Mexico Holiday AAR

[PDH]

Needs pics of the stunningly beautiful Slovenian woman.

[Barrister]

Cool trip Malthus - thanks for the pics.

I've thought before about trying for a similar trip - screw the beach resorts, just go to Mexico to visit the Mayans ruins.  I only got to visit Chichen Itza the one time I was in Mexico and it was absolutely fascinating, but I understood even at the time it was comparatively a minor ruin for the Mayans.

[Syt]

You know that it shows Pacal sitting in a space capsule, right?

[Malthus]

Heh, gotta love those ancient aliens. They do get around. 

[Malthus]

Chiapas - day trip out of Palenque - Yaxchilan

While in Palenque, we learned that it was possible to pay for a bus trip to visit two other very significant sites - Yaxchilan and Bonampak. Emphasis on the word "possible". If I had any idea of the length and difficulty of the trip, I may have reconsidered - which would have been a shame, because the sites are well worth the effort.

We paid our price, and woke up at 5 in the AM to be picked up. The guy arrived, with a lovely couple from Slovenia already aboard - the woman was stunningly beautiful, and I mean stunning. [Sorry, no pics ... I'm not that crass  ]

The bus was in bad shape - apparently held together with chewing gum and twine. I realized we may me in for it when the first thing the driver did was stop to buy a large supply of oil - he spent the rest of the trip feeding oil into his machine. Unfortunately, the road was very hilly in parts, causing my wife no end of grief (she hates scary drives) and the engine no end of stress. However, though it had some moments when it sounded like it was expiring, the driver did manage to coax it there and back again - three hours of driving each way.

Yaxchilan is right on the border with Guatemala, which is apparently to Mexico as Mexico is to the US - that is, a source of illegal immigrants and drugs. So the closer we got to Yaxchilan, the thicker the military and police presence became - we passed checkpoint after checkpoint, complete with stone-faced Mexican soldiers with assault rifles and riot shotguns (they stopped us only long enough to leer at the lovely Slovine and my wife - evidently, we did not resemble Guatemalan migrant workers. They did not, however, hit us up for bribes, which I had been fearing).

You can't actually drive to Yaxchilan - it is reachable only by boat, so after the three-hour drive came a 40 minute ride on a local's rented motorboat-canoe on the muddy, massive Usumacinta River (complete with hungry-looking crocodiles and, of course, Howler Monkies). Finally, we arrived at the site ...

[Syt]

Heh, gotta love those ancient aliens. They do get around. 

I saw a documentary about that once. I think it was called "Stargate."

[Malthus]

Chiapas - day trip out of Palenque - Yaxchilan part 2

I had known about this site for ten years, because the first time I went to Mexico, I bought from a Mayan artist his carving of a copy of a lintel from this place - the original of which was taken from the site and ended up in the British Museum. The lintel depicts a noblewoman of Yaxcilan engaging in a hallucinatory ritual in which she pierced herself with stingray spines, poured her blood onto some paper, and burned the paper in sacrifice. The lintel depicts the moment of burning the paper - the noblewoman in kneeling, holding a bowl with burning paper; the smoke rises up and turns into a serpent; and out of the mouth of the serpent emerges an ancestor-warrior, giving her a prophecy that the reign of the newly-installed king will be glorious. All of which is explained in the hieroglyphs on the lintel (which, for some unknown reason, are written in mirror-image!).



Anyway, I thought the carving I bought was very well done, and I became fascinated by the odd imagery - a few years later, I sought out the original in the British Museum; but I never thought I would actually get to Yaxchilan itself, as it is notoriously remote ... but now, here we were.

The original:



The site itself is in the most beautiful location - right in a massive bend in the river, so it has river on three sides. The jungle surrounding it is thick and seemingly primordial. You get to the site by entering a structure called "the labyrinth" - a series of dark, bat-filled passageways of unknown purpose (Carl was reluctant to enter, because he said it reminded him of a horror movie! Not sure when he had seen one of those ...). Once through, you emerge onto a large plaza filled with various structures - the buildings are not impressive, after Palenque, but their true glory is the elaborately-carved lintels over the doorways (many, but not all, of which have been carted off to places like the British Museum). Also, some massive carved stele.







However, opposite the plaza is a huge ceremonial staircase built right up the side of a massive hill. This is truly monumental and impressive - particularly as, to get to the rest of the site, you are expected to climb it. Not easy considering how hot and humid the place is. It is a daunting task. Halfway up, poor Carl was getting dangerously overheated - we had to pour some of our drinking water over his head and make him rest in the shade. Then up, and up some more, to a massive temple at the top - with its roof-comb still more-or-less intact. This temple had a carving on the bottom step of scenes from the Mayan ball-game.     

[Malthus]

Heh, gotta love those ancient aliens. They do get around. 

I saw a documentary about that once. I think it was called "Stargate."

In fact, nuts theories about the ancient Maya are everywhere - while the ancient aliens types are a farcical fad, the 'Mayans as peaceful utopians' one is longer-lasting, but also quite wrong, as the next site shows ...

[Syt]

Cool pictures, btw. I believe I've seen Yaxchilan in a few documentaries, and I'm rather jealous of the whole trip.

[Malthus]

Chiapas - day trip out of Palenque - Bonampak

The last site we went to was Bonampak. Again, I'd heard of this place before, but never imagined going there. This place is famous because it is the only one in which actual Mayan paintings have survived - in vivid colour.

The site was long known by the local Lacandon Mayans (I assume, the descendants of the original inhabitants). Outsiders only learned of it in the 1940s. Unfortunately, the first visitors were not exactly what we would call professional archaeologists, and did stuff like throw kerosene on the murals to bring out the colours - which did the murals no good at all. Still, some of them are pretty clear.

I had entirely the wrong idea about this place - I though the murals were found in underground caves. Not so. They were found in a temple building halfway up a pyramid - this pyramid, in the structure with the awning.



The murals tell a story, of a great victory by the king of Bonampak over his enemies. The story is divided into three tiny buildings (you can only fit about three people in each, and photography is pretty difficult). In the first building, the warriors of Bonampak are consecrating their ruler, with dances and ceremonies:





Notice the guy on the right with a funky skull on his hat:



In the second room (unfortunately, the most degraded) there is a terrific battle, and the warriors from Bonampak are winning. Here a captive is being taken (it is kinda hard to see, but he's being grabbed by the hair):



The other wall shows the nasty fate of the captives - they plead for mercy:





But they plead in vain:



Finally, the third room shows the victory celebration. Blow the trumpets!



Some lords are piercing their tongues for the hallucinatory blood-letting ceremony depicted intuit lintel I was talking about:

[The Larch]

Very nice pictures Malthus, keep them coming. 

And I echo PDH's desire of a glimpse at the Balkanic Beauty. 

[Malthus]

Very nice pictures Malthus, keep them coming. 

And I echo PDH's desire of a glimpse at the Balkanic Beauty. 

That's about it for Mayan ruins - after Bonampak, we took a few days on the Maya Riviera so that Carl could play in the ocean and build sand-castles. On a touristic note, we did something recommended to us by friends: rented someone's condo (rather than going to a hotel). It worked out well. The place was very luxurious, and not too expensive.

As for the Balkan Beauty, sadly no pics. 

[Malthus]

Following up, I'm reading a bunch of books on the Maya.

I've read A Forest Of Kings by Linda Schele and David Freidel - which is excellent, if somewhat old (25 years is a long time in this field). It describes the meaning of the monuments at several sites - including Palenque and Yaxchillan - by the people who played a big role in the recent decipherment of Mayan glyphs.

I'm right now reading The Ancient Maya (6th ed.) by R. Sharer, which is a mighty thick tome - a lot drier that the other one, but covers more ground. This book was clearly intended as a university textbook; its value is that it is more recent.

I'm particularly interested in tracing the Tikal-Calakmul wars - which appera to have been the Classic Mayan version of the World Wars (or, a better analogy, the Mayan version of the  Peloponnesian War). Interestingly, all of the best-known sites today were on the side of Tikal - Tikal itself, Copan, and Palenque. The Calakmul sites are not as well known as tourist destinations. 

[katmai]

Did you get chance to view any Olmec stuff?

[Siege]

Malthus went to Mejico?
But, but, mexicans hate jews....!

By the way, that picture in the mexican religious store, is that an alien?