gems, jade, jadeite, fei cui, Mesoamerica, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mayans, Olmecs, Aztecs, archaeology, history, archaeogemology, Pre-Columbian jade; Costa Rica; Maya; exchange; iconography, lapidary, corn, maize

Anthology of the various writings of Karl Andreas Taube, the noted expert in Mayan culture and art. As his friend and colleague said: These are examples of Karl’s craft, even his cognitive wiring, a gift for detecting coherent stories. Then there is what can only be understood as an affinity for worldly beauty, the layered metaphors that enrich Mesoamerican imagery and still deliver that powerful punch that makes us whirl for the love of it. Karl is earthy, enjoys a good laugh, an exuberant dance, or a frolic. He admires and delights in stunning objects; he understands emotion and experience. These capacities equipped him to identify, for the first time, ancient Maya clowns, recognizing that certain scenes were intended to be riotously funny, and, more ethereally, that rushing clouds, ripe with rain, could be understood as feathered serpents showering us all with their westbound blessings. Karl discovered that objects pleasing to touch and rub, like jade, carried spirits within. He discerned a paradise filled with floral scents, buzzing bees, and fluttering birds—in the here and now, everywhere, in the impossibly distant past, and in the future as well. It is at this level that Karl’s work acquires a majestic sweep. Curiously, it is also where it becomes most human. His writing has gone beyond academic debate, beyond the dry armature of citations and the conventional introduction-middle-conclusion structure. It has taken us to a world where people laughed, loved, lived, died, and lived again. That is the place he visits, and to which he has invited us to travel in the wonder-filled essays that follow.""