mummies and mayans

 

The Yucatán is about as flat as a billiard table.


But, where villages and hills meet, the local church will be built on the highest point.


That is true of Santa Elena.  Its ocher-painted church (San Mateo) can be seen from miles away.  Looking like a cross between an El Cid fortress and Noah's high-centered ark.


Islagringo and I stopped at the village not to gawk at its church or its roof-top view of the surrounding area.  (If we had, I would have been ticked because the church was closed.)


Nope.  We were in an Indiana Jones frame of mind.  There were mummies to be seen.


A Mayan pyramid once stood on the church's hill.  It is long gone.  Replaced by a church some time in the Seventeenth Century. The current structure was built two centuries later.  I am certain Davis-Bacon wages were not paid to any of the construction teams. 


In 1980, the church was reconstructed.  While excavating the area, the workers found nine small coffins.  When they opened them, they found small bodies.  Mummified small bodies.  Two hundred year old mummified small bodies.


Rather than reburying them, the village saw income in the discovery.  The local newspaper immediately dubbed them: "The dwarfs of Santa Elena."  With genuine Mexican sensationalist journalism. 


It is no coincidence that dwarfs figure in the legend of the Mayan pyramid now missing from the crest of the hill.


Of course, they were not dwarfs.  Four of the bodies were infants.  The others were children aged 1 to 9.  All dead of some serious infection.

The four infant coffins were placed in the church's small museum.  (The other bodies simply did not comport with the myth.) 


The current exhibit is a bit more forthcoming.
Each of the infant bodies on display is clothed,

wrapped in cotton shrouds, and wears a flowered headdress.  Each coffin also includes branches, twigs, leaves under the body.


These were the children of Mayans.  Buried in an age-old tradition.


No one is certain what caused the bodies to mummify.  Obviously, they were not formally embalmed.


The scientific explanation is that the hot climate, a prolonged dry season, protection from rainfall, and good drainage beneath the church kept the bodies from decaying.  Instead, they mummified.


But the museum is an equal opportunity exploiter.  The missing pyramid gets its due.  A pre-Colombian Mayan grave was discovered during the excavation.


The male Mayan is laid out, under glass, approximately the way he was discovered.  And the museum provides an excellent summary of Mayan burial procedures.  Far more informative than the ambiguious "dwarfs."

American guide books feel compelled to comment about the ghoulish nature of the exhibits -- just as they do about the Guanajuato mummies.  As if the locals were somehow disrespecting their own ancestors.


My experience is that Mexicans have a far different view about death and bodies than do most Anglo-Saxons.  The Day of the Dead celebrations are the most obvious example.

 
We NOBers know that death is going to happen.  But we diet, exercise, and pop pills in the vain hope of somehow missing Miss Dickinson's carriage.  And then we hide our dying in hospitals.


Displaying these bodies is merely a reminder that for all of our egos, our finery, our possessions -- we are all going to end up in a little box when we are done using this body.


On that plane, we will all be equal.