possible that the ballgame was indeed played in these areas, but on courts with perishable boundaries or temporary court markers.
By 300 BCE, evidence for ōllamaliztli appears throughout much of the Mesoamerican archaeological record, including ballcourts in the Central Chiapas Valley, in the Oaxaca Valley, as well as ceramic ballgame tableaus from Western Mexico As might be expected with a game played over such a long period of time by many cultures, details varied over time and place, so the Mesoamerican ballgame might be more seen as a family of related games. In general, the hip-ball version is most popularly thought of as the Mesoamerican ballgame, researchers believe that this version was the primary—or only—version played within the masonry ballcourt. Ample archaeological evidence exists for games where the ball was struck by a wooden stick, racquets and batons, the forearm at times in combination; each of the various types of games had its own size of ball, specialized gear and playing field, rules. Games were played between two teams of players; the number of players per team could vary, between two to four. Some games were played on makeshift courts for simple recreation while others were formal spectacles on huge stone ballcourts leading to human sacrifice.
Without human s
Maya Hero Twins
The Maya Hero Twins are the central figures of a narrative included within the colonial Kʼicheʼ document called Popol Vuh, constituting the oldest Maya myth to have been preserved in its entirety. Called Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the Kʼicheʼ language, the Twins have been identified in the art of the Classic Mayas; the twins are portrayed as complementary forces. The complementary pairings of life and death and earth, day and night and moon, among multiple others have been used to represent the twins; the duality that occurs between male and female is seen in twin myths, as a male and female twin are conceptualized to be born to represent the two sides of a single entity. The Twin motif recurs in many Native American mythologies; the sources on the Hero Twins are both written, iconographic. Classic Maya iconography demonstrates that the earlier Twin narratives must have diverged from the 16th-century Popol Vuh myth. Many versions of the Twin Myth must have circulated among the Mayas, but the only one that survives in a written form is the Classical Kʼicheʼ version in the Popol Vuh.
According to this version, the Hero Twins were Xbalanque and Hunahpu who were ballplayers like their father and uncle, Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu. Summoned to Xibalba by the Lords of the Underworld, the father and uncle were defeated and sacrificed. Two sons were conceived, however, by the seed of the dead father; the pregnant mother fled from Xibalba. The sons—or'Twins'—grew up to avenge their father, after many trials defeated the lords of the Underworld in the ballgame; the Popol Vuh features other episodes involving the Twins as well, including the destruction of a pretentious bird demon, Vucub Caquix, of his two demonic sons. The Twins turned their half-brothers into the howler monkey gods, who were the patrons of artists and scribes; the Twins were transformed into sun and moon, signaling the beginning of a new age. It has been noted that in the upper world scenes of the Popol Vuh, Hunahpu has the dominant role, whereas, in the underworld, Xbalanque takes the initiative. Bartolomé de las Casas described Xbalanque as having entered the underworld as a war leader.
His description refers to the Qʼeqchiʼ town of Carchá. Xbalanque is the name given to the male protagonist in earlier variants of the Qʼeqchiʼ myth of Sun and Moon, where he is hunting for deer, capturing the daughter of the Earth Deity. In these cases, Hunahpu has no role to play. Another main source for Hero Twin mythology is much earlier and consists of representations found on Maya ceramics until about 900 AD and in the Dresden Codex some centuries later. Recognizable are the figures of Hunahpu and the howler monkey scribes and sculptors. Hunahpu is distinguished by black spots on his skin, which are those of a corpse, thus marking him out as one who descended into the underworld. On the Preclassic murals from San Bartolo, the king, marked with a black spot on the cheek, drawing blood from his genitals in the four corners of the world, appears to personify the hero Hunahpu. Xbalanque—the'War Twin'—is more animal-like, in that he is distinguished by jaguar patches on his skin and by whiskers or a beard.
Certain iconographic scenes are suggestive of episodes in the Popol Vuh. The Twins' shooting of a steeply descending bird with blowguns may represent the defeat of Vucub-Caquix, whereas the principal Maya maize god rising from the carapace of a turtle in the presence of the Hero Twins may visualize the resurrection of the Twins' father, Hun-Hunahpu; this second scene has been explained differently, however. In any case, the Twins are depicted together with the main maize god, these three semi-divinities were felt to belong together. Therefore, it is no coincidence that in the Popol Vuh, the Twins are symbolically represented by two maize stalks; the name "Xbalanque" has been variously translated as'Jaguar Sun','Hidden Sun', and'Jaguar Deer'. The initial sound may stem from yax, since in Classical Maya, a hieroglyphic element of this meaning precedes the pictogram of the hero. For the combination of prefix and pictogram, a reading as Yax Balam has been proposed; the name "Hunahpu" is understood as Hun-ahpub'One-Blowgunner', the blowgun characterizing the youthful hero as a hunter of birds.
The head of Hunahpu is used as a variant sign for the 20th day in the day count or tzolkin, which in these cases may have been read as ahpu, rather than Ahau. The 20th day is the concluding day of all vigesimal periods, including the katun and baktun; the head of Xbalanque is used as a variant for the number nine. The following is a detailed summary of the Popol Vuh Twin Myth, on from the death of the heroes' father and uncle. Hunahpu and his brother were conceived when their mother Xquic, daughter of one of the lords of Xibalba, spoke with the severed head of their father Hun; the skull spat upon the maiden's hand. Xquic sought out Hun Hunahpu's mother, who begrudgingly took her as a ward after setting up a number of trials to prove her identity. After birth and Xbalanque were not well treated by their grandmother or their older half-
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. The name describes the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye; the term Milky Way is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from the Greek γαλαξίας κύκλος. From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610; until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies; the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter between 200,000 light-years. It is estimated to contain 100 -- more than 100 billion planets; the Solar System is located at a radius of 26,490 light-years from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of the Orion Arm, one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust.
The stars in the innermost 10,000 light-years form a bulge and one or more bars that radiate from the bulge. The galactic center is an intense radio source known as Sagittarius A*, assumed to be a supermassive black hole of 4.100 million solar masses. Stars and gases at a wide range of distances from the Galactic Center orbit at 220 kilometers per second; the constant rotation speed contradicts the laws of Keplerian dynamics and suggests that much of the mass of the Milky Way is invisible to telescopes, neither emitting nor absorbing electromagnetic radiation. This conjectural mass has been termed "dark matter"; the rotational period is about 240 million years at the radius of the Sun. The Milky Way as a whole is moving at a velocity of 600 km per second with respect to extragalactic frames of reference; the oldest stars in the Milky Way are nearly as old as the Universe itself and thus formed shortly after the Dark Ages of the Big Bang. The Milky Way has several satellite galaxies and is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which form part of the Virgo Supercluster, itself a component of the Laniakea Supercluster.
The Milky Way is visible from Earth as a hazy band of white light, some 30° wide, arching across the night sky. In night sky observing, although all the individual naked-eye stars in the entire sky are part of the Milky Way, the term “Milky Way” is limited to this band of light; the light originates from the accumulation of unresolved stars and other material located in the direction of the galactic plane. Dark regions within the band, such as the Great Rift and the Coalsack, are areas where interstellar dust blocks light from distant stars; the area of sky that the Milky Way obscures is called the Zone of Avoidance. The Milky Way has a low surface brightness, its visibility can be reduced by background light, such as light pollution or moonlight. The sky needs to be darker than about 20.2 magnitude per square arcsecond in order for the Milky Way to be visible. It should be visible if the limiting magnitude is +5.1 or better and shows a great deal of detail at +6.1. This makes the Milky Way difficult to see from brightly lit urban or suburban areas, but prominent when viewed from rural areas when the Moon is below the horizon.
Maps of artificial night sky brightness show that more than one-third of Earth's population cannot see the Milky Way from their homes due to light pollution. As viewed from Earth, the visible region of the Milky Way's galactic plane occupies an area of the sky that includes 30 constellations; the Galactic Center lies in the direction of Sagittarius. From Sagittarius, the hazy band of white light appears to pass around to the galactic anticenter in Auriga; the band continues the rest of the way around the sky, back to Sagittarius, dividing the sky into two equal hemispheres. The galactic plane is inclined by about 60° to the ecliptic. Relative to the celestial equator, it passes as far north as the constellation of Cassiopeia and as far south as the constellation of Crux, indicating the high inclination of Earth's equatorial plane and the plane of the ecliptic, relative to the galactic plane; the north galactic pole is situated at right ascension 12h 49m, declination +27.4° near β Comae Berenices, the south galactic pole is near α Sculptoris.
Because of this high inclination, depending on the time of night and year, the arch of the Milky Way may appear low or high in the sky. For observers from latitudes 65° north to 65° south, the Milky Way passes directly overhead twice a day; the Milky Way is the second-largest galaxy in the Local Group, with its stellar disk 100,000 ly in diameter and, on average 1,000 ly thick. The Milky Way is 1.5 trillion times the mass of the Sun. To compare the relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if the Solar System out to Neptune were the size of a US quarter, the Milky Way would be the size of the contiguous United States. There is a ring-like filament of stars rippling above and below the flat galactic plane, wrapping around the Milky Way at a diameter of 150,000–180,000 light-years, which may be part of the Milky Way itself. Estimates of the mass of the Milky Way vary, depending upon the method and data used; the low end of the estimate range is 5.8×1011 solar masses, somewhat less than that of the Andromeda Galaxy.
Measurements using the Very Long Baseline Array in 2009 found
Kinich Ahau
Kinich Ahau is the 16th-century Yucatec name of the Maya sun god, designated as God G when referring to the codices. In the Classic period, God G is depicted as a middle-aged man with an aquiline nose, large square eyes, cross-eyed, a filed incisor in the upper row of teeth. There is a k'in'sun'-infix, sometimes in the eyes. Among the southern Lacandons, Kinich Ahau continued to play a role in narrative well into the second half of the twentieth century. Kinich Ahau is the Lacandon name of the sun god; the element kʼinich assumed to mean'sun-eyed', appears to have been in general use as a royal title during the Classic Period. Kinich Ahau should not be confused with Ah Kʼin Chob. Ah Kʼin is Yucatec for ` someone who deals with the day'; the term refers to priests in general. As to Ah Kʼin Chob, J. E. S. Thompson suggested that this Lacandon deity name could refer to the sun deity, but the mythology of Ah Kʼin Chob does not bear this out. Although the element chob has been translated as'squint-eyed', an iconographic feature of the Classic sun deity, the only source for this translation is a single statement by Tozzer.
Kinich Ahau was the patron of one of the four years of the 52-year cycle. In the rituals introducing this year, war dances were executed. Kinich Ahau was considered an aspect of the upper god, Itzamna, he may conceivably be related to the patron deity of Izamal, Kinich Kakmo'Fire Parrot', reported to descend to earth while the sun was standing in the zenith in order to consume offerings. God G's appearances in Classic Maya art are best known from large stucco masks adorning pyramids. Compared to the deities connected to agricultural fertility, God G occurs rather infrequently in other media than stucco, is part of narrative events, it may be noted that the Hero Twins and Xbalanque, although stated to have changed into Sun and Moon, are never shown assimilated to God G. The Sun God is associated with an aquatic eastern paradise, where he can assume the shape of a chimerical water bird, or be shown as a young man, paddling a canoe; such imagery could suggest lyric religious poetry comparable to the Aztec evocations of a'flower paradise'.
The sun deity can be shown as a king seated high on a throne cushion, or as a ruler carrying the bicephalic'ceremonial bar'. Inversely, the Maya king is assimilated to the sun deity; the emblematic double-bird of the early Copan king, Yax Kʼukʼ Moʼ'Great Quetzal-Parrot', shows the head of the sun deity within its beaks. Ancestral Maya kings assimilated to the sun deity were sometimes depicted while vertically descending from the zenith. In Yaxchilan, the ancestral king is seated within a solar cartouche, his wife in a lunar crescent; the solar aspect of a king seems to imply apotheosis and life after death. Hieroglyphically, the sun god is the patron of the day-unit, the month of Yaxkʼin'dry season', the number Four. Several other deities evince a large eye, such as God D, various jaguar gods. Attribute sharing occurs chiefly with the so-called Jaguar God of the Underworld and a human-faced ocean deity with shell ears, fins beside the mouth, a sacrificial awl set in the mouth. The'Jaguar God of the Underworld' is traditionally referred to by scholars as the'Night Sun', i.e. the form taken by the sun during his subterranean journey from West to East.
It has been suggested that the three just-mentioned deities involved in the sharing of attributes could represent various stages of the sun's daily cycle. Recent Maya mythology is concerned with Sun's childhood and the conflicts leading up to his actual solar transformation. Although specific imagery is used for the path of the sun, there are hardly any histories concerning the mature sun deity, save for the southern Lacandons. According to them, Kinich Ahau, the elder brother of the upper god, will put an end to this world by descending from the sky and have his jaguars devour mankind. Little is known about specific solar rituals, although it is noteworthy that Kinich Ahau occurs in the Dresden Codex, concerned with ritual matters. Boremanse, Contes et mythologie des indiens lacandons. 1986. Hellmuth, Monster und Menschen in der Maya-Kunst. 1987. Landa, see Star Gods of the Maya. Stuart and Stuart, Eternal City of the Maya. Thames and Hudson 2008. Taube, Flower Mountain. Res 45: 69-98. Taube and Miller, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya.
Thompson, Maya History and Religion. 1970. Tozzer, A Comparative Study of the Mayas and the Lacandones. New York 1907. Tozzer, Landa's Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán. 1941
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. According to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed over 4.5 billion years ago. Earth's gravity interacts with other objects in space the Sun and the Moon, Earth's only natural satellite. Earth revolves around the Sun in a period known as an Earth year. During this time, Earth rotates about its axis about 366.26 times. Earth's axis of rotation is tilted with respect to its orbital plane; the gravitational interaction between Earth and the Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes Earth's orientation on its axis, slows its rotation. Earth is the largest of the four terrestrial planets. Earth's lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earth's surface is covered with water by oceans; the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere.
The majority of Earth's polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet and the sea ice of the Arctic ice pack. Earth's interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earth's magnetic field, a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earth's history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earth's atmosphere and surface, leading to the proliferation of aerobic and anaerobic organisms; some geological evidence indicates. Since the combination of Earth's distance from the Sun, physical properties, geological history have allowed life to evolve and thrive. In the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely. Over 7.6 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and natural resources for their survival.
Humans have developed diverse cultures. The modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most spelled eorðe, it has cognates in every Germanic language, their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō. In its earliest appearances, eorðe was being used to translate the many senses of Latin terra and Greek γῆ: the ground, its soil, dry land, the human world, the surface of the world, the globe itself; as with Terra and Gaia, Earth was a personified goddess in Germanic paganism: the Angles were listed by Tacitus as among the devotees of Nerthus, Norse mythology included Jörð, a giantess given as the mother of Thor. Earth was written in lowercase, from early Middle English, its definite sense as "the globe" was expressed as the earth. By Early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, the earth became the Earth when referenced along with other heavenly bodies. More the name is sometimes given as Earth, by analogy with the names of the other planets.
House styles now vary: Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, with the capitalized form an acceptable variant. Another convention capitalizes "Earth" when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the, it always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as "what on earth are you doing?" The oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4.5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4.54±0.04 Bya the primordial Earth had formed. The bodies in the Solar System evolved with the Sun. In theory, a solar nebula partitions a volume out of a molecular cloud by gravitational collapse, which begins to spin and flatten into a circumstellar disk, the planets grow out of that disk with the Sun. A nebula contains gas, ice grains, dust. According to nebular theory, planetesimals formed by accretion, with the primordial Earth taking 10–20 million years to form. A subject of research is the formation of some 4.53 Bya. A leading hypothesis is that it was formed by accretion from material loosed from Earth after a Mars-sized object, named Theia, hit Earth.
In this view, the mass of Theia was 10 percent of Earth, it hit Earth with a glancing blow and some of its mass merged with Earth. Between 4.1 and 3.8 Bya, numerous asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment caused significant changes to the greater surface environment of the Moon and, by inference, to that of Earth. Earth's atmosphere and oceans were formed by volcanic outgassing. Water vapor from these sources condensed into the oceans, augmented by water and ice from asteroids and comets. In this model, atmospheric "greenhouse gases" kept the oceans from freezing when the newly forming Sun had only 70% of its current luminosity. By 3.5 Bya, Earth's magnetic field was established, which helped prevent the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind. A crust formed; the two models that explain land mass propose either a steady growth to the present-day forms or, more a rapid growth early in Earth history followed by a long-term steady continental area. Continents formed by plate tectonics
Awilix
Awilix was a goddess of the Postclassic Kʼicheʼ Maya, who had a large kingdom in the highlands of Guatemala. She was the patron deity of the Nijaʼibʼ noble lineage at the Kʼicheʼ capital Qʼumarkaj, with a large temple in the city. Awilix was a goddess of night, although some studies refer to the deity as male. Awilix was derived from the Classic period lowland Maya moon goddess or from Cʼabawil Ix, the Moon goddess of the Chontal Maya. Awilix was the goddess of the queen of the night, she was associated with the Underworld and death and was a patron of the Mesoamerican ballgame. Her calendrical day was ik' in the 20-day cycle of the Maya calendar; the eagle was the totem animal of the Nijaʼibʼ, it is presumed that the bird was associated with the lunar aspect of the goddess, with the jaguar associated with her night aspect. Awilix was one of the three principal deities of the Kʼicheʼ, together with Tohil and Jacawitz, the trinity of gods was sometimes referred to collectively as Tohil, the most important of the three.
Alternate origins have been suggested for the origin of the name of the goddess, it has been suggested that awilix derives from kwilix/wilix in the Qʼeqchiʼ Maya language, which means "swallow". It has been suggested that the Nijaʼibʼ migrated from the area around the Pico de Orizaba mountain in central Mexico; this area was known as Awilizapan in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, it may be that the Nijaʼibʼ derived the name of their goddess from their place of origin. Awilix is mentioned throughout the Kʼicheʼ epic Popul Vuh and is mentioned in the important Kʼicheʼ document known as the Título de los Señores de Totonicapán. Ixbalanque, one of the Maya Hero Twins of the Popul Vuh, was the incarnation of Awilix. In Qʼumarkaj the temple of Awilix faced the temple of Tohil across a small plaza, it was on the east side of the plaza with a stairway giving access from the west. Investigations at the temple have revealed; the high priest of Awilix was called the Ajaw Awilix. According to a drawing made by Rivera y Maestre in the early 19th century, the temple of Awilix was not as tall as the temple of Tohil.
This structure was the second most important temple in Qʼumarkaj. This temple was formed of a large rectangular platform supporting a smaller platform and a temple structure on the east side. A wide stairway climbed the west side of the temple, it was flanked on the lower level by two large talud-tablero panels; the exterior stonework of the building has been stripped away. There were four principal phases of construction and there is evidence that the temple had been repaired various times prior to the Spanish conquest; the floor under the third phase of construction had been painted dark green. Archaeological investigations found fragments of incense burners underneath the first building phase; the temple is similar in form to a temple mound on the west side of the first plaza in Iximche, the postclassic capital of the Kaqchikel Maya. Structure 4 at Zaculeu, the capital of the Mam Maya, is a temple-palace combination situated on the southeast side of one of the main plazas and was to have been a temple of Awilix.
This temple-palace is Kʼicheʼ in style and has been identified with the Nijaʼibʼ lineage of the Kʼicheʼ, being similar to the Temple of Awilix at Qʼumarkaj. The structure consists of a central pyramidal base flanked by two attached range structures; the pyramidal base is topped by a shrine containing three rooms, the final room of the three is circular. The temple has three steep stairways flanked by balustrades; the main stairway ascends directly from the plaza, those on either side are perpendicular to the main stairway. The balustrade of each stairway terminates at the top in a vertical panel; the temple facade is in good condition. The range structures are unequal in size and each contains a single long room atop a low platform; the facade of each of these rooms once possessed a row of columns although only stumps remain in situ. The modern descendents of the Nijaʼibʼ in Momostenango revere rival syncretised forms of the goddess, who are said to be the lovers of the town's patron saint Santiago
