We went to see the Mayan ruins, the ancient city of Tikal, on our way to Belize. Tikal is in the Peten region of Guate – in the northern part, in the midst of tropcial rainforest. The ancient Mayans of Tikal lived from about 900 BC to 900 AD when their giant civilization collapsed quite suddenly – no one knows the reason. They estimate the city had about 200,000 occupants.

Tikal is a city that is about 3-4 square miles, and is one of (if not, THE) largest ruins site in the Mayan world. Mayan ruins stretch across Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador.  There was no metal whatsoever found in Tikal, so the city was made with limestone from flints and obsidian. Oh my goodness.

I’m almost through the Popol Vuh (the Mayan Bible) and the seeing the correlations between that and Tikal was interesting. The round stones and gravestone looking things in front of all the temples were for sacrifices – some of them, human. (You can see that in the first picture) In the Popol Vuh, there is a part where the sun is so hot it turns the gods into stones and the people have to pour blood sacrifices into the mouths of the stones to help the gods turn into flesh again… There is a ball court in Tikal and in the Popol, the  Mayans played a ball game that had great significance in the formation of people. In Tikal, 4 is clearly a sacred number, with great difference paid to the 4 corners of the earth and the 4 directions. The temples in Tikal are built in directional lines, to make certain shadows during fall, spring, summer and winter solstice. The first men that were created in the Popol Vuh were 4 men.

We were actually there on DEC 21 – Winter Solstice and we got to see a Mayan ceremony, performed on the contemporary alter (you can see it’s just a round, cement dent in the Grand Plaza). The ceremony was pretty touristy, but interesting nonetheless. Only 2% of Guatemala’s population still practices only Mayan religion (the rest are Catholic, or mix the two, and Evangelicals are on the rise too). There was lots of burning offerings for the ancestors. The shaman opened by saying “People ask where are the [ancient] Maya? Where did they go? But we want the world to know we are right here – we have the legacy of our ancestors and all that they left us. We are not going anywhere and we wish for the unity of all people.” 

And it was pretty heartbreaking to be in the midst of what was once a huge, rich society, full of life and hundreds of thousands of people — and to witness the Mayan people today. Today, they are discriminated against in modern Guatemalan society, conquered, poor, subdued, harassed and oppressed from one war after another  by the Spanish, the Canadians, then the Americans, and now their own government (of which NONE are Mayan representatives).  They are asked to vote in elections where they can’t read the ballots (many don’t speak Spanish and many are illiterate), they are relegated to domestic and farming jobs, they suffer constant discrimination. My old Spanish teacher used to wear her local indigenous clothing to school and her teacher prohibited her from carrying the school flag because of it, even though she had the top grades in the class and was supposed to get that privilege. Another Spanish teacher I had dated a Mayan girl when he was a teenager – not only was his family PISSED but they could never go into clubs together, getting turned away because of her indigenous clothing….it goes on….

Tikal means “the accoustic city”. Our guide took us to the first temple (it’s the first picture below) and had us face the temple and then he clapped. You could hear the echo, even though we couldn’t see another temple near us. All the temples echo off of one another. In lots of places in the city you can clap or call and you can hear it miles away echoing off another temple. Wow.

They had cleared out all of the trees during their tenure there – and it’s hard to imagine because as you can see, the rainforest has reclaimed this land! Everywhere you walk in Tikal, you can basically assume you’re walking on top of an original structure – with most of them still unexcavated because it’s so expensive. Also, the Mayans deliberately destroyed alot of their older works of art and buildings, and built on top of them (perhaps when one king died to erase his memory when the new king took power?)…so there are layers upon layers of buildings all getting higher and higher – closer to the gods.

Also, the temples were originally covered in a plaster and painted bright red and blue. Many masks and sculptures were carved into the sides of the buildings, but time has eroded them away. You have to use your imagination, but this city was every bit as fascinating and sophisticated as ancient Rome.

There is very little remaining art from Tikal – and it’s not enough to be very telling about how the people there lived. Like Egypt, they found tombs under the temples, the elite (or kings?) buried with every day items for the after life – jars, pots, servants, jewelry. And like Egypt, they had many gods for everything – the sun, the moon, the cinema, the airplane, the cranky neighbor….maybe? The hieroglyphics are almost cartoonish compared with Egyptian art.

I can not even describe what it felt like to be in this mysterious place and the largess of it is overwhelming.

This video turned out to be really crappy quality (the frustrations of video online), so I’m posting some high res pics below it…

 

Morning light

 

Temple 1 and Grand Plaza

 

Side shot from residences looking at Temple 1

 

Still half-buried ruins, excavating in process

 

Temple 5 - very steep