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The elite from ancient societies focussed upon corn as having sacred kinds of properties which they then associated with themselves. And this is pretty obvious in the young maize god-the sculpture was apparently a manifestation of mythological beings resulting from the third Maya creation. There were eight mythological beings, four women and four men, who are the ancestors of all the Maya people.
“古代社會精英團隊把玉米的地位提升到神圣的財產，并且將自己與玉米聯系起來。這點很顯然地在這年輕的玉米神身上體現出來；你看，這雕像明顯是第三瑪雅人造神運動的成果。瑪雅歷史上有八位神靈，四男四女，被奠為全體瑪雅人的祖先。瑪雅人認為他們祖先基本上是從玉米進化而來的，由黃玉米與白玉米面團做成的。
The Maya believed that their ancestors essentially came from corn, and they were formed of yellow and white maize dough. Maize was certainly a primary focus of ritual and religious veneration by ancient Meso-American people, going back all the way before the Maya and even into the Olmec civilisation.'
玉米曾經是古代中美洲人禮儀與宗教崇拜的重中之重，可一種追溯回前瑪雅，甚至奧爾梅克文明時代。”
So our maize god is not just a hauntingly beautiful statue, he gives us a real insight into the way ancient American society thought about itself and its environment. The maize god represents both the fact of the agricultural cycle of planting, harvesting and replanting, and the faith in a parallel human cycle of birth, death and rebirth,but more, he is the very stuff of which the Central Americans are made. Where the Hebrew god made Adam out of dust, the Mayan gods used maize to make their humans. The mythical story is told in the most famous epic in the whole of the Americas, the Popol Vuh. For generations, this was passed on through oral traditions before finally being written down in the seventeenth century. Here's a taste of it:
因此，我們的玉米神可不只是一位高高在上的美麗雕像，他允許我們去真正體會到古代美洲社會人們是如何思考社會本身及周遭環境的。玉米神象征著農作物種植、收獲與補植這種生生不息的循環過程，同時也象征著另一種生命的循環—人類的出生、死亡與新生命的重新誕生這種生死輪回。更重要的是，玉米神是中美洲人民存在性的最本質事物。希伯來的上帝用塵埃造出了首位人類亞當，瑪雅神用玉米來創造人類。在整個美洲神話中，著名史詩《波波爾烏》講敘了這個神話故事。悠悠歲月里，這故事在一代又一代人中口口相傳，一直流傳到十七世紀，終于被記載入書本。讓我們來品味一下其中一小段：
'And here is the beginning of the conception of humans and of the search for the ingredients of the human body...So they spoke; the bearer, begetter, the makers, modellers-and a sovereign plumed serpent-they sought and discovered what was needed for human flesh.
“于是眾神就開始有了最原始的關于人類的概念，也就著手進行尋找人類肉體的工作。眾神開口說：人類應該是負重者、繼承者、創造者與模范者，擁有主權意識及靈蛇般的靈性。經過千辛萬苦的苦苦尋找，眾神最終找到并發現了一種人類肉體需要的物質。
It was only a short while before the sun, moon and stars were to appear above the makers and modellers. Split place, bitter water place, is the name, the yellow corn, white corn, came from there. And this was when they found the staple foods, and then the yellow corn and white corn were ground. After that they put into words the making, the modelling of our first mother-father, with yellow corn, white corn alone for the flesh, food alone for the human legs and arms for our first fathers, the four human works.'
那時眾神初混沌，創造出日月星辰，山川河流。在那苦水之濱，養育了黃玉米與白玉米。眾神尋找到那里，尋找到這些糧食并進行種植。隨后他們念起了咒語，用黃玉米與白玉米造出了人類的肉體，再用其他食品做成人類的四肢，賦于了生命。這就是我們最早的父母親，眾神最初的四件人類作品。”
But why did maize become the favoured food and the revered grain of the Americas? Why not wheat or a certain type of meat?
但為什么唯獨玉米成為所有美洲人最為青睞的食品與崇敬的谷物？為什么不是小麥或者其它類型的肉類呢？
