Posts (page 2)

We set our eyes on Guatemala today as we took the Usamacinta River down to Yaxchilan. Yaxchilan was a Mayan city set just above the river in a solid defensive position that also allowed it to control trade traffic. It’s architectural florescence occurred during the reign of Bird Jaguar IV, whose name and titles ad nauseam are present on many of the lintels: engraved tablets set in doorways. One of these lintels tells us that Bird Jaguar IV, Divine Ajaw of Yaxchilan, Master of Aj Jux, He of 20 Captives, Master of Jeweled Skull, etc has a wife who is the mother of the heir to the throne, Izamnaaj Balam III. I know this because Katie and I translated it from the Mayan hieroglyphs. Cool, right?

We entered the city through a labyrinth similar to the one we were denied access to in Oxkintok, and experienced a pathway to the Xibalba complete with fairly large bats of the Emballuridae family. From there, we began a tour of Bird Jaguar IV and his greatness as we gazed on his constructions and read his lintels, full of titles exalting himself. On a few occasions, he sought to elevate and legitimize his mother, who was not the primary wife of his father, and in one stela, he also paid tribute to his sajal, or nobles. All of these features served one function, like they have at every site we have visited: to assert and legitimize his power.

Much of the architecture at the site is the standard Peten style with Rio Bec influence present in features like roof combs, which add false height to buildings. Like other sites we have visited recently, Yaxchilan is a Classic period site and a number of the buildings haven’t been consolidated or reconstructed. Rebecca also told us that a lot of the “dirt” archeology hasn’t been done here either. This was surprising to me because there is obviously a thriving, if not monolithic like at Uxmal, Tulum or Chichen Itza, tourism business here. While I would like to come back to Yaxchilan in some hypothetical future and see it in a different, improved state than it is now as a result of that business, I am wary of what results from that money. The sound and light shows at Tulum and Uxmal still rub me the wrong way. Maybe the fact that the site is yards from Guatemala insulates and will continue to protect Yaxchilan from such distortion.

After a long, hot day at Yaxchilan, we visited a waterfall to cool off- and cool off we did. Like at Siaan Kann, the water made the Guadalupe River feel warm, and as a result, I could only manage to stay in just long enough to strip the accumulated sweat and bug spray off my body. The view, however, was just as beautiful outside the water as it was in it, and we were spared the company of strangers because of the relative obscurity of the waterfall.  

Today we visited one of the sites I had scripted into obscurity in my notes: Bonampak. While the sit emay have had some political influence and significance in the Early Classic period, its cultural florescence occurred under the hegemony of Yaxchilan during the Late Classic Period. During this name, a ruler named Chan Muwaan married a member of nobility at Yaxchilan and commissioned some of the most beautiful and well-preserved murals in the Mayan world. I am sure I have said this before though: anything of real beauty has to be experienced in person. You just can’t capture it with a picture.

                The murals are divided into three rooms. According to The Chronicles of the Mayan Kings and Queens, the first room is a scene at court. There are three nobles dancing, there are musicians playing the music they are dancing to, and there are masked actors in costume serving some unidentified purpose. The second room, which is my favorite, is hell and destruction. Three walls are full of fighting warriors in traditional uniform. The fourth wall is the resulting captives from that battle- some of them are already dead, some of them are being tortured, and all the while, their captors lord over them. With room three, the pleasantry returns with a celebration of victory. I will agree with Robert that this room is really surreal. There are some strange figures, all hazy either as a result of the botched cleaning process of the murals, time, or the state of mind of the artist. The most bizarre of these images include royal ladies performing autosacrifice, or piercing their tongues.

                The murals themselves have an interesting history. As a I mentioned, they were done while Bonampak was under the thumb of Yaxchilan, specifically Izamnaaj Balam III, whom I will probably bring up tomorrow when we visit Yaxchilan because he is the son of the important Bird Jaguar IV. Moreover, the murals are unfinished, evidencing some kind of disruption or collapse of the city, especially because there are no further records found on site.

To be honest, I don’t know enough about the political history of Chiapas to be afraid of what many may consider an “unstable” region. I know that there are Zapatista rebels with the notation EZN, that they are in some way related to the Mayan cause of independence, they have some association with narcos, be it contrived or legitimate, and that the rebels are the reason the Mexicans at border control were more concerned with the (firework) mortar launcher in the back of Brad’s car than any of the other somewhat suspicious features of it- weapons trafficking into the country is a concern. As a result, I do not fear being in Chiapas anymore than Oklahoma, and driving into it was only novel because it is a foreign state.

Today, as we’re sitting down waiting for everyone to finish looking through the museum, Hugo asks us if we have noticed anything about the type of tourists visiting Palenque. He tells us that there aren’t a lot of Americans coming to Palenque because of its location in Chiapas- they’re afraid. There were plenty of Europeans however.

This simple comment caused a whole rush of observations to fly through my head, mostly pertaining to the history of the U.S. compared to that of Europe, and what kind of people that creates. Suddenly, the observation became a predictable one.

If you look at European history, you will find a history of violence as much as anything else. While this is true of American history as well, the violence I am talking about is between countries, where wars go on in everyone’s backyard. They are not sterilized and they cannot ever happen to “someone else’ under the best of circumstances. Moreover, when Europeans are ticked off, in general, they tend to express it- they haven’t lost a spirit of activism, even when it creates riots. As Americans, we have had the privilege of growing up generation after generation without fighting a foreign enemy in our own backyards.  With only two exceptions to the two foreign attacks on our soil in the last century, our wars have been elective- we have participated in conflicts and sent our country’s sons and daughters off to die for our own political and economic gain. Moreover, our sense of activism and outrage has degenerated into lazy whining. Take, for example, the fact that more people marched in Rome against the Iraq War, than in our own much more populous country, on Washington D.C. Yes, we were the ones pushing the agenda, but if I, as a fourteen year old girl, could see the stupidity in attacking a country over an idea that is perpetrated by a group that is not harbored in that country, under the flimsiest of logic, and the rest of the world could see this too, why were we not more outraged? Was it because our pride was wounded, because we had lost a sense of outrage which should have been evoked by our exploitation, or both?

Now that this is degenerating into a rant, I want to say that I am the last one to exalt any country, especially European ones, but this brings me back to my point about tourists: Of course insulated Americans feel “threatened” what has increasingly become nonviolent political strife in Chiapas thanks to a pervasive police presence in the region, and Europeans are willing to shrug it off for an adventure.  This sentiment is echoed in the squeamishness about my classmates when a rooster was run over by a car during one of our lectures. Yes, death is and should be a little disturbing, but that chicken lived a way better life, and died a way better death than any poor chicken subjected to a factory farm. Of course, no one wants to know that- they prefer to eat their obscenely large breast meat without thinking about the kind of steroids that we pumped into the poor bird in order for it to grow that much.  If they only knew why their apples always look so perfect…

I should say that I am not here to attack Americans either. I am as guilty as anyone else of a multitude of flaws. I am, relatively speaking, a spoiled brat. I have isolation anxiety when I am denied access to the internet. I go to a fancy school that costs more than most people in the world make in a year, members of my family included. I have enough money to eat too much when so many have too little. And I don’t participate enough in the world- my only contribution is what I learn and share with others, often to no effect whatsoever. Observations like Hugo’s remind me today that despite the inescapability of many of the characteristics I have because I grew up in a privileged environment, I don’t want to be another insulated American in a sterilized world, where bad things happen in some hypothetical other place to someone else. I want to be in the world, and experience it as a world citizen. I want to share in a sense of outrage at exploitation and do something about it, rather than sit and stare at it on TV or reading about it in the news.  The first step, it seems, is here in Mexico, but I have many more roads left to travel. In the meanwhile, I have a people and its history to experience, in Chiapas, ignorantly unafraid.

It was another Dawley morning for us this morning as we headed out to the site of Palenque to explore its unique architecture, beautiful setting and the adjacent museum. The city itself was a contemporary of Calakmul, though much smaller, and also of Yaxchilan, which we will be visiting later this week. It’s fluorescence was under the rule of K’inich Janaab Pakal I, partially due to his intense desire to legitimize himself after the deaths of notable figures at the city.  In its earlier days, it was subject to attacks by distance attacks by Scroll Serpent at Calakmul during the reign of Palenque’s first queen, Lady Yohl Ik’nal, and her son, Aj Ne’Ohl Mat.

While the whole city is worth talking about, my favorite feature of the site was not the Temple of Inscriptions, or the Palacio del Palenque, or anything else commissioned by the great Pakal, but instead something created by his son, K’inich Kan B’alam II: The Temples of the Sun, the Cross, and the Foliated Cross. Each temple represents an aspect of the Mayan world with its associated symbols. The Temple of the Sun venerates the sun and is associated with warfare, Xibalba, captives and the jaguar. The Temple of the Cross celebrates the Ceiba Tree as it rises out of a Monster Mask, and is associated with the celestial realm.  Finally, my person favorite because it represents the empirical realm, is the Temple of the Foliated Cross, which venerates maize. Here, maize rises out of a water lily and heads come out of the maize, creating a very surrealistic image that I unfortunately didn’t catch a glimpse of. In the center of each temple is a sweatbath for the establishment of spiritual connections

What makes Palenque most striking is that its architecture is very unlike anything else that we have seen. The most obvious of these features is the watchtower than rises out the Palacio del Palenque, invoking something distinctly Asian. The ruling bodies of Palenque must have been something special to create such a different style in an interconnected world. The fact that the surrounding

After lunch, we visited the museum that holds the sarcophagus of Pakal and many of the artifacts found in the Temple of inscriptions. I have to say that I was very impressed by the sheer size of the sarcophagus and what it meant as a physical undertaking to a culture without wheels. The artifacts in his tomb were also beautiful- I am a big fan of the jade mosaic masks. They remind me of the kind of jewelry my mother likes to wear.

For some reason, even though we didn’t encounter residences like in Oxkintok, I felt like Palenque was finally the city that felt like a city. Perhaps it was the fluctuating elevation that created a feeling of temple skyscrapers. Maybe it was the abundance of resources- you don’t really have to worry about rain in the rainforest, which also provides a significant amount of food, and the wood may not serve very much use in temples, but it is certainly the base material for an everyday palapas. Whatever the reason, with however a rational foundation, Palenque was the city I was holding my breath for, and it was definitely worth the wait.

Greetings from Palenque, Chiapas! We are currently on a two day stay here with free time to relax, study for our Maya post-final, and visit the ancient Mayan city of Palenque before we leave for four days in La Selva Lacandon. We’ve had a few bumps in the road as we have been travelling, namely bad weather that has been stalking us since Puerto Morelos, but it has otherwise been very pleasant. Keep sending me e-mails! I use them as an excuse to procrastinate.

                As you may or may not have noticed, there are quite a few blogs up and  more are coming, although not in any particular order. Unfortunately, I can't load pictures at this time. Everything will come as bandwidth permits, though, and if not, I will have this entire middle leg of our journey thoroughly documented by the time we reach San Cristobol on the 10^th! In the meanwhile, if I can survive, you can. Also, look for a travel map as soon as I can muster up the energy.

Today was the second day of our Calakmul visit. In addition to being an archeological site for a major superstate in the Mayan region, it is also a biosphere reserve in the middle of nowhere. As a result, it was the perfect way to spend two days learning about ruins and keeping an eye out for elusive mammalian species.

We spent the large majority of our time at Calakmul filling our field notebooks with animal sightings. While we have become accustomed to seeing many of the same birds over and over again, things like flycatchers, jays, orioles and mot-mots, we were treated to less common varieties of these birds in our first hour, including toucans, Oscillating Turkeys so frequently Robert chased some down the road on the way in, a Boat-billed Flycatcher, and a Violaceous trogon, which I am glad to take credit for spotting since I am binocularly-challenged. Then, we saw the monkeys! Now you know what time it is- Spot the Sigmund! At first, it was just one lone, aggressive male spider monkey, which is strange because spider monkeys do not usually roam alone. We spent fifteen minutes chasing him a little bit off of the beaten path, listening to him vocalize and make threat displays when two of his friends showed up, more inclined to hop around between the trees and eat.

Later, as we were climbed down from atop the tallest structure in Calakmul, the illustriously named Estructura Dos, we heard the growling bark of a troop of Howler Monkeys, and having been deprived their presence, we chose to chase down their call.  We were not disappointed and chased a group of seven or so of them in the trees, at least two large males and a small baby howler monkey. After they had escaped our camera and our trail in the brush, we cut through to the road again where we spotted them a second time, but they had largely stopped howling. Further down the trail, was a very agitated group of howlers, or I should saw, couple of males. I wish I could describe the sound to you- it sounded everything like a cross between the sound you hear the T-Rex make in Jurassic Park to the phantom scream of a supernatural villain in a horror movie. Oh wait, why don’t you watch the movie on Youtube? That more hominid, less-frightening sound you hear is Ellen.

                Today, we were accompanied by the field biologist of Calakmul on a nature walk around the largest of the five reservoirs the Calakmul Mayans used for water. Again, we were treated to many birds on our way in, including a pair of unexpected Great Egrets on the other side of the reservoir. We also spotted an Agouti, several Great Curassows, and more Oscillated Turkeys.  While on the trail, we also spotted Leist Grebes, an as-of-yet unidentified but very colorful snake, and the molted skin of the vicious Fer-de-Lance.

                Like I mentioned before, in addition to being one of the largest biological reserves in Mexico, Calakmul is also a major archeological site, although for its relative importance, little is excavated for likely one reason: the remoteness of its location. From Xpuhil, a relatively small town, it is a two-and-a-half-hour trip by bus, at least, depending on how many turkeys Robert takes a mind to paparazzing on the way in. While it was discovered in the 1930s, large-scale excavations did not take place until the 1980s, when travel-guides were still recommending chainsaws as useful tools for alleviating the difficulties of travelling into Calakmul. Moreover, while approximately 117  stelae have been found here, more than any other in the Mayan region, because the quality of the limestone is poor when not imported, most of the history is lost except where it is recorded in other cities. That it is even recorded at all attests to the large hegemonic power of Calakmul as the seat of the Kaan dynasty and arch-rival of the superstate of Tikal.

                The notable features of the site include the monolithic structures one and two and structure three for a post-archeologically-relevant inscriptions. Structure one and structure two are only interesting because they are gigantic, and you can see Guatemala from the top of them. Otherwise, they fit the mold of the common Calakmul monument: Terminal Classic with Early Classic substructures with Peten-style architecture. Structure three, however, is worth mentioning for its graffiti. Although there is a large amount of graffiti left by tourists, who feel compelled to destroy whatever stucco has been spared erosion, there is an inscription from the archeologist, Cyrus Lundall, who discovered the site in the 19321. Can you pick out his name in the old and the tourist graffiti?

                Overall, I’d argue that Calakmul is incomparable to any site we have seen so far, not just for its magnitude, but for its location as well.

On our way from Siaan Kaan to Xpuhil, where we will be staying while we visit Calakmul, we stopped at two scheduled, and one unscheduled stop along the way.

Our first site was at the Mayan city of Bécan, which is notable for the large moat around it.  While the moat could have provided a significant amount of defense, especially if the dirt from the moat was used the build a defensive palisade, there probably wasn’t enough water in the region to use it as a moat even if there was evidence that it was used defensively. Regardless, its presence was probably appreciated by its citizens during an attack by Calakmul. What there is evidence of, however, is that the moat was used as a trash dump because there is a large amount of…trash…in it.

Bécan is the first site we have visited with large amount of Rio Bec architecture. The style is a mock-replication of Peten-style architecture with Chenes influence, but unfortunately we haven’t seen enough of either of those styles to pick it out ourselves yet. In order to create height and grandeur, the Rio Bec style employs false towers, stairways and roof combs. While these definitely result in structures that rival the beauty of the Puuc-style architecture we have become familiar with, they are ultimately less impressive than say, the Acropolis at Ek’Balam, which really is as functionally tall as its architecture suggests. It does, however, have a round structure similar to the one who saw in Muyil associated with the cult of the Feathered Serpent. It is also the site of a beautiful and well-preserved frieze of a Chaak Monster mask associated with Chenes-style architecture. It’s turned in profile so that it is completely unrecognizable to my eyes, which have only recently learned to identify the three-dimensional masks we have encountered in sites like Uxmal.

Perhaps on the way to Bécan, or maybe in between Bécan and Chicanna, we made an unscheduled stop at a random pyramid along the highway. I don’t remind because I was half-asleep when I woke up to a lurching stop, spotted Robert with his paparazzi camera in hand, Ellen, Hugo and Rebecca (with her camera too!) running across the highway. I watched them groggily climb up and then back down the tower, and then fell asleep when the bus finally lurched forward again, and completely forgot to ask any of them about the pyramid. I would have thought it was a dream except I have a picture. I think it says something about the Mayans, though, that we seemed to encounter pyramids wherever we go. This wasn’t some random civilization, concentrated in a few places- the Mayan were everywhere.

We visited Chicanna after lunch. It’s a much smaller site although it is a little bit older. While most of the structures in Bécan were built in the 8^th to the 9^th century, Chicanna’s architecture, less substructures, range from about 550-750AD.  It also has predominantly Rio Bec architecture, although the Chenes-style profile masks are present here also. The most interesting structure, although certainly not the most attractive, is Structure 2, which the site is named after: “Mouth of the Monster Mask.” The Monster Masks at this structure are nice, but the Mayan graffiti of the structure across from it, accompanied by revolting modern graffiti, is more interesting. Even better is the layer of hieroglyphs the peeling stucco reveals. Who knows what stories they will tell?

Today, we travelled to the Siaan Kaan Biosphere Reserve, on which is the small site of the city of Muyil, where we ventured back into the land of name-by-number structures.

To begin our day, we took a motorboat into the lagoons of Siaan Kaan and explored the Mayan-constructed canals surrounded by marsh. Conspicuously, there were few birds- I only recorded one chilling Great Blue Heron in my notebook, even though it was flying over the lagoon. This is probably because the lagoons were made of freshwater, which is naturally less biomass abundant than saltwater. As a result, there is fewer things for the birds to eat, like fish, which are absent because of the lack of large amounts of algae. The water as clear, icy blue, and where the boat had not stirred up the sandy sediment at the bottom, there was an off-white limestone bottom to gaze on, perfectly devoid of all life except for sporadic marsh grass.

After the passing through two lagoons connected by the Mayan canals, we entered another group of Mayan canals, were instructed to stand on the dock and put our life vests on. So, I, centered the life jacked on my body like I intended to put it on backwards, and then threaded my legs through the arm-holes, pulled it up like a gigantic diaper, and fastened it around my stomach. Not visual enough? Try the picture to your left. Then, I lowered myself into the water that makes the Guadalupe River feel warm, and proceeded to float down the Mayan canals, paparazzi’d by Ahau Roberto the entire way. Along the side of the riverbanks, we gazed on more marsh grass, mangroves, some termite nests, and occasional spots of brown algae, but we were really the only living things in the water until a second group of tourists, all in boats, met us at the end of canal. They insisted they had paid more for their dry excursion, but I doubt they had as much fun.

On the way back, Aakash’s attempts to imitate Leonardo di Caprio gave me something to contemplate- I still owe him a Mayan sacrifice- would a lagoon instead of a cenote suffice? Before I made my decision, we had arrived back on land to explore Muyil. Unfortunately, this Mayan city, while beautiful, provided no opportunities to make up for my indecision.

Like other sites we have visited, like Labna, Sayil, or Acanceh, there is not a lot of money coming into the site. As a result, less of the buildings are reconstructed or consolidated, there are fewer tourists to spoil my pictures or to encourage grotesque sound and light shows. This also means that a good number of buildings are mostly as they were found- no more than large mounds of rubble. A good number of the structures were still “presentable” in a way that they would appease the eyes of tourists, however.

Muyil itself was one of the largest East Coast cities and has architecture that reflects influences from their East Coast geography and the Peten region. There is evidence of occupation from the Middle Preclassic (550BC) to the Terminal Classic (~925AD), although there is no architecture from the earliest periods, so the origins of the site are dated by pottery.  Apparently, it is one of several sites that we will see in the coming days with a peculiar round structure at the top of the Castillo related to either the Terminal Classic/Postclassic cult of Quetzalqauotl (sp?), or possibly the World Tree.. More interesting to me now that we have seen more than fifteen sites of ruins, was that this site is still used in modern Mayan rituals. On the pathway into the reserve, there was a hieroglyph as a worship-aid for a Mayan pilgrimage up the East Coast of the Yucatan peninsula where they carry a Jesus Christ on a cross. This is yet another example of the way the Mayans have integrated Christianity into their ancestral religion. Additionally, one of the temples is still used by modern Mayan shamans for religious rituals because it is built over a sacred cave. As I may have mentioned before, caves and cenotes are inherently sacred to the Mayan because they represent a link to the underworld, Xibalba.

After the site and the lagoon, we went out to lunch in Bakalar, the small town where we stayed at the hotel Laguna Bakalar. The restaurant was built next to a cenote that would rival a small lake in size and reached a depth of 90m. After the frigid water of the reserve earlier that morning, I had burnt myself out on swimming, but I did stick my feet in the water to find it surprisingly warm not only for the weather that day, but also for how deep it was. It was yet another nice cenote ending to a long, Mexico day of ecology, travelling, ruins and restaurants.

I don’t feel compelled to say a whole lot about what class has been like the past couple of days. Several of my fellow students gave presentations on members of our reef taxonomy. Robert gave one of his slideslows from pictures he took on his underwater camera. Oh, yea…he took those pictures snorkeling, once in Puerto Morelos and once in Cozumel, as part of class.

Fellow Ursinus students, at home and abroad, what did you do today?