How this Maya ethnozoology web site will cover the diversity of creatures of Mesoamerica
The long range goal of this Maya ethnozoology web site is to have one complete page on every pertinent species of creature (that was relevant to the Classic Maya of Mesoamerica).
In the middle of a recession, until a generous corporation or considerate individual provides funding, we will start with pages on theme-groups: so a group of related creatures on a single page.
Then, as funds become available, we will expand and build one complete page for each species. So here are the pages for the groups.
If the link is not a hot link this means the page is still being worked on. As soon as a page is finished we will have a hot link to it.
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Nicholas Hellmuth holding a catfish that relates with waterlily and also with the maya ethnozoology. Photo by Sofia Monzon, Monterrico, Guatemala. |
Which is correct,
Maya ethnozoology or Mayan ethnozoology?
Having been at universities for decades, I am fully aware of the difference in meaning between Maya and Mayan. But to assist the reader understand the differences, and the deep emotions that the difference between Maya and Mayan is to the scholar, we have a separate page that discusses whether it is Maya ethnozoology, or Mayan ethnozoology.
Audience of this web site on Maya ethnozoology is all interested individuals
Posted Nov 2, 2011
With our academic background logically our initial audience are students and scholars. But in reality the full audience also includes the thousands of enthusiastic bird watchers and animal lovers around the world.
I believe this is the first web site on Mayan ethnozoology which is available in 36 languages. Yes, obviously this is a computer translation. But we believe it is significantly faster than earlier Babel-style translators.
To achive such fast translations requires having computer coding specialists in-house on-staff. But since our goal is to help students as well as faculty and the general public around the world, we decided it was worth the investment to make our material available in languages for China, Japan, Korea, India, Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
Every year I travel about 414,000 kilometers, to lecture around the world, but also to learn about advanced digital imaging technologies so we at FLAAR can provide museums as well as zoological, botanical, archaeological, geological, and ethnographic institutes, departments, and field projects with assistance in how to improve their digital photography and printing for exhibits. As I am in all the foreign countries where I visit every year, I notice how enthusiastic people are about learning about the Maya cultures of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras.
So we wish our material to be in at least 36 languages to start with. I thank our capable staff of web masters for their hard work in programming the FLAAR web sites to be readable in so many languages.
Our other older web sites, such as www.maya-archaeology.org, were written in HTML and PHP, so we have to re-write them from scratch into newer computer code. So it will take us a while to make our legacy web sites translatable.
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Dr. Hellmuth taking photographs of a Heloderma in the La Aurora National Zoo. Photo by Sofia Monzon, September 2011 |
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Heloderma, in the La Aurora National Zoo. Photo by Nicholas Hellmuth, September 2011 |
