Maya 2012 Apocalypse - Upcoming Lecture I'm presenting

So, this is happening.

Did Maya Architects Tie Fossils to Creation?

Art Daily posts an announcement of research at the Maya city of Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico, suggesting fossils may be tied to Maya ideas of Creation. This new study notes the use of fossil-bearing stones in ritual and elite funerary contexts at Palenque, and combining historical and epigraphic evidence, suggests that the fossils hearkened back to a watery world at the dawn of Creation.

This would not be the first discovery of fossils in Mesoamerican ritual contexts. At La Venta (I believe, I don't have the original reports here at my fingertips) at least one fossil shark teeth was part of an Olmec ritual cache.

The idea of pre-19th century people conducting different forms of paleontology is a compelling and common sensical notion, one discussed by Adrienne Mayor in her books, as profiled in the New York Times.

I would need to see more about the Palenque research to comment further, but it raises a potentially fascinating possibility.

Electronic Atlas of Maya Sites: Now on Google Earth

Database of locations and rough size/scale of over 6000 Maya archaeological sites. And now, they have a kmz version for Google Earth.

http://mayagis.smv.org/

Soviet-Era Maya-Themed Playing Cards

Amazing.

Note: one is Moche.

h/t BoingBoing

Pulp Fiction? Maya Ruins and Treasure Hunting by Parachute in 1931

Popular Science, April 1931: The story of Captain William F. Long, adventurer, who weaves a tale of parachuting in search of hidden gold and gems in a living city of the Maya. It's a tale of racist notions of natives bowing to white gods, jungle battles, and un-named Mexican archaeologists with stone idols.

Go ahead and read, if you can stand the excitement

I have no idea how much if any of it is even remotely true (obviously, much of it is problematic, but I don't even know if there ever was a plane flight or a skydive, never mind any of the details). What I do know is that in the wake of several highly publicized legitimate air surveys of Maya ruins, including one by hero pilot Charles Lindbergh (we're still before the rise of Nazi Germany and Lindbergh's political steps), it looks like the press was all too eager to print tales of such derring-do. The New York Times ran Long's story, as they did several other sensationalistic tales of archaeological adventure. Around the same time they started running stories on Mitchell-Hedges, who would eventually produce the Crystal Skull "of Lubantuun."

Spielberg and Lucas said they based Indiana Jones off of the pulp serials of the 1930s and 1940s. I wonder if they knew how close they were to the respectable headlines of the day.

El Mirador - Destroyed by Teotihuacanos?

Press reports coming from the El Mirador project are intriguing, to say the least. This will complicate the arguments over the relationships between Teotihuacan and Tikal, and El Mirador and Calakmul.

"Many of the excavated blades are made of obsidian which the archaeologists have traced to a source hundreds of miles away in the Mexican highlands. They believe the spears belonged to warriors from Teotihuacan, an ancient civilization near Mexico City and an ally of Tikal, which was an enemy city of El Mirador.

"We've found over 200 of the obsidian tips alone, as well as flint ones, indicating there was a tremendous battle," said excavation leader Richard Hansen, a senior scientist in Idaho State University's anthropology department who is pushing the pyramid battle theory."

...

"Hansen's archaeologists found graffiti they believe was left by Teotihuacan fighters who smashed up carved Maya monoliths and left crudely etched skull drawings, known as Tlalocs, on the rock as proof of their victory.

"The Tlaloc is the war god image of the highland Mexicans (and we found it) crudely pecked on these monuments, suggesting that perhaps a hostile event had taken place here," Hansen said."

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-42207620090903?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Immigrants and Abandonment at Kiuic

UPDATE: August 2010 - USA Today returned for a multimedia exploration of Kiuic

Friends and colleagues from the past have made news this weekend with their work at Kiuic, Yucatan, and its Terminal Classic florescence and abandonment. Some choice bits

"Both the pyramids and the palaces look like latter-day additions to Kiuic, built in the 9th century, just as Maya centers farther south were being abandoned. "The influx of wealth ... may spring from immigration," Bey says, as Maya headed north."

...

"the archaeologists found tools, stone knives and axes, corn-grinder stones called metates ... and pots still sitting in place. "It was completely unexpected," Bey says. "It looks like they just turned the metates on their sides and left things waiting for them to come back.""

...

"The only sign of warfare is a collection of spear points found in the central plaza of Kiuic. There are signs that construction halted there — a stucco-floored plaza sits half-complete, for example. "Drought seems more likely, that would halt construction," Bey says."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2009-09-19-mayan-collapse_N.htm

Chocolate spread from Ancient Mesoamerica into the US Southwest

Testing of Chaco cylinder vessels shows chocolate consumption, another important Mesoamerican domesticate and social practice to filter at some point into the Southwest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/us/04cocoa.html?_r=1&em

Xibalba Update: INAH Article

INAH, Mexico's National Institute for Anthropology and History, has released an English-language short release on the cave complex discussed in my previous post. It's a lot more interesting than I thought, with not just one building within the caves, but several.

Particularly interesting is the presence of a sacbe. These white limestone raised roads radiate out between and within Maya settlements, and are particularly well-documented in western Yucatan. Roads are an important aspect of Maya thought, similar to the idea of one's path or journey having a lot more significance than literally where one will travel. The equivalent in Yukatek to "How's it going?" is "How's your road?," which come to think of it is a fairly similar sentiment. When one gets married, it is said "their road came to an end." While this is humorously close to the English colloquialism "End of the road, pal," it would be better understood as meaning that the married people began a new road together as a pair.

There has long been debate on whether the roads were primarily for ritual pilgrimages and processions, for transportation of goods and people, to demonstrate political allegiance, or some combination. The discovery of one inside a heavily sacralized cave complex will likely give some heft to arguments for ritual.

Subterranean Maya Temple Complex Suggested as Road to Xibalba

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN1442474520080815?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

The image of the building constructed within the cavern is impressive. The article doesn't mention where specifically this is, other than in Mexico and the Yucatan peninsula. Apparently it dates to the Classic.

Maya Textiles From Copan Show Impressive Craftworking

Textiles are obviously rare in archaeological contexts, especially in the tropics. Nonetheless, textile fragments from Copan are some of the few leaving any evidence of Classic Maya fabrics, and apparently the work was extraordinary.

The History of Crystal Skulls

Interesting article from Archaeology Magazine on the history of supposedly Mesoamerican crystal skulls (soon to be even more famous due to the Indiana Jones movie) and how they swirl around one antiquities dealer in the second half of the 19th century.

Update: The British Museum and Smithsonian skulls also have tool marks like those used about a century ago.

Maya hieroglyphic decipherment on NOVA, April 8

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mayacode/

The show appears to be a history of the decipherment. But regardless of that, there are a few neat aspects on the website, such as a translation of Piedras Negras Stela 3, with audio for the entire text. This is of course similar to the audio elements of the dictionaries at FAMSI, which are well worth checking out.

On Lost Cities: Lost Inka City of Patiti Found ... Again

The legend of El Dorado, or this case the variant of the Inka city of Patiti, crops up about every six months when a new impressive stone ruin is found in the jungles of South America. Here's the current candidate.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080116-lost-city.html

I can't blame them, of course. I remember the false alarms around finding Copan royal founder Yax K'uk' Mo', before his tomb was finally identified for certain. El Mirador was overlooked for decades before it was rediscovered as the greatest of all Maya cities, transforming the picture of early Maya civilization, and Tikal has the Mundo Perdido or "Lost World" pyramid which has a similar history. And closer to Patiti, there is always the tantalizing memory of the lost city of Macchu Picchu, discovered right at the peak of popular interest in explorers and lost cities and other colonial-era fantasticalness.

Back in college, I remember being amazed by the discovery of Ubar using space shuttle imagery and remote sensing to find camel and foot paths. The Moskitia of Honduras has the enduring legend of the White City, Ciudad Blanca. It too is looked for (here's an example) and sometimes found time and again. Initially supposed to be a city of gleaming white stone buildings, in the 20th century viewed from the air in addition to the old tales, it has also taken on the meaning over time of being a lost city of White people. This of course brings to mind the older medieval stories of Prester John and later colonial myths and fiction of lost Roman legions that brought civilization to Africa, reflected in the treatment of Great Zimbabwe. The British Empire had a lost city of its own, Camelot, which has been identified several times, including at Tintagel in Cornwall.

EDIT: Looks like Patiti is still lost

Guatemalan President Announces El Mirador to Become Tourist Park

El Mirador is the cradle of Classic Maya civilization, the first great city. Now swallowed by jungle, two thousand years ago it was a Maya metropolis dotted by numerous pyramid temples, some of them the largest constructions of the Maya world, centuries before the "Classic" period. The city was abandoned before the Classic period began, at least in part due to ecological mismanagement and destruction documented by archaeological projects directed by Richard Hansen. But the Mirador basin was remembered, and scattered activity and settlement continued. The Kan dynasty of Calakmul (which is connected to El Mirador by an ancient road), which dominated much of the Maya world in the 6th and 7th centuries, seem to have clamed the city as their ancestral home.

Shockinlyg, this city only came to light decades after Maya archaeology had become a serious field of study. This was largely due to the remote location of the city and the extremely difficult field conditions. Once the size and age of the city became clear, the entire story of the development of Maya civilization had to be changed, a process that is ongoing.

El Mirador is about to become even more high profile. In his inauguration speech, newly-elected Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom announced plans to open the site the tourism, part of a plan to tame the infamously lawless Peten.

Possible Use for Ulua Marble Vases?

Marble vases from the Ulua valley of Honduras are some of the most amazing objects from prehispanic Maya society. Laboriously carved by hand from the hard stone, they have been typically studied as looted art objects. But the discovery of one of these vases in the potential context of an ancestor rite in Honduras suggests that they may have contained a nasty concoction consumed as part of a religious ceremony. The soil around the vessel contained remains of corn, cacao, and a purgative. Once we start talking about shamans and trances, things get a little loose, but this does suggest that at least one of the marbles was not a simple gift or prestige good, but had a higher calling.

Marketplace Detected at Maya City of Chunchucmil

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/535748/

Press release describing article in Latin American Antiquity on the methods and findings of soil chemistry exploration at Chunchucmil, Yucatan. In essence, high phosphorous readings, available in the field, allowed for the suggestion of a marketplace for selling food, surrounding a footpath in the Late Classic city. This is not the first phosphorous-based attempt to identify past activity areas, but it does sound significant.

At Ciudad Vieja, we combined several lines of evidence (remote sensing, excavation, ceramics, glass) to suggest a commercial food vendor, iron works, and possible market area also near a footpath in the early sixteenth-century town of San Salvador. Perhaps in the future this might be tested against chemical evidence.

Origins of Chocolate Lie in Preclassic Mesoamerican Beer

Analysis of Early Preclassic pots from Puerto Escondido in the Ulua Valley of Honduras show that chocolate was a by-product of the fermentation of cacao pods for use in making beer. The exploitation of chocolate as a specific product may date to ca. 1100 BC. It is noteworthy that this evidence is not from the Olmec Gulf Coast, but from the southern edge of Mesoamerica. Previously, the Olmec had been credited with the invention of chocolate, in part on linguistic grounds.

Hiatus Over: Dissertation Draft Submitted, Maya Meetings Attended

I've been missing from this blog and Spooky Paradigm because I've been too busy preparing the draft of my dissertation. As of last week, it was in the hands of my committee. I still have revision to do, a defense to make, and official copies to print before it is really done.

Immediately after I turned in the draft, we had the Maya Meetings here at Tulane, organized by the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, with a focus on mural art. San Bartolo was of course a major topic of discussion, in Dr. William Saturno's presentation as well as others, but Yucatan was covered extensively. This included the amazing finds at Ek Balam. That was nice to see, presented by Dr. Alfonso Lacadenas, since I had worked at the site for a month or so back in 1995. Dr. Francisco Estrada Belli presented new eviidence for the Teotihuacan entrada into the Maya world in 378 AD, found in the Holmul region of eastern Guatemala. There were other papers, though those based on presenting results of recent field research made more of an impact on me.

So, now I can finally get back to having a little time to myself and to writing here and at Spooky Paradigm. Not much mind you, I am still quite busy. But at least some