Territory - the Environment Is Not Scenery - From the Human of Clay to the Human of Maize

Before asking how the brain represents the environment, perhaps it is useful to begin with a much older question:

what are we made of?

In the Popol Wuj, a foundational text of K’iche’ Maya tradition, human creation passes through different attempts. First come beings made of clay. Then beings made of wood. Finally, humans made of maize.

A Latin American phenomenological-hermeneutic reading published by Lucero González Suárez in 2023 revisits precisely this sequence and shows how the limitations of clay and wood precede the successful constitution of maize humans.

BrainLatam does not intend to turn the Popol Wuj into neuroscience.

We want to make the opposite move:

can our current scientific categories listen to questions that a Latin American cosmogony was already asking about body, territory, and Being?

Clay — when we imagine that we can exist apart from territory

In our contemporary reading, the human of clay can work as a first analogy.

Not because the Popol Wuj says that clay means interiority, but because the image allows us to think about a humanity that seeks its truth exclusively within itself, or in an existence separated from the nature that sustains it.

Different religious traditions contain ideas of transcendence and life after death. They are not identical and should not be reduced to a single interpretation.

The problem begins whenever any narrative suggests that we do not truly belong to nature.

The planet becomes a passage.

The body becomes a temporary container.

Nature becomes scenery or a resource for an existence considered more important somewhere else.

In the BrainLatam metaphor, this would resemble:

Tekoha without APUS.

A great deal of inside.

Too little re-encounter with what makes that inside possible.

Yet we breathe air.

We drink water.

We eat territory.

We depend on organisms that are not us.

The Body-Territory cannot remain alive by looking only inward.

Wood — when the narrative keeps working even after losing the territory

The wooden beings of the Popol Wuj can move and multiply, yet they do not achieve what the narrative expects from the human.

Here we can build our second analogy.

The contemporary human of wood functions.

Produces.

Repeats.

Executes.

Accumulates.

And may speak extremely well.

Perhaps that is precisely where the danger lies.

A narrative does not need to remain connected to territory in order to continue functioning socially.

It can mobilize religion.

Markets.

Revolution.

Nation.

Progress.

Science.

Tradition.

Freedom.

Justice.

All of these words can express legitimate values.

But none of them, by itself, guarantees that what we are saying remains related to what is actually happening.

The problem does not belong exclusively to capitalism, socialism, communism, or any other system.

It appears whenever:

the narrative becomes more important than the territory to which it should respond.

Forest becomes only timber.

A person becomes labor.

Attention becomes a metric.

Data become an asset.

A river becomes megawatts.

Education becomes an indicator.

Perhaps the human of wood is precisely the one capable of continuing to execute the protocol even after becoming unable to perceive what the protocol itself is producing.

Maize — what was outside becomes what we are made of

Then we arrive at maize.

In the K’iche’ narrative, yellow and white maize participate in the constitution of successful human beings.

Here appears perhaps the most powerful image for Body-Territory:

what was outside becomes what we are made of.

The maize was in the territory.

It had to grow.

It depended on water.

Soil.

Light.

Other forms of life.

It was found.

Cultivated.

Harvested.

Prepared.

Eaten.

Metabolized.

It became muscle, energy, and movement.

And the body returned to act upon the territory.

Territory → food → metabolism → Body → movement → territory.

The boundary between inside and outside remains functionally useful.

But it no longer appears absolute.

Perhaps we are “made of maize” precisely in this analogical sense:

we are continuously constituted by the relationships we are able to sustain with what we are not.

The subway changes when we change the light — and so do we

A 2026 paper by Wei and colleagues offers a particularly interesting experimental entry into this discussion.

The researchers created nine virtual subway environments, combining three illumination levels — 300, 500, and 750 lux — with different lighting and color configurations.

Twenty-one participants experienced these conditions in virtual reality while researchers simultaneously recorded subjective evaluations of the environment and prefrontal hemodynamic activity using fNIRS.

The question was not merely aesthetic.

The aim was to investigate how combinations of light intensity and color in an underground transit environment could simultaneously modify reported experience and measures related to cortical activity.

This matters because, experimentally, the subway ceased to be merely “the place where the experiment occurs.”

The configuration of the environment itself became the experimental variable.

Among the conditions investigated, an intermediate illumination of approximately 500 lux, combined with a bluish configuration around 4300 K, was associated with more restorative evaluations and differences in prefrontal functional connectivity.

The brighter 750-lux condition was associated with greater subjective alertness and higher prefrontal activation, but not necessarily with a stronger restorative experience.

This forces an important distinction.

More activation does not automatically mean a better environment.

More alertness does not necessarily mean greater well-being.

And the same person may display different responses when we alter only properties of the space in which they are situated.

We cannot conclude that a particular lighting condition universally “produces” a given experience.

The sample is limited, virtual reality remains an experimental slice, and fNIRS observes only part of brain dynamics.

Yet the study demonstrates something methodologically important:

changing the environment can simultaneously change what a person reports and what we are able to observe in their physiology.

Light is not merely scenery.

It participates in the conditions of the encounter.

The same light never meets only the eyes

When someone enters that virtual subway, the light does not meet the retina alone.

It meets a Body-Territory that is also:

breathing;

maintaining balance;

occupying a certain posture;

feeling its own heart;

estimating distances;

orienting possibilities for movement;

carrying memories and expectations.

We might therefore think:

light + space + position + organism + history → perceptual encounter.

And even this formula remains incomplete.

Recent Latin American research in Environmental Psychology has increasingly argued that person and environment need to be studied relationally rather than as entirely separate entities.

APUS and Tekoha — outside and inside in motion

In BrainLatam language, we use APUS as a conceptual window for observing synchronization with what is happening outside:

where am I?

what is moving?

what is the distance?

where can I step?

what can I reach?

which movements are possible?

And we use Tekoha as a window onto what is happening inside:

how am I breathing?

how is my heart beating?

am I tense?

hungry?

afraid?

in pain?

what is my metabolic state?

We do not present them as straightforward Indigenous translations of Western neuroscientific categories.

They are BrainLatam conceptual extensions.

And, most importantly:

APUS and Tekoha do not operate separately.

A change in light alters orientation.

Orientation modifies posture.

Posture modifies breathing.

The change in breathing alters once again how space is encountered.

APUS ⇄ Tekoha ⇄ APUS ⇄ Tekoha...

It is a living protocol.

Human, horse, and territory

Equestrian practice makes this dynamic almost visible.

There is not simply:

rider → command → horse.

Rider and horse continuously adjust their movements to one another and to the territory.

The human perceives rhythm, speed, distance, slope, and obstacle.

At the same time, the rider breathes, feels tension, fear, confidence, and fatigue.

The horse also has its own internal and external dynamics.

And the terrain transforms both.

Sand is not grass.

A downhill slope is not an uphill one.

The rider changes the horse.

The horse changes the rider.

The territory changes the relationship.

Thus:

Human ⇄ Horse ⇄ Territory.

The relationship does not take place upon the environment.

The environment participates in the relationship.

The protocol changes because the perceiver changed

A beginner rider approaches a particular obstacle.

Years later, the rider encounters something physically similar.

But it is no longer the same encounter.

Now the rider may perceive rhythm, take-off distance, the horse's position, ground quality, and the time available for adjustment.

The stimulus may be similar.

The one who encounters it has changed.

This gives us a way to think about transcendence without leaving the Body-Territory.

To transcend may mean encountering something apparently similar again while becoming able to perceive differences that our previous state could not yet perceive.

The protocol does not merely execute.

It learns.

Religion, Science, and Politics can be simpler

Perhaps the same logic can help us demystify words that often seem distant from young people.

In the BrainLatam analogy:

Religion imagines tomorrow.

Science does and observes what happens.

Politics judges outcomes and values.

Didactically, we can approximate them as:

Religion / Legislative → what kind of tomorrow do we want to make possible?

Science / Executive → what are we going to do now?

Politics / Judiciary → how do we judge what happened?

These are not literal institutional equivalences.

They are operations.

We all imagine.

We act.

We judge.

The problem begins when one function stops communicating with the others.

Imagining without re-encountering territory can become dogma.

Doing without judging can become machinery.

Judging without being able to imagine or construct alternatives can become paralysis.

Voting with awareness — and Consciousness

This question becomes especially important for young people exposed every day to clipped videos, slogans, memes, religious discourse, economic promises, and political identities.

This text is not intended to tell anyone whom to vote for.

The earlier question is:

how do we produce our own judgment?

Because a political narrative can change Tekoha.

It can produce fear.

Hope.

Anger.

Belonging.

That is real.

But feeling something intensely does not mean that our interpretation of what is outside is necessarily correct.

This is why APUS must continue returning to territory.

A simple formulation may help:

Feeling is real. Interpretation still needs to be tested.

This is where media literacy, fact-checking, and scientific education also become practices of perceptual autonomy.

Not to teach young people what to think.

But to increase their ability to recognize why they are thinking what they are thinking, and what in the territory may support or contradict that judgment.

Jiwasa — the human of maize does not exist alone

Maize takes us to one final question.

It does not exist alone.

It depends on water.

Soil.

Light.

Microorganisms.

Other species.

Time.

Work.

Perhaps Jiwasa needs to cross the boundary of the human species.

A tree does not need to become a fungus.

A fungus does not need to become an animal.

A horse does not need to become its rider.

One person does not need to think exactly like another.

Jiwasa means belonging without demanding that every position become our own.

A biome exists precisely because differences remain capable of relating.

Perhaps democracy depends on something similar.

We may judge values differently.

But we need to preserve some possibility of returning to a shareable territory.

Jiwasa allows differences in judgment; it does not require different realities.

Perhaps the human of clay imagines that they do not belong to the planet.

The human of wood can sustain narratives even after those narratives have drifted away from it.

But the human of maize must continuously return to territory.

Because they depend on it.

Eat from it.

Breathe it.

Move within it.

Share it with other forms of life.

Perhaps transcendence is not abandoning that territory.

Perhaps it is returning to it transformed, able to perceive what we previously could not yet perceive.

Because the environment was never merely scenery.

It continuously participates in the configuration of the one who is able to say: “I am here.”

References

González Suárez, L. (2023). El ser del hombre a la luz del Popol Vuh. Análisis fenomenológico-hermenéutico. LiminaR, 21(1), e948.
Examines the figures of clay, wood, and maize and the conception of the human in the Popol Wuj.

Wei, D., Li, G., Li, P., Wang, M., Li, Y., & Song, W. (2026). Restorative lighting–color ambience and experience in underground transit spaces: Evidence from VR and fNIRS. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 39, 102203.
Central study for the environmental discussion: combines virtual reality, different illumination levels and color configurations, subjective evaluations, and fNIRS to investigate how changes in lighting environment participate in experience and cortical dynamics.

Farias Diniz, R., Moisés, J., Barbosa, D. A., & Costa, A. L. F. (2023). Environmental Psychology in Latin America: an analysis of open access scientific production. Revista Interamericana de Psicología, 57(3), e1844.
Maps Latin American research on person–environment relations and shows the regional consolidation of the field.

Mardones, R. E., & Berroeta, H. (2024). Environmental Psychology in Latin America: Trends and invisibilities in mainstream scientific production. Revista Interamericana de Psicología, 58(2), e1994.
Discusses trends and invisibilities in Environmental Psychology produced in Latin America.

Francica, C. (2024). Afectos y estéticas del “cuerpo-territorio”. Estudios Filológicos, 74, 325–349.
Analyzes Chilean artistic productions connecting body, territory, memory, contamination, care, affect, and more-than-human relations.

Zanin, C. A., & Fenelon, T. M. T. (2024). Alfabetização midiática por meio da checagem de fatos: uma proposta de pesquisa-ação. Comunicação & Educação, 29(2), 201–217.
Presents fact-checking as a practice for critical education and media literacy among students.

Guazina, L. S. (2023/2024). Alfabetização midiática e informacional no combate à desinformação e à violência nas escolas: uma proposta de agenda. Comunicação & Educação, 28(2), 20–32.
Connects media education, citizenship, and critical formation in informational environments marked by disinformation.

BrainLatam (2026). APUS and Tekoha — How the World Enters the Body and the Body Returns to the World.
Develops APUS and Tekoha as conceptual windows onto the dynamics between external and internal movements of the Body-Territory.

BrainLatam (2026). Consciousness Is a Movement That Perceives Itself as Being.
Integrates APUS, Tekoha, Body-Territory, and Consciousness 5D within the hypothesis that consciousness is a movement that perceives itself as Being in the metabolism produced.