Reading Comprehension

Culture

Medium

For the Maya of the Classic period, who lived in Southern Mexico and Central America between 250 and 900 CE, the category of 'persons' was not coincident with human beings, as it is for us. That is, human beings were persons but other, nonhuman entities could be persons, too. In order to explore the slippage of categories between 'humans' and 'persons', I examined a very specific category of ancient Maya images, found painted in scenes on ceramic vessels. I sought out instances in which faces (some combination of eyes, nose, and mouth) are shown on inanimate objects. Consider my iPhone, which needs to be fed with electricity every night, swaddled in a protective bumper, and enjoys communicating with other fellow phone beings. Does it have personhood (if at all) because it is connected to me, drawing this resource from me as an owner or source? For the Maya (who did have plenty of other communicating objects, if not smartphones), the answer was no. Nonhuman persons were not tethered to specific humans, and they did not derive their personhood from a connection with a human. It's a profoundly democratising way of understanding the world. Humans are not more important persons – we are just one of many kinds of persons who inhabit this world.

The Maya saw personhood as 'activated' by experiencing certain bodily needs and through participation in certain social activities. For example, among the faced objects that I examined, persons are marked by personal requirements (such as hunger, tiredness, physical closeness), and by community obligations (communication, interaction, ritual observance). In the images I examined, we see, for instance, faced objects being cradled in humans' arms; we also see them speaking to humans. These core elements of personhood are both turned inward, what the body or self of a person requires, and outward, what a community expects of the persons who are a part of it, underlining the reciprocal nature of community membership.

Personhood was a nonbinary proposition for the Maya. Entities were able to be persons while also being something else. The faced objects I looked at indicate that they continue to be functional, doing what objects do (a stone implement continues to chop, an incense burner continues to do its smoky work). Furthermore, the Maya visually depicted many objects in ways that indicated the material category to which they belonged – drawings of the stone implement show that a person-tool is still made of stone. One additional complexity: the incense burner (which would have been made of clay, and decorated with spiky appliques representing the sacred ceiba tree found in this region) is categorised as a person but also as a tree. With these Maya examples, we are challenged to discard the person/nonperson binary that constitutes our basic ontological outlook. The porousness of boundaries that we have seen in the Maya world points towards the possibility of living with a certain uncategorisability of the world.

Which one of the following best explains the "additional complexity" that the example of the incense burner illustrates regarding personhood for the Classic Maya?

The example complicates the nonbinary understanding of personhood by bringing in the sacred, establishing the porosity of the divine and the profane.

The example adds a new layer to the nonbinary understanding of personhood by bringing in a third category that shares a similar relation with the previous two.

The example provides an exception to the nonbinary understanding of person hood that the passage had hitherto established.

The example adds a new layer to the nonbinary understanding of personhood by bringing in a third category that shares a dissimilar relation with the previous two.

✅ Correct Option: 2

To solve this question,we need to find what "additional complexity" the incense burner example shows about Maya personhood.

Step 1: Find the "additional complexity" in the passage

Step 2: Understand how it relates to Maya nonbinary personhood concept

Step 3: Match this understanding with the right option

From passage: "One additional complexity: the incense burner (which would have been made of clay, and decorated with spiky appliques representing the sacred ceiba tree found in this region) is categorised as a person but also as a tree."

The passage already explained that Maya objects can be both persons and functional objects (like stone tools). The incense burner adds another layer -> it's a person and an object and a tree. So we go from two categories to three categories.

The key insight -> Maya personhood breaks our simple "person vs nonperson" thinking. The incense burner shows this even more clearly by belonging to three categories at once.

🔴 Option 1 -> scope-error -> focuses on sacred vs profane, but passage isn't about religious categories. It's about how many different things one entity can be at the same time.

🟢 Option 2 -> correct -> captures it perfectly. Takes the existing two categories (person + object) and adds a third (tree). All three relate to the incense burner in the same way - it literally IS all three things.

🔴 Option 3 -> context-shift -> calls it an "exception" but passage presents it as another example that supports the nonbinary idea, not something that goes against it.

🔴 Option 4 -> degree-error -> right about third category but wrong about "dissimilar relation." The incense burner relates to all three categories the same way - by being all three things.

From passage: "With these Maya examples, we are challenged to discard the person/nonperson binary that constitutes our basic ontological outlook."

The incense burner shows we need to think beyond just two categories -> it adds tree as a third category that works just like the other two.

Question 13

On the basis of the passage, which one of the following worldviews can be inferred to be closest to that of the Classic Maya?

Question 14

Which one of the following, if true, would not undermine the democratising potential of the Classic Maya worldview?

Question 16

Which one of the following, if true about the Classic Maya, would invalidate the purpose of the iPhone example in the passage?

Which one of the following best explains the "additional complexity" that the example of the incense burner illustrates regarding personhood for the Classic Maya?

Solution

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