Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (Abridged) - Softcover

Stephens, John Lloyd

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1560986514 ISBN 13: 9781560986515

Publisher: Smithsonian Books, 1996

Synopsis

A lively, eloquent guide to the Maya ruins of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, as entertaining today as when it was first published in 1843, Stephens' guide recounts his two trips made to the region between 1839 and 1842. It includes extensive accounts of 44 Maya sites as well as of Yucatan folkways, manners, dress, ceremonies, amusements—all of which makes this a great travel book. Now published in a single-volume edition, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan captures for the modern reader and traveler the excitement of archaeological exploration and discovery.

About this title

About the Author

John Lloyd Stephens was an American explorer whose reports on long-forgotten Mayan ruins in Central America caused a resurgence of popular and scholarly interest in the ancient people.

From Publishers Weekly

As director of the Ocean Steam Navigating Company and president of the Panama Railway Company, Stephens (1805-1852) knew a lot about travel, and he wrote about it. His first book, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, went through 12 printings and earned its author $15,000 in its first three months, making him one of America's first bestselling writers. Edgar Allen Poe called it "perhaps the most interesting book of travel ever published." This more seasoned and focused account of Stephens's second trip, originally published in 1843, is packed with detailed accounts of travels in newly discovered Mayan ruins and with equally fascinating lithographs by his travel companion, Frederick Catherwood. Through Stephens's eyes, readers see Yucatan villages of 150 years ago, when Indians used cacao beans instead of money in their marketplaces; a Catholic/indigenous hybrid funeral that seems no more barbaric than the crude medical treatments rendered by another of Stephens's travel companions, Dr. Cabot, on their Mayan guides. One of the first to acknowledge that indigenous Americans might have built the great American pyramids and temples, not Egyptians, Greeks or one of the lost tribes of Israel, Stephens voiced a rare, nonjudgmental viewpoint in a time when European cultural elitism was the unquestioned norm. Not just a curiosity for archeology buffs or cultural studies types, this is also an informative, intriguing guide for armchair travelers.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Smithsonian Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1560986514
• ISBN 13: 9781560986515
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 286