You thought the Mayans died out four centuries ago?

Maya was a pre-Columbian civilisation in Mesoamerica.

The Spanish arrived in the Caribbean in the early 16th century and eventually conquered the whole region of what we now call Central and South America. Except for Brazil, where the Portuguese got there first. Until then, the major Mesoamerican cultures were the Maya, the Incas, Aztecs and Olmecs.

The name Maya was not in fact what the people called themselves. Their political culture developed as a number of city states and it wasn't until the city of Mayapan became the  predominant political and cultural capital that the name Maya came into usage, in the 13th, 14th and early 15th centuries. Mayan peoples still identified themselves by their sub cultures such as the Yucatecs, the Tztzil and the Tzeltal. I'm not sure why there are so many instances of the letter z in Mesoamerican names but they can be useful in Scrabble - if your house rules allow proper names.

Rather than bore you with a dry historical journey, which I am definitely not qualified to write, my interest was piqued by the discovery that Mayan people still live today. Can you guess how many? I'd have ignorantly thought maybe a few hundred thousand but it's actually around six million! Primarily in Mexico, they also live in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize. There are apparently 31 distinct groups, speaking different, mutually unintelligible (at least according to the Canadian Museum of History) languages. I imagine that's a bit like a Cornishman trying to understand a Geordie. When I was a young teenager, a Londoner, I went with my parents to an event in Scotland and I literally could not understand a word of what the locals said.

The modern Mayan people maintain many of their historical customs. They engage in agriculture and practise various crafts.

Although of course many have adapted to and adopted modern cultures, traditional groups still follow the old ways. The Lacandón of the Chiapas rain forest, in Mexico, hunted with bow and arrow until the 1950s. One of the biggest threats to the Mayan culture is their felling of tropical rain forests to to make way for corn fields. This obviously doesn't endear them to the modern world. Or Greta Thunberg.

I would love to be able to visit Mayan sites such as Chichen Itza.

This is one of the "new seven wonders of the world", voted by tens of millions of people in a contest run by a Swiss company, The New 7 Wonders Foundation (which, frankly, isn't the catchiest name they could have used). I'm going to post separately about them. You might like to think about what you'd include in the list, before I start.

I guess modern nations have been pretty slow to recognise and respect the old civilisations and peoples in their midst. The Native Americans, the Aborigines, the Kikuyu and many others have suffered greatly at the hands of colonial conquerors and today's nation states perhaps don't understand the concepts of city states, tribal groupings and diverse languages, or the desire of their people to maintain their traditions. Homogeneity rules! I hope one day I will get to see Chichen Itza; in doing so, I will do my part in honouring an amazing culture.

Dynastic mini quiz

Q1. Who was Kublai Khan's grandfather?

Q2. Who was the great grandmother of Sophie of Württemberg, Queen of the Netherlands?

Q3. How many great grandchildren did Queen Victoria have?

Q4. What relation is a great great grandchild with another of different great grandparentage?

Q5. What relation is Abraham Lincoln to George Clooney?

Notable Vietnamese

Triệu Thị Trinh, better known by the honorific Bà Triệu or Lady Triệu, was a Vietnamese warrior who resisted the Eastern Wu occupation of Vietnam in the 3rd century AD. Her fight against the Chinese occupation of her country, which had been annexed by the Han dynasty in the 2nd century BC, had some success in the short term but it remained part of China for a further seven centuries.

Vietnam was under Chinese sovereignty on and off for around 1,500 years. In 1428, Lê Lợi re-established the independent nation of Vietnam under his House of Lê. He was a guerilla leader who drove out the Ming Chinese armies but subsequently proved an astute politician by his diplomatic negotiations with the Ming court, promising loyalty to China in return for political independence. This is he.

Many years of tribal civil wars followed. But they inspired Vietnamese poets such as Nguyễn Du, Đặng Trần Côn and Hồ Xuân Hương. The latter's satirical and erotic oeuvre included such as:

[kids, skip to the end]

"My body is like a jackfruit swinging on a tree,
My skin is rough, my pulp is thick.
Dear prince, if you want me then pierce me upon your stick
Don't squeeze, i'll ooze and stain your hands."
("The Jackfruit")

Because I pitied, this happened,
I wonder if he knows?
Our match had not begun
When fate intervened.
The sin he will have to bear, for a hundred years -
Right now, love's burden is all mine.
("Premarital Pregnancy")

The modern history of this small. much maligned nation began with the oppression of Western Christian religious influence and resulted in French invasion and colonisation. Phan Đình Phùng was a Vietnamese revolutionary who led rebel armies against French colonial forces at the end of the 19th century and is regarded to this day as a revolutionary hero.

In World War II, Japanese invasion and a French Vichy government were overcome by the Allies but in September 1945 Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. His Viet Minh forces defeated the French in 1954. Twenty years of war followed, with first the French seeking to defend its interests and then the USA attempting to stop the spread of communism. Despite this pressure, the communists solidified control over the country and renamed Saigon, the previous South Vietnam capital, as Ho Chi Minh City.

After two thousand years of conflict, Vietnam is now a modern nation, a member of the United Nations since 1977 and currently a member of the UN Security Council. They have one of the fastest growing economies in South East Asia and a poverty rate below 6 per cent. Let's hope the next two thousand years will be peaceful and stable.

Exponentialism

I'm not sure whether exponentialism is a word. If not, I have invented it. I'll be on to the OED in the morning. My definition is "the religion of solving jigsaw puzzles". Put simply, if I have 800 pieces of a 1,000 piece puzzle still to be placed, and I spend one hour today working on the puzzle, I might expect to correctly place say one piece, whilst when I have only 50 pieces still to be placed, I would expect to place all of them within the hour. The placing success grows at an exponential rate rather than a linear one. [Ed: You have a strange definition of "simply", Nigel]

I am a worshipper of exponentialism. It gives me hope in the dark days when pieces don't fit and I simply can't find that piece with a green stripe and a dash of yellow on the tongue. It gives me belief that I will eventually solve the puzzle. It gives me joy in the company of shared believers in the healing powers of puzzling.

Regular readers will know of my difficulties with my Starry Night puzzle. I get great succour from the experiences of a fellow disciple of exponentialism, Hugh Jackman:

That'll be me in a few months' time!

The Germans know how to do it

Until February 2020 I played poker once a week at a local pub. They were just fun games really, highly competitive but friendly with just a £1 stake. Once a month we would play a £10 game, just to kid ourselves we were professionals. Sadly, the pandemic has meant that hasn't happened for nearly a year; squeezing ten people round a small table is not exactly conducive to keeping viruses from spreading. Indeed, we and many other live poker games throughout the UK, rather than Wuhan's bats, may have been the original superspreaders.

My topic today is: kickers. In Texas Holdem poker, a kicker is a side card which can act as a decider between two otherwise equal hands. Two aces, two tens with a six beats two aces, two tens and a five. The six is the kicker.

But enough of poker. What you really want to read about today, my friends, is......football!!! And what word could better reflect the essence of football than: Kicker.

I was intrigued to learn of a German club called Stuttgarter Kickers. They play in the Oberliga Baden-Württemberg, which is the fifth tier of the German professional football pyramid, after two successive relegations. They are currently second in the table. However, matches in this league haven't been played since October, presumably because of Covid-19. They are not due to play again until the last weekend in February; hopefully things might be a bit better by then.

So why my interest in this obscure team? Because of their name, of course. Kickers is such an obvious word for a football club. That's what footballers do, they kick. Sometimes each other but mostly the ball. A typical new football club would entitle themselves something like MyNewClub FC, where the FC stands for Football Club. It sounds so much posher than Kickers, which is the ultimate in onomatopoeia (in its original Greek meaning). Or maybe MyNewClub City or MyNewClub United or MyNewClub Albion, all of them rubbish deflections, claiming some kind of social function, from the primary purpose of the club, which is to kick balls.

I thought at first that this was an anglicized version of a different German word but no, that's their name. Even babelfish.com translates the English "kicker" into German as "kicker".

I wondered if this club is unique in its name but no, there is also the Kickers Offenbach which is absolutely not a hater of The Tales of Hoffman but a genuine football club. A few more include Richmond Kickers of Virginia, USA, playing in the United States Soccer League One, Kickers Emden in the Oberliga Lower Saxony, Femina Kickers in Worb, Switzerland, currently bottom of the Nationalliga B Women table with 0 points after 7 matches and Würzburger Kickers who are in the Bundesliga 2 in Germany. The latter copped out a bit by calling themselves themselves FC Würzburger Kickers - covering all bases and a definite nod to establishment elitism.

I just wish we had some in England. I can think of many English clubs with reputations for being bunches of cloggers - opposition first, ball second. Bolton Kickers more apt than Bolton Wanderers (what does that mean?) for instance. Kickers Wimbledon in the old days. If you've got this far in this post, you'll have your own favourites for that.

Here's to Kickers everywhere - enjoy what you do!

Spheres

I've just had another birthday present. I'm like the Queen, in that I have two birthdays a year. That's the only resemblance; as far as I know, she doesn't have a blog.

I was woken up by the chiming of my doorbell at 07:10 today. I'm pretty sure none of my readers will think that 07:10 is anything other than a late start to the day but I'm used to getting out of my warm bed some time between 08:00 and 08:30. For those of you shocked by that, bear in mind I am rarely in bed before midnight. Anyway, it was a courier delivering a large parcel. I hope he's getting overtime for unsocial hours.

Even at that ungodly hour, I was too inquisitive to pass up the opportunity to see what was inside the parcel. A cornucopia of delights! First of all, though, back to my warm bed for another hour's sleep. My heating doesn't come on until 07:30, after all. But I couldn't sleep, so made a cuppa and re-examined my loot.

Best of all was a card from my grandson

but also a new jigsaw puzzle. It's a Death Star - fans of Star Wars will be aware of that monstrous entity; I wish I had one in my Civilization game, I have to make do with Giant Death Robots.

Most intriguing of all, the puzzle is double sided! How is that going to work, for goodness sake? I see problems ahead. Problem #2 is that it's too large for my regular puzzle table - so I have now ordered a circular table of the correct size from Mr Amazon! Don't worry, this has an upside - I can continue with Van Gogh (decent progress is being made with that, since you ask) on my puzzle table whilst setting up the Death Star on my new table.

The Death Star is of course a sphere. And that set me thinking about spheres. Which I know is weird but thinking outside the box is the lifeblood of bloggers.

Now balls are spheres but you'll be relieved to know that I'm not going to talk about football. No, I am into much bigger spheres than those. Last night I watched the movie First Man, about Neil Armstrong and the years leading up to the Apollo 11 mission. It's a decent enough couple of hours if you're looking for some entertainment. Some of the time it's a bit tense, as they travel through the ionosphere and the troposphere. See, spheres! Concentrate, people.

Which of those spheres surrounding the earth is nearer to us? It's the troposphere, in which we all live. Clouds, rain, snow, that sort of stuff. The lowest part is the boundary layer, the earth's surface.

Further out from the troposphere is the stratosphere. This extends outwards a further 50km from the troposphere. The ozone in this layer absorbs ultraviolet light from the sun and prevents us from getting skin cancers and the earth from getting overheated. Or at least it would do if we weren't slowly destroying it with our nasty aerosols.

Then there's the mesosphere, thermosphere and the exosphere. I feel a home schooling science lesson coming on. Taken together, these three make up the ionosphere. It contains free electrons; without them there wouldn't be any radio waves and we couldn't hear Listen With Mother. Or use GPS.

The ionosphere is also where man made satellites orbit the earth. As of 1 April 2020, there were 2,666 of them. That sounds a lot - are they all really necessary? You'd think they would crash into each other. Want to know which countries have launched satellites? I have just the thing for you:

No-one wants to miss out, obviously.

So Nigel, once we get to the edge of the exosphere, are we nearly at the moon? As you see, the exosphere stretches to around 400km above the earth. Further out, the outer regions, up to 16,000km above the earth, make up the magnetosphere. The moon, however, is 384,400km away. So no.

Thinking about the universe is why I couldn't get back to sleep at 07:15 today. I need an afternoon nap!