Category: Yucatan 2020

January 5-6, 2020
We’ve spent the past two days exploring four more Mayan sites. Though the Mayans occupied the area for over 1000 years (roughly 200 BC until 1400 AD), and left over 1500 known cities, the five (counting Palenque) we visited spanned most of the entire period.

The biggest ruins in the Yucatan might well belong to those at Chichen Itza, or at least the most excavated and most visited. Up to 19,000 visitors a day arrive by the busload during peak season (last week), and it seemed like there were that many when we were leaving.  We got there shortly after the park opened at 800, so there were still a few spots left in the parking lot. That did not last long. I can understand the fascination with a site labeled as one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

Our hotel there had a main entrance that was part of a hacienda purchased by Edward Thompson, American vice consul in Merida, who was responsible for some of the early excavations—and the man who used his diplomatic pouch to secret a number of artifacts to the Harvard Peabody museum. Harvard won a battle waged by the Mexican government to get the material returned. The Mexican supreme court ruled that the laws at the time were inadequate to protect the nation’s treasurers, so Harvard could keep the items; in a gesture of gratitude, some of the materials were returned. Mr. Thompson himself was hounded out of Mexico, however, and the hacienda sold to archeologists who built cabins, one of which was occupied by Mr. & Mrs. Hoyt.

Like most of the excavated sites, only a small portion of any of the sites has been recovered or restored Given time, the jungle wins, or the cost of recovery is enormous. Coba, were we visited today, for example, spanned 40 square kilometers. Less than 15% is restored.

Chichen Itza is classic period—about 1000 AD—which means the buildings were architecturally and artistically at their peak. The city-state was one of the most dominant, controlling as it did, one of the ancient world’s most important products—salt–until drought and population pressure eroded its sway. The pyramid is 42 meters high, one of the highest, built atop an earlier version which contained a tomb whose finery now graces the national museum. My favorite buildings, though, were the ball court, the largest known with a “hoop” about 15 feet off the ground (try and dunk that); a ritualistic altar with thousands of skull figures (the macabre idea borrowed apparently from the Toltecs in central Mexico; the popular but apocryphal story is that the losers were decapitated); the observatory (the Mayans, like most successful agricultural civilizations placed great emphasis on the rain god and were adept astronomers and astrologers; the construction of the observatory allowed stargazing even during the day); the temple of 1000 warriors, with a jaguar god atop, and 1000 pillars that for all the world looks like something borrowed from a Roman movie set); and, bless the Spanish, two buildings named by them, the “nunnery” and the “church”, older buildings with some of the best intact steles and bas-relief that we’ve seen. Partly because of the crowds and the wear and tear, none of the buildings is readily accessible. That’s probably a good thing because the pyramid has 365 steps (the Mayans knew the days of the year). Carolyn is super impressed with any civilization that reveres jaguars. We did see two jaguar crossing signs on the way to Cancun.

Ek Balam, the jaguar city, was older.(pre-classic period) and easily combined in one day with Chichen Itza. The site had an unusual rounded building and some excavated common folk housing—all ten feet per room—that we saw nowhere else. I liked the reconstructed Mayan “arch” at the gateway to the city, which was triangular. The road there was full of pilgrims, many on bicycles, heading to a Church of the Three Wise Men, since Monday, the day of the arrival of the three wise men, is the gift giving day associated with Christmas in Mexico.

Today’s visits were to Coba and Tulum, two later (post classic; Tulum, in fact, lasting until the Spanish explorations, which was unusual for the Mayans). Coba, as mentioned, occupied 40 square kilometers, and even though only a small portion is excavated, those buildings are sufficiently scattered that we had a trishaw with a driver to take us around. Our guide noted that the workmanship deteriorated, but it was hard to tell in a city that had two ball courts (American and National League?), and a pyramid taller than the one at Chichen Itza (but unrestored).

The most stunning site was Tulum, settled for a long time, but come to prominence late—stunning because of its location on the coast. Apparently, it was sort of a customs station or duty free shop for Mayans along the coast, protected by a wall on 3 sides and steep cliffs down to the ocean on the fourth side. Large iguanas willingly posed for pictures, but the buildings atop the hills—again, some of them resembling Roman ruins because of the pillars used to hold up a (no longer there) wooden roof. The most unusual of the gods was an upside-down man, facing west—the direction of the setting sun.

Given that the palaces of the Mayan rich were much nicer than the (mostly unexcavated) hovels of the poor, it’s fittingly ironic that our last night is being spent in Cancun, in one of those updated 21st century palaces.

January 3, 2020
We’re only 58 miles (as the crow flies) and 6200 feet lower than we were yesterday, but getting from the colonial charm of San Cristobal and its nearby Mayan descendants to the classical Maya ruins at Palenque was almost a six hour trip. Part of that was the descent which followed a lot of ridgelines, which meant curved type C roads (meaning usually not wide enough to pass, at least in theory); part of the delay was from topes—speed bumps. Our driver/guide said on one trip he counted the number, and it was 259, but that needs to be updated. The speed bumps not only replace stoplights and stop signs in towns as ways to slow traffic at important junctures (school crossings for example), but enterprising shopkeepers have them built up daily to encourage traffic to stop for bananas, the omni present coke, or pollo (chicken), or gasoline or….

Part of the length of the trip came from a short side trip to Aqua Azul, a national park (meaning three toll booths) to view cascades on the local river that is known for its blue green water during the dry season (now) and its muddy turbulence during the rainy season.

It was worth the drive down through at least three ecosystems, starting with pine and ending with humid jungle (there are howler monkeys sharing the resort we’re at with us); Palenque has a well deserved reputation as one of the top ruins in the Mayan period, and deservedly so.

While the settlement began about 100 bc, the heyday was during the reigns of King Pakal, his son, and grandson, in the 8th century (700-800 or so). Pakal was a successful warrior, and constructed buildings that were artistic monuments to his success. And he lived to be 80 years old, unheard of at the time, and thought to possess magical powers because of a deformed leg.

The temples/tombs/palaces, which comprise the majority of the excavated sites (a small portion of the site) mark the architectural highlights of the classic Mayan period (700-900). The buildings are mostly pyramid shaped, towering probably 150 high, at one time embracing a city of maybe 100000 people. There’s a tomb for Pakal, his official wife (the Red Queen, so named because of the cinnabar sprinkled on her, an unexcavated Jaguar temple (something like 20 temples have been excavated, or at least named; as I saw in Cambodia, left alone, the jungle always wins), and a huge palace with an underground stream forced to go through a narrow passage and thus speeded up to the point where it had enough pressure to supply the palace with running water.

I was really glad that we’d gone to Mexico City last year and visited the National Archeological Museum there, because some of the choice relics are there—in particular the jade death mask of Pakal. The highlight in the museum here is a replica of the sarcophagus of Pakal, a huge box with elaborate stone bas reliefs that have some of the best-known glyphs of the period.

Our host at the resort is an Italian/German who studied Mayan linguistics and he told us that the writing was initially translated by a Russian (as part of the cold war efforts to find things useful to intelligence) while Westerners were slower to decipher the writing. The big push came in the 90s, and he estimated about 85% of the script can be read. As a result, we know much about the Mayans.

I’m struck again at the similarities between the Mesoamericans and the Cahokia mound builders. For example, the classic birdman piasa stone looks like something out of Mayan central casting, and the pyramid in Cahokia is a pale earthen copy of the Mayan ruins. I suppose what it shows is that even before the internet and air travel, there was cultural sharing in the Americas, perhaps even more than there is today.

January 4, 2020
If you think—and some of you I know do—that I’ve got a big head, you should see some of the statues I’ve been looking at today. From the Olmec civilization, circa 1200-200 BC. You can find them in lots of places; we first did a year ago, at the National Archeological Museum in Mexico City. That’s really a great introduction to Mesoamerica because, as the nation’s major museum, it got first crack at most of the art (that didn’t wind up in Europe or the United States). There are, however, enough Mesoamerican artifacts to fill more than one museum.
For example, you can spend an afternoon in Villahermosa (literally, beautiful city), a town of some 700,000 the capital of the state of Tabasco (known in Mexico for the birthplace of President Amlo—not Tabasco sauce which is I recall a product of Louisiana imagination). Here, a very imaginative  poet conceived of moving the Olmec ruins from inaccessible La Venta to an accessible park in the city which housed a Natural History museum, an aquarium, a planetarium, a zoo, and a host of other institutions, which now includes an archeological park of some 40 Olmec statues, altars, and plinths set in the lush jungle.

The enormous heads draw speculation on the transport of tons of stone because the Mesoamericans did not have wheels. And yet…basalt and sandstone in particular, with ten foot heads were transported (my favorite guess was using whale grease), paving the way, so archeologists argue, for the later Mayans, the bas-reliefs giving rise to later steles, and some of the art patterns repeated for the next 12-1500 years by their successors (and adopted by THEIR successors, the Aztecs, and their successors, contemporary Mexicans).

The Olmec area seems to have been in the Yucatán/Guatemala/Honduras jungles, and the artifacts in the park cover about 500 years, mostly from La Venta. I had to take pictures of Carolyn with the “Grandmother”, and myself with “The Walker”, but the most stunning besides the big heads are the altars, usually with a man/bird/jaguar/crocodile half emerging from a cave (the underworld). The eagle carried the sun during the day (and is part of the Mexican flag), and the jaguar carried the sun through the netherworld at night.

From Villahermosa, our trek meant a short flight to Merida, capital of the Yucatan (and purportedly Mexico’s safest city) and then an hour and a half ride to Chichen Itza, where tomorrow we get the advanced course in all things Mayan.

January 2, 2020
Carolyn’s desire to see more pre-Colombian ruins led us to the village of San Cristobal de las Casas, high in the mountains in southern Mexico. We’re at 6600 feet, 16 degrees north of the Equator, in another charming colonial village of about 450, 000 people. The village dates from 1528, with some of the historical buildings dating to the 16th and 17th century, and the old historic district chock full of one story buildings in pastels, with iron bars on windows, and lots of charming residences and shops restored as hotels (we’re in the Casa San Lucia, with antiques, paintings, and jaguar statues), shops, or restaurants, and narrow cobbled streets full of tourists and locals.
You can tell the locals, since Chiapas state is storied. Once administered as part of Guatemala under the Spanish, the state opted to join Mexico in 1824, shortly after independence. Its history since has been sometimes troubled, since the indigenous Indians have had the short stick since the Spanish invasion. There were a number of uprisings, most recently in the 1990s, that brought federal troops to crush the Zapatistas, but really led to more autonomy for the 8 local tribes, descendants of the Mayans and still speaking languages that are closer to 900 than to Spanish.

We went to two of those semiautonomous villages today, San Juan Chemula, and Zincantan. The centerpiece of both were the churches, with a big difference. In Chemula, the arch over the church is decorated with animals and butterflies, rather than Saints. Inside, the locals were having a service with the village elders in white tunics and the religious clergy in black praying for the entire community. Locals came with their family to hire a holy person to pray for them, and brought offerings, including live chickens to be sacrifices (and turned into chicken soup), and coke and other carbonated drinks to induce a burp and chase away evil spirits. I read somewhere that the church no longer considers the building “Catholic,” and I can only imagine what the Dominicans (they who not only settled and evangelized here, but also brought the Inquisition to the New World) would respond.

San Cristobal brought wheat and wood as its contributions to Spain, and that led to the settlement’s prosperity for the non-indigenous peoples. The area is still a rich agricultural region (Zincantan greeted us with enormous greenhouses) but tourism, I suspect, is what keeps this region green. Originally called Ciudad Real, it was renamed after independence in honor of St. Christopher, protector of travelers, and I think the Saint’s day when the Spanish founded the city, and became de las Casas in honor of Bartholomew de las Casas, an early bishop that did his best to end Indian slavery, and whose statue embellishes one of the major squares in the city.

We spent sometime sightseeing—the colonial square with the (smaller) copy of the government headquarters on one end of the main square, the cathedral resplendent as so much of the city in pastels, and a visit to a museum that was once the Dominican Monastery (all church property was confiscated by the federal government in the 1860s; it is sometimes loaned today to the churches) that included some of the artifacts found by the foreign archeologists who made San Cristobal home.

Tomorrow we descend to the jungle for the massive ruins of Palenque, which was one of the main objectives of this trip.