The Mayan ruins of Quiriguá in Izabal and El Zotz in Petén, as well as the historic architecture of Belize City, have been included on the World Monuments Fund (WMF) 2012 Watch, a list of cultural heritage sites around the world at risk of damage or destruction from a variety of threats.

With a mission of preserving the world’s architectural heritage of significant monuments, buildings and sites, the WMF listed 67 locations in 41 countries in its 2012 Watch. Three Central American locations were included:

Quiriguá
An archaeological site dating to the Mayan Classic period, Quiriguá is a complex of pyramids, terraces and stairways. The site is best known for its superb sculptures, including outstanding stelae. Quiriguá was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981.

Quiriguá’s long-term preservation is challenged by a number of factors, according to the WMF. Illegal timber extraction and deforestation from farming have greatly increased the risk of flooding, as more than 70% of the forest cover in the surrounding valley has been lost. While a management plan has been developed to help, implementation is constrained by limited resources and encroachment of surrounding private industry.

El Zotz
Nestled in the dense forest of the Biotopo San Miguel la Palotada, the Mayan archaeological site of El Zotz features pyramids, palaces, plazas, and a ball court.

Deforestation and looting pose constant challenges, according to WMF. A pyramid is in danger of collapse from unstable trees, and the progressive erosion in a looter’s trench is damaging the stucco façades of structures. Many tourists visit El Zotz as part of tours to nearby Tikal.

Belize City
Established in the mid-17th century as a trading post for precious woods, Belize City has many colonial buildings that are quickly deteriorating, according to WMF. An inventory and protection strategies are greatly needed to ensure the preservation of these historically significant houses, the group said.

For more information visit www.wmf.org

Photos courtesy of Arturo Godoy (www.arturogodoy.com) & Dirección General de Patrimonio Cultural y Natural del Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes of Guatemala.

Deer are among the 10 most commonly depicted animals on Mayan vases, plates and bowls of the Late Classic period.

Although two species of deer inhabit the Mayan heartland, the white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, is the one usually depicted in Mayan art. For the Classic Maya, the deer was in some ways as important as the jaguar, monkey and snakes.

Plus, its meat was a major source of protein. Deer-hunting scenes are clearly depicted on 7th-8th century Chama-style vases. There are also a series of mold-made vases. It is not always clear if these came from the Motagua Valley area or from the Escuintla area. The same set of deer scenes is depicted over and over again, as is typical of mold-made decorations in ancient times. Considering that deer were sacred and edible, some of the hunting scenes contain ritual enactments. The Maya ate almost every animal that was available to them, but other than the elusive tapir, the deer is about the largest and most common game animal in Petén, Yucatán, Chiapas and Belize.

Thus it is not surprising that reports on zooarchaeology of the Classic Mayan document deer meat as a staple of their diet. As well, the Post Classic bark-paper codices depict deer being captured in traps. Deer antlers were used as a tool, and deer hides were used for leather.

Deer are mentioned in the Popol Vuh creation story, but there are not really any major deer characters in the Popol Vuh.

Some Classic Mayan depictions of the ballgame were representations of a deer hunt: the ballplayers were dressed like deer hunters. Ballplayers and many hunters wear wide-brimmed hats, for example. This concept has been tough for writers of Mayan culture to incorporate in their discussions of the ballgame, since so much of what is written is skewed by popular misconceptions. My conclusion has been that some versions of the ancient Mayan ballgame were recreations of a hunt: Some of the ballplayers were the “game.” However, it is important to realize that there were many different versions of the ballgame—of course not all were recreations of hunting. Some ball-games were more militaristic; others were pure sport. Other games were more like a ritual enactment of the games presented in the Popol Vuh. Some games involved sacrifice (of the losing player; the concept that it was the winner who was sacrificed is a popular mistake).

The Post Classic bark-paper codices of the Maya clearly show hunting, trapping and ritual interaction with deer. Ethnohistorical sources mention deer sacrifices. Clearly, the deer had supernatural implications. Deer are mentioned in the Popol Vuh creation story, but there are not really any major deer characters in the Popol Vuh. Deer are present but are not as prominent as jaguars, bats, macaws, leaf-cutting ants, and the like. Although deer were not fully domesticated, there are plenty of scenes on codex-style Mayan vases that show deer inside the palace areas, usually with well-fed young women.

Deer heads (real and artificial) are worn by the Maya, especially in dances and ritual parades.

Throughout the Bilbao area of Cotzumalguapa, Escuintla, you can see many sculptures that depict deer or hieroglyphs of a deer head. The Bilbao culture is non-Mayan—a fascinating mixture of diverse Mexican cultures that took root in Guatemala and developed a unique Guatemalan adaptation of a mixture of Teotihuacan, Classic Veracruz and other sources from Mexico. You can see these fascinating sculptures in two museums near the town of Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa, and other examples in the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, some in the Museo Popol Vuh (Universidad Francisco Marroquín), and a few in other museums.

Today you can see white-tailed deer at AutoSafari Chapín, in the Copán ruins and occasionally at Tikal and Yaxhá.

Although we perhaps are mesmerized by jaguars, vampire bats, crocodiles and cute hummingbirds as creatures in Mayan mythology, we should reinstate the deer into the regal processions and supernatural beliefs of Classic Mayan civilization.

Dr. Nicholas Hellmuth is director of FLAAR Reports (Foundation for Latin American Anthropological Research). For more information visit www.digital-photography.org

Mayan carving with deer figures (courtesy of Museo de Arte Precolombino y Vidrio Moderno, Casa Santo Domingo)

by Dr. Nicholas M. Hellmuth

The most remarkable deity in the ancient Mayan myth of the Popol Vuh is “Seven Macaw.” In reality this preening bird-creature is pictured in Classic Mayan art as a snake-eating raptor. So in most renditions in murals and pottery, Seven Macaw is a hawk-like composite creature without very many features of a macaw (other than an overall, spectacular strutting posture). This giant bird monster is also called the “Principal Bird Deity.”

Primarily at Copán, Honduras, in association with the ball courts, is a giant mythical bird pictured with primarily macaw characteristics. Indeed at Copán you get the concept of “Macaw Mountain.” Ironic that in a highland area you get such a concentration on macaws whose natural habitat is more in the rainforest lowlands.
Whereas an ornithologist could perhaps tell the difference between Mayan portraits of parrots and Mayan renderings of macaws a thousand years ago, I will bunch them together for this article.

In the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, in the Museo Popol Vuh and other museums, you can see highly stylized macaws in profile on the sides of Early Classic basal flange bowls. This class of ceramics is from the Tikal, Uaxactun, Holmul area of Central Petén, but examples can be found elsewhere, including Belize and potentially at Copán, since the ceramics of Honduras were also influenced by styles from nearby Guatemala and Belize.

In the museum of glass and archaeology in the Hotel Casa Santo Domingo in La Antigua Guatemala, you can also see macaw effigy vessels (again we use the word “macaw” as a generic term; some of these may be large parrots).

A few centuries later you also find macaws as ballgame hachas (hatchets). A vulture is more common, but macaws, bats, deer and feline heads are also stylized to form a ballgame hacha. An hacha was worn on the special ballgame belt, especially during decapitation ceremonies and ritual portraits of the players posing with the giant ball.

Although there are several macaw species in tropical Latin America, the one you see most often in Guatemala is the scarlet macaw, Ara macao.

The most remarkable renditions of Seven Macaw are from the pre-Classic murals of San Bartolo, Petén. But this giant bird deity is, as mentioned, primarily a snake-eating hawk composite, despite its name as a macaw in the 16th century Quiché Highland Mayan version of the Popol Vuh, which is the version that has come down to us.

Macaws are commonly pictured in Mayan art from about the 2nd century onward, but on ceramics are most common in the early Classic Petén region of Guatemala. For sculpture, the most common place to find representations of macaws is Copán, Honduras.

Otherwise, hummingbirds, water birds, vultures and raptors (hawks and eagles) are the birds most commonly pictured in Classic Mayan art. Overall more than a dozen species, or even 20, could be itemized, but you soon notice that certain species are pictured more often than others. You can see photos of some of these birds on our website, www.maya-archaeology.org.

Dr. Nicholas Hellmuth is director of FLAAR Reports (Foundation for Latin American Anthropological Research). For more information visit www.digital-photography.org

Front to back: Don Humberto «El Diablo» Amador, followed by his son Jenry, Lic. Edwin Román and Eliceo and Donis Alvarado. 
El Diablo, El Zotz, Petén. (photo by Arturo Godoy)

In the dense jungle of Guatemala, in the Petén Basin region which is home to the ancient Mayan city of Tikal, looming pyramids, looted tombs and overgrown paths that once served as Mayan superhighways speak of an era of ancient kingdoms and powerful warring dynasties. It’s easy to die and be forgotten here for thousands of years amid the thick vines, monsoonal rains and teeming vegetation that over time buries temples, jade, textiles, bones — both human and animal — only to resurface again, sometimes 1,600 years later in a place called El Diablo, the devil.

El Diablo — named for the steep climb that feels like punishment from the devil himself — is a pyramid on the outskirts of El Zotz, around 23 kilometers west of Tikal, from where Edwin Román Ramírez, 32, Guatemalan archaeologist and co-director for the bi-national Archaeological Project El Zotz, can stand atop the steep slope and see the pyramids of Tikal in the distance.

“The trek we make every year into the jungle helps us to understand the landscape and how close these two archaeological sites were throughout history. But they were not friends,” Román tells me from an undisclosed city in Guatemala where all the artifacts from the project are stored and classified under constant fears of theft and looting.

The El Zotz Project started in 2006, first mapping and then digging on the periphery of a powerful city like Tikal to determine what happens while living under those conditions. “What we think is going on after some study of the hieroglyphs is that this is some kind of buffer state. It was a kingdom that was

between other more powerful dynasties and elected to ally itself with the enemies of Tikal as far as we can tell,” said project director Stephen Houston, who teaches at Brown University, the institution financing this collaborative project. This year brought in the biggest team yet with 80 to 90 laborers and at least 20 archaeologists — half Guatemalan and half foreigners as legally stipulated for bi-national projects — into the remote jungle for some three months.

They didn’t get far into their season when they made their greatest discovery: a burial chamber that they believe is the tomb of King Chak’ Ahk, one of the first kings of a Mayan dynasty to settle in El Zotz. The tomb was found on May 28 at the base of El Diablo where they, particularly Román, had been tunneling this pyramid, which was 40 percent collapsed and looked like Swiss cheese because of all the looting. The tomb was about nine feet deep and four and half feet high and sealed with alternating layers of mud and rock, which helped keep it airtight for well over 1,600 years.

The process of finding the tomb involved first discovering the elaborate stucco masks that had been painted red and then digging through a looter’s tunnel, which the team began to clean out. “Working in tunnels is one of the most dangerous jobs that exists. You can only see the width of the tunnel, in this case one meter, everything else is your imagination,” Román said.

Once inside they found a small building in front of this great temple which had effigies of what appeared to be the Sun God and then a smaller enclosed building which, through digging deeper, they soon discovered had caches of vessels or ceramics that contained human body parts as a sacrificial or ritual offering.

“Under that we began to uncover row after row, layer after layer of stones, and it did seem to have increasingly the feeling of a bank vault, almost as if someone had been concerned about security in this fairly unstable political zone and for the protection of whatever lay underneath,” Houston said.

One after the other, they discovered more of these caches containing body parts, fingers, often surrounded by areas of red that probably corresponded to the decayed flesh of the fingers themselves. There were teeth. In one of the vessels they found an incinerated, partly cremated baby.

“There was a lot of misery that went into encasing this tomb’s magical and protective circuit,” Houston said.

After a week or so of this very labor-intensive archaeology they reached the same level as the base of the tomb.

They carefully shaved away at the wall and slowly lowered a light bulb into the tomb. Suddenly, there was a pinprick of light reflecting inches, if not centimeters or millimeters, from the tomb itself.

“When I started going down it was spectacular to see all dark, dark, dark, and then when the light bulb was lowered all the light that projected those colors below — green, pink, red, black, brown. Then to see this chamber was spectacular,” said Román, carefully brushing sand off one of the pots found in the tomb.

I found him and Sarah Newman who was working with Román on the tomb site, in the afterglow of their find, cleaning up artifacts in a laboratory that resembled a dorm-room setting.

They would then carry all these artifacts to a small, windowless room, which had shelves up to the ceiling filled with labeled plastic bags containing more artifacts.

“My first thought was, ‘Oh my God!’” Newman said, almost giggling, joking that it was downhill from here in her professional career. “My second thought was, ‘What are we going to do with all of this?’ There were many things that as archaeologists we just don’t know how to deal with.”

When they opened up the tomb there was the chill of almost semi-refrigeration as if the layers of riverbed, swamp mud and stone had served to protect the tomb. Once they opened it the rotting began again and both Houston and Román remembered a distinctive rotting smell of putrefication inside. Time had been suspended for 1,600 years until now. There was an urgency to things now.
“Royal tombs are found very seldom in any part of the world. So that when the tomb of the pharaohs is discovered it’s something that revolutionizes Egyptology… A royal tomb is a quantum leap beyond any kind of grave,” said Houston.

It also sets a milestone for the recent field of archaeology in Guatemala, which dates back 30 years to Juan Pedro Laporte, who created the field at the School of History at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (USAC); he passed away this year. There are now around 140 graduates in the field of archaeology from both Universidad del Valle and USAC.

Finding the tomb also has a personal significance for Román — a way of doing politics in his life that involves working and studying his ancestors and “studying the past in order to give it to fellow Guatemalans and say, ‘Look how great our past was, imagine what our future can be if we work together.’ For that reason I will always come back to Guatemala, to share what little I know with the younger generation.”

Photos by Arturo Godoy

Artists’s composite rendition of El Mirador, 300 B.C.-150 A.D. (National Geographic)

Threatened by years of abuse and neglect, the Mirador Basin needs help and it needs it now.

The 400-year sliver of history between the biblical Old and New Testaments, sometimes erroneously called the ‘silent years’, packed Planet Earth with progress. Alexander the Great studied at the feet of Aristotle and, zealous to unite the world under Greek culture, conquered his way east and then south through Palestine to found Alexandria in Egypt before his death at age 33 in 323 B.C. Meanwhile, Persian culture was spreading, and the Roman Empire was revving up.

On the other side of the world, the ancient Maya were doing urban development with monuments and buildings more than 200 feet high sporting ornately carved façades. They studied science like the Greeks, built pyramids on a par with the Egyptians and roads like the Romans, to last 1,000 years. They moved construction materials and a rich economy of corn, squash, beans and cacao over a network of causeways within 820 square miles now known as the Mirador Basin. “They were an agricultural superpower,” says Dr. Richard Hansen.

As an archeology student in 1978, Hansen was invited by Catholic University of Washington and Brigham Young University to join investigations for the next five years at the metropolis of El Mirador in the Mirador Basin, about 50 miles north of Tikal and 1,000 years older. Hansen then did further investigations sponsored by the Guatemalan government and so has studied the area for some 30 years.

“We’ve mapped and excavated 51 cities that were home to perhaps a million Maya in the basin, with the largest known Mayan structures in size and scale.” A small sample of script, found chiseled in stone, may represent the earliest writing of the Maya world. The causeways measured up to 130 feet wide, 13 feet high, “…and they were paved!” Hansen adds.

Ongoing archeological excavations may reveal much more. The cities of the Mirador Basin were abandoned about 150 A.D., although modest resettlement began 600 years later. Jaguars, monkeys, crocodiles, turtles and birds with dazzling feathers still live there.

A Senior Scientist at Idaho State University, Hansen also directs the Mirador Basin Project, with a multi-discipline, archeological and environmental team representing 52 universities and research institutions all over the world.

“They moved a rich economy of corn, squash, beans and cacao over a network of causeways within 820 square miles now known as the Mirador Basin. They were an agricultural superpower,” says Dr. Richard Hansen.

The Mirador Basin, defined by hills on three sides, sits on an elevated plateau in the rainforest that crosses the northernmost border of Guatemala into Mexico. It’s a triangular, tropical wilderness complex within the block of land known as the Petén that juts up north into Mexico, “an ecological, biological and cultural system,” explains Hansen, reducing a complicated subject to simple terms.

The basin, estimated to be 60 million years old, has been threatened in the past few years by neglect and abuse, primarily from looting, poaching, logging and fires. Loss by logging has increased dramatically, the trees cut and the fields burned, then used for farming. Previous forests now are pastures.

“The swamps were crucial to the ancient civilization. They gave them the agricultural clout to become an economic superpower. But a magnificent society collapsed due to abuse of the environment. If you don’t protect the system, you lose everything. What we’re trying to do now is to save this thing.”

How? For starters, lease vs. log, i.e. pay rent as an alternative to logging to the people who claim the land. The long-range plan is to switch to tourism. “There are no villages in the basin, so no one would have to be displaced.”

“We’re training for tourism,” he says, referring to educational projects underway in adjacent communities that include ecology, health, literacy, reforestation, artisans and financial management. Locals already work together with the Mirador Basin Project teams. Development via tourist infrastructure would provide jobs and diffuse economic resources to population sectors while protecting the ecological integrity of the tropical forest and supporting scientific study and preservation of archeological sites.

Hansen adds, “The real danger to the area would be roads,” which could invite undesirable traffic and intrusion of all kinds. He envisions a roadless wilderness with a small train, “like a kiddie train”, to carry tourists for four to five hours from the southwestern edge of the basin to El Mirador, getting off and on to look at the ancient cities. He also envisions a five-star eco-lodge developed by Guatemalan entrepreneurs. “Why not?” For now, options to visit include hiring a helicopter or taking a three-day hike on an ancient causeway from Carmelita, where everything needed, including guides, mules, tents, hammocks, even cooks, can be rented. Nearly 3,000 people a year are hiking into the area.

It’s an enormous dream. The Project works with the Guatemala government, private foundations and alliances with an impressive list of Guatemala industries who share the dream; and funding, of course, is crucial to making it happen. It’s not a cash cow yet. But, as National Geographic summed it up in October, 1989, “Doing nothing will be far more costly.”

Could El Mirador be Guatemala’s Machu Picchu? It has been a century since that discovery, and today a well-oiled, integrated Peruvian system brings half a million visitors a year, while strictly staying green. Time is of the essence. “This is the last gasp,” says Hansen. “If we fail, we lose the whole basin. I want to preserve it for the future.”

Photos by © FARES Foundation (except as otherwise noted) used by permission.

Dr. Hansen will present the Mirador Basin Project during the World Mayan Archeology Convention at Casa Convento Concepción, La Antigua, June 18-20. (see page 62)

The Mirador Basin Museum, 15 avenida 18-01, zona 6, interior Finca La Pedrera, is open Mon-Fri, 9-4; free. 2289-3985. Also see: www.miradorbasin.com, www.fares-foundation.org, www.pacunam.org

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Thanks to New Media/Universidad Francisco Marroquín for sharing this video with us.

The proud team of excavators of the Tak’alik Ab’aj National Project who discovered Monuments 215 (in front) and 217

“Standing Stones” site yields unprecedented sculpture

Archaeologists recently discovered ancient altars, monuments and an unprecedented stone sculpture at a 2.5-square-mile Mayan ruin near Retalhuleu in southwestern Guatemala.

Representing both Olmec and Maya cultures, the Tak’alik Ab’aj (Standing Stones) site was inhabited for nearly 1,700 years, starting roughly in 1000 BC, and was a key trading center with ancient merchants traveling from present-day El Salvador and Mexico. Since excavations began in the late 1800s, more than 250 buildings and monuments have been uncovered.

Archaeologists Christa Schieber de Lavarreda and Miguel Orrego Corzo, from the Guatemala Ministry of Culture and Sports, have in recent years been leading an excavation that has produced a stream of important discoveries, including evidence of one of the earliest royal burials ever found in an important Mayan site. In March 2008, the team unearthed Altar 48, the monument to the birth of Mayan culture. In June and August, additional monuments (215 and 217) were discovered.

Because so many archaeological sites are yet to be excavated and studied, it is predicted that the established concepts about Mayan history will change substantially over the next 20 years.

“Reconstructing” with photographs and carefully executed drawings of the imposing character (Monument 215) standing on top of the monster bat “capital” of the column-sculpture (Monument 217). The fragments of Stele 53 and 61 fitted with the remains of the column, thus recovering more of the ancient texts at its sides. All together it makes a monumental column-sculpture of at least 2.30m in height, and in every sense a historic landmark at the ancient city Tak’alik Ab’aj.

At a recent press conference, de Lavarreda and Orrego said the mysterious, enigmatic sculpture, known as “The Carrier of the Ancestor of Tak’alik Ab’aj,” is an unprecedented find. The sculpture presents an imposing character, decorated with insignias of power with certain Olmec characteristics. “The monument is unique and represents a great challenge for archaeologists,” de Lavarreda and Orrego said.

“Something very surprising is that this character is carrying a small human figure on his back. This small human figure has the position of his arms on his chest and hands folded down, and very straight legs, similar to those infants who are often found in the lap of the Olmec jade figures. These infant figures have been interpreted by some archaeologists as divine beings or ancestors. The quality of the volume and complete form of the sculpture conveys the formal concepts of Olmec art sculpture; however, this sculpture seems strange,” they reported.

The small human figure—is it the representation of the ancestor?—carried at the back of the personage of Monument 215.

“It is important to note that the small figure on the back of the standing character is literally joined by an extended cloth or skirt to the head of the bat. It is evident that the intention of the sculptor of this figure was to communicate the importance of the union of the carrier of the ancestor with the monster bat.” 

Schieber de Lavarreda and Orrego said this sculpture raises many questions:

• Why is the character carrying a small figure on his back?
• Who is the character and who is the little creature?
• Why is this character standing on a bat?
• Why is the sculptural style of the character different than that of the bat?
• What message did the sculpture transmit?
• Why was this sculpture destroyed and its pieces then included in the structure of the wall?
• Where had this sculpture been standing so it could be seen from all four sides?

The imposing character of Monument 215, the alter having been lifted carefully by the crew into upright position

The archaeologists said it could have been carved at or just before the start of the early Mayan era, in the transition of Tak’alik Ab’aj from the Olmec era to the Mayan era.

“Could it be that the early Mayan sculptor wanted to invoke the preceding Olmec culture as ancestors, as it later appears in the Mayan steles, where the ancestors are depicted watching from the heavens to protect and legitimize the power of the ruler represented below?” de Lavarreda and Orrego asked.

The monster bat head lifted into upright position. On the top of the head are the remains of the feet of the personage of Monument 215, which originally had been standing on the “capital” of monster bat head of the column-sculpture.

“We think that this is actually good news,” de Lavarreda and Orrego said. “In the past looting and ransacking of unprotected archaeological sites in remote areas presented a serious problem, a heavy loss to the cultural heritage of Guatemala. Maybe now, with more responsible archaeological institutions and a new perspective of archaeology, the undiscovered sites present a unique opportunity to preserve the cultural heritage of Guatemala and make new exiting discoveries about the ancient Mayas and their mysteries.”

With the collaboration of Barbara Schieber/Editor, The Guatemala Times, this article is based on New Maya Olmec Archeological Find in Guatemala published in October 2008 on www.guatemala-times.com and the authorization by Christa Schieber de Lavarreda and Miguel Orrego Corzo, Ministry of Culture and Sports, Head Office of Cultural and Natural Heritage, Tak’alik Ab’aj National Project, NATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARK TAK’ALIK AB’AJ El Asintal, Retalhuleu, Guatemala.