cross-eyed Mayans
Mark Spahn
Having recently read a book about the Maya ("Jungle of Stone"), I followed a click-bait come-on touting "jaw-dropping facts about ancient Mayans". I stopped when I reached this panel (the previous panel illustrated Mayans with a picture of plains Indians):
http://www.horizontimes.com/facts/13-jaw-dropping-facts-ancient-mayans/4
==QUOTE==
The Maya believed that being cross eyed was desirable.
While many folks are at least a little bit cross eyed it has never been thought of as a particularly desirable trait in our culture. For the ancient Maya, however, being cross eyed was something to be proud of. In fact, like the forehead pressing above, they would go through great lengths to make their children cross eyed at birth. This would take the form of dangling objects in front of a baby’s eyes until they were permanently crossed.
==UNQUOTE==
Is it even possible, without surgery, to make anyone's eyes
"permanently crossed"? How could such a person function? And why
is this fact illustrated with a picture of girls whose eyes are
not crossed? No sources are cited for these claimed click-bait
facts. I think I'll swear off click bait.
-- Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)
Mark Spahn
(Email sent to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Coe ;
Dr. Coe is author of "Breaking the Maya Code", which is on my
list of wanna-read books )
An afterthought... I did an online search on "strabismus
genetic" (should have thought of this before), and got
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=strabismus+genetic&t=ha&ia=web
The conclusion seems to be that strabismus is partly genetic in
cause, but that this is not well understood (e.g., there is no
genetic test for propensity to strabismus). It would be
instructive to have statistics on the incidence of strabismus
among Native North American subgroups (Mayan, indios in general,
Sioux, Seneca) as compared with other population subgroups
(whites, blacks, Chinese, Uzbeks, Inuit, etc.).
-- Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)
Synchronicity! In reading further in "Jungle of Stone", I came across this on page 292:
==QUOTE==
There was one more venture before the expedition left for the ruins. They learned that many Meridanos [residents of Merida, in the Yucatan peninsula] suffered from an eye condition called strabismus, or cross-eyes, and [Stephens's and Catherwood's traveling companion] Dr. Cabot offered to perform at no charge a new surgical technique that could correct the condition simply by cutting one of the contracted muscles of the eye. ... When word got out that the doctor from the United States could cure cross-eyes, a number of "subjects" began lining up outside the house. An operating room of sorts was set up, again in the living room, which was large enough to accommodate local doctors, as well as the governor and a small crowd of other invited and uninvited luminaries. After several operations, all successes, including one on the "oldest general in the Mexican service," who lived in Merida in exile, Stephens had had enough: "My head was actually swimming with visions of bleeding and mutilated eyes." ... Cabot was a local hero.
==UNQUOTE==
So from this passage it appears that strabismus is relatively common among people in this region, which includes many Maya. Let's see what turns up from an online search on "strabismus Maya"...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_society says "High-status Mayan mothers would artificially induce crosseyedness (strabismus) [how?] and would strap on boards to flatten the foreheads of high-born infants as a lifelong sign of noble status.[3] The eye condition was used to honor Kinich Ahau, the crosseyed sun god of the Mayans."
It is not clear whether the relatively high incidence of strabismus among Maya is genetic, or deliberately caused (by culture).
By the way, I have always understood "squint" to mean to look or peer with the eyes partly closed, as when the light is too strong, but "squint" also refers to the eyes pointing in different directions (i.e., being cross-eyed). I didn't know this second meaning of "squint".
-- Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)
On 2/20/2017 9:36 AM, Michael Coe wrote:
I dimly remember reading something about this alleged behavior when I was a grad student, but after five decades I can't pin down the source. When John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood went on their second journey to Yucatan, they were accompanied by Dr. Cabot, a Bostonian practitioner. He performed a number of free operations on Maya kids to correct their "squint".
The Classic Maya Sun God was definitely cross-eyed.
Michael Coe