Teotihuacan, Xochicalco, Monte Alban and Mitla

This is the 2nd attempt at writng this entry. The last one took me about 3 days of messing around with computers to write. I was just about to publish it, when some glitch in the stupid virus addled internet cafe computer destroyed it all....I' ll try again one more time, but it's been very, very frustrating.....

The central creation myth in Mesoamerica centres around "La pelota" or the ballgame. The myth seems to have originated with the earliest civilisations, probably the Olmecs .

In a nutshell, the story centres around a pair of twin boys who are summoned to the underworld to explain to the Lords of Death why they had made so much noise in their ballcourt above their domain. They were sacrificed, the one buried under the ball court, the other decapitated and his skull hung from a tree "pour encourager les autres". However, this skull manged to get its revenge by spitting into the hand of the daughter of one of the Lords of Death, miraculously making her pregnant. (Some annunciation!) To evade her father's anger, she sheltered with the maternal grandmother of the original twins, and gave birth to another set of twins, also boys.

In their turn, they were keen sportsmen and like their father before them, were summoned by the Lords of Death because of the racket. They were challenged by them to play ball by day and were submitted to various impossible trials at night, through which they were able to prevail by a mixture of cunning, ingenuity and sheer trickery. The culmination was being forced to play a game involving jumping over a pit of fire but they had been forewarned and simply jumped in to their fiery deaths, having primed the Lords' seers to wrongly tell their masters how to dispose of their bones, which were ground up and cast into the river. This enabled th e twins to be reincarnated with the faces of catfish after 5 days and regain their human forms after 6.

In their new bodies, they became vagabond actors, and their star turn involved the one twin dismembering and decapitating the other and bringing him back to life. The Lords of Death heard of this fabulous new spectacle, bade a command performance and were so impressed, that they begged for the trick to be done on themselves. This the twin happily did, but neglected the last part and did not bring the Lords of Death back to life. Thus was death defeated by human trickery and ingenuity. It fell to the living to reenact this drama with actual sacrifice, as resurrection and rebirth came through the act of sacrifice, especially by decapitation, as with the first progenitor twin.

Thi s is a loosely paraphrased account lifted from a brilliant book about the Maya "A Forest of Kings" by Linda Schele and David Freidel, published by Morrow in 1990: It is a riveting account of the history of the Maya Kingdoms seen through the lens of interpreting the glyphs that exist on the Mayan tombs and monuments scattered around Mesoamerica. Written with inspiring scholarship and vivid imagination it really brings this ancient civilisation to life. The pages referring to this myth: pp 74-77

Although the ruins described here are not Mayan, and were not literate and left no written histories as such, there was certainly contact between them and the Mayans, and the central myths and paradigms seem to have been similar.

In all the sites, there were ball courts, where the dramas between Life and Death, darkness and light and political disputes were sometimes settled. The rules are not known, but players wore heavy padding around their waists, one knee and one forearm to prevent bruising from the heavy latex ball, which was slightly larger than a modern basketball. Markers found on the sites depict scenes of bound captives, play between historical people or between the hero twins and the Lords of Death. Archeological evidence associates the ballcourts with captive sacrifice and political pomp and circumstance.

The Southern Ballcourt at Xochicalco, note the circular markers set into the walls

TEOTIHUACAN

Some 50 km north of Mexico city, this was already ruined and abandoned by the time the Aztecs rediscovered it. Many of the names ascribed to it were given by the Aztecs,and was reputed by them to be the birthplace of the gods. Very little is known, except that it flourished in the first half of the first millenim CE and was abandoned by about 700. The street of the dead so called is a straight avenue running North-South through the site, the most dramatic monuments being the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. By all accounts it was very cosmopolitan with varied communities of Mayans, Zapotecs from Monte Alban amongst others from other parts, all living there and contributing to the life. The street of the dead itself was once lined with colourful frescos. It must have been an awesome and vibrant place.

Pyramid of the Sun, taken from Pyramid of the Moon. Notice the "dead" straight Street of the Dead--- In Aztec mythology, butterflies were the reincarnated spirits of fallen warriors, whose sacred duty was to escort the Sun to its zenith on its journey from the underworld. There were legions at the top of the Pyramid of the Sun at noon, in the blistering heat, so they are still carrying out their sacred task.

Pyramid of the Sun from Pyramid of the Moon. Note ceremonial platform at the top of the first stage; a great place for meditation.

A fresco from the Jaguar Palace next to Pyramid of the Moon.A jaguar in a king's headress, blowing a conch horn, with noise coming out and falling to the ground. The jaguar was a symbol of power and battle prowess and the conch fpr the Mayans probabñy singled the arrival of the spirits of the ancestors, materialised through blood ritual.

XOCHICALCO 36 km southwest of Cuernavaca
Flourished around the same time as Teotihuacan was declining, but was probably abandoned later around 900. Smashed and scattered holy artifacts and belongings from the houses of the elite point to a disillusionment that the priestly class couldn't deliver the city from the hard times of prolongued drought. The lower cast inhabitants (whose dwellings were discovered more or less intact with their artifacts) drifted to the valleys below and resumed farming for themselves, rather than sustain an expensive ruling class.

The great Plaza Xochicalco


The Serpent Pyramid

Detail from the Serpent Pyramid
MONTE ALBAN 10km from Oaxaca in the hills to the southwest of the town. Probably formed as a cooperative effort by Zapotec villages to offset the aspiration of Teotihuacan to the North. It seems to have been mainly a group ceremonial space. Giant base relief images of "dancers" were found by the buildings just to the left of my right shoulder. They are likely to have been tortured captives, whose names and dates are inscribed with them, along with evidence of bloodletting, torture and genital mutilation. Keeping captured kings alive and using their sacfred blood for holy ritual was a way of neutralising conquered other states, as another king could not succeed a still living king.

Ludwig, a very forceful young German along with some aggressive american tourists managed to get a group of us to help pay for a guide. This Zapotec's english ranged from the unintelligible to the barely comprehensible, insisted that the "dancers" were in fact didactic anatomical diagrams and that the Zapotecs had not practised sacrifice like the ignorant Maya. Trepanning was practised, but there is no evidence of other surgery, who knows? It seemed like local spin to me and inconsistent. However, when it emerged that Ludwig's father had supported himself in South America in his youth, teaching English without qualification or much knowledge, I had to feel sympathy for our guide. Perhaps he'd paid for his course in good faith, but had been taught a version not recognisable to any actual native speaker.

In the museum, were many human remains showing deformities due to rickets and osteoporis. So diet was poor. It seems that as with a lot of these settlements, when the threat receded, the need for an elite priestly class vanished with the inability to get special favours from the gods.

Plaza Monte Alban

Unobstructed view showing scale

Performance space with great acoustics
MITLA
Built after the the dissolution of Monte Alban. It seems to have been a localised settlement. Of interest the mosaic like stonework created with different sized stones. A beautiful and intricate pattern which puts Great Zimbabwe to shame. As no mortar was used these buildings were earthquake proof. In fact there low and solid dimension reinforces this quality-

"Mosaics" on inner dwelling place walls. They were cut so that the pattern continued perfectly at the corners

Showing "mosaic reliefs" on outer walls