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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 709.72
EAN num: 9780500203927
ISBN number: 050020392X
Label: Thames & Hudson
Manufacturer: Thames & Hudson
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 256
Printing Date: October 30, 2006
Publishing house: Thames & Hudson
Sale Popularity Level: 10747
Studio: Thames & Hudson
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Product Description:
'An essential guide to the art and architecture of ancient Central America.'—Colonial Latin American Historical Review
Mary Ellen Miller evocatively surveys the artistic achievements of the high Precolumbian civilizations—Olmec, Maya, Teotihuacan, Toltec, Aztec—as well as those of their less well-known contemporaries. Their pyramids and palaces, jades and brightly colored paintings emerge from these pages as vividly as when they very first astonished Cortes's men in 1519.
The fourth edition of this standard work includes exciting new discoveries, from Palenque, Mexico, where architecture and sculpture reveal a dramatic eighth century, to San Bartolo, Guatemala, where Maya paintings have riveted an international audience. Continuing hieroglyphic decipherments provide fresh insights. The revised edition of the Art of Mesoamerica is the ideal companion for art historians, students, and travelers alike. 220 illustrations, 136 in color.
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Rated by buyers 
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Note: You're "helpful" votes are appreciated. One Mormon reader likes to automatically give my reviews negative votes because of my negative reviews of books on the Book of Mormon. Oh, well, and Thanks.
Miller's book is a must for anyone interested in the cultures of ancient Mexico and Central America (mesoamerica). It is full of quality photos of the artifacts and ruins. Miller points out many errors.
One picture, for example, shows an Olmec figure holding a child on its lap. "Mexican peasants who found this large greenstone sculpture near las Limas, Veracruze, believed it to be a madonna and child. In fact, it represents a youth holding an Olmec rain deity in his lap."
As for the theories that became popular in the 19th century, Miller dismisses them with the observation that "these claims are made by those unwilling to accept the modern Mesoamerican peasant as the descendant of creators of high culture. Although the question of contact remains unanswered in all its details, by and large it will be assumed here that ideas, inventions, and civilizations arose independently in the New World."
This is another way of pointing out the glaring racism of those who demand an Old World origin of Native American culture.
The claims of the Book of Mormon that there were great Hebrew-Christian civilizations in ancient America are without basis in reality. It is one thing the argue that contact influenced a given culture, but it is an entirely different thing to argue that any civilization in the New World was derived from the Old World.
In thumbing Miller's book, the reader is confronted with the pagan reality of ancient mesoamerica, where the rain gods ruled and human sacrifice was practiced by the Olmecs, the Maya, and the Aztecs. No amount of clever manipulation of the facts by Mormon authors will change this fact.
Rated by buyers 
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A very British take on this history of the Mesoamerican life. It's very detailed with great illustrations and photographs to correlate with the text. Although not impossible a careful reading of the text is necessary to fully understand what is being conveyed.
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