Lost Seas: an approach to the Mayan and Mesopotamian visions of Water

Description

Planet Earth is composed of circa 70% of Water, which makes this compound the
essence of life, present almost everywhere, though in different ways and mixed with different substances. Due to its particularities, water has been embedded, comprehended, and somehow used in human imagery, since the dawn of time, which allows the identification of similar symbolic understandings in different human cultures, diachronically.
Though one can say water is a universal symbol, it is imperative to develop research on its meanings, namely by going further than the general identification of them. Moreover, it is important to analyze outside the framework of the traditionally called “universal religions”. Hence, to fully understand Water’s symbolic meanings in a global scale, we need to analyze not only societies that did not interact with each other, but also take in consideration the social and environmental settings. Following this premise, with this paper we propose to present our initial research on the topic, namely through a comparative
analysis on the conceptions about the sea produced by the Mayan and the Mesopotamian civilizations.
At first sight, they seem to have nothing in common, given their different temporal, spatial, social, and even environmental contexts. Moreover, these civilizations were primarily understood as terrestrial. Yet, in recent years, their connection with the sea has been “rediscovered” by academia, namely in wat concerns the symbolic discourses produced on the aquatic environment. With this paper, and following an interdisciplinary approach, we intend to explore these discourses, identifying parallels and thus contributing to further enable the understanding of water as a universal symbol.

Period	16 Nov 2022 → 19 Nov 2022
Event title	X CITCEM CONFERENCE : Cultures do Water: Heritage, Environment and Society
Event type	Conference
Location	Porto, PortugalShow on map