my brother, my pal

I watched Olivier Dahan's Le Vie en Rose just before I left Oregon.


A busy Edith Piaf -- at the height of her fame -- allows a young song writer to audition a song for her.  As Charles Dumont starts playing the now-famous opening line of Non, je ne regrette rien, Edith declares: "That song is about me; it's my life."


The song has long been one of my favorites.  Since I first heard The Little Sparrow sing it.  And I have tried to live a life where I regret nothing.


But, if I could regret something, it would be being away from Oregon today.  Because it is a very special day.


My sainted brother crosses one of those major milestone birthdays -- and I should be there to help him celebrate.


We have traveled many a mile together.  I already told you it started with a rocky first act.  (pearl harbor has a competitor)  When my mother brought my new baby brother through the front door, I threw a toy truck at her and broke her glasses.


He was born on 7 December.  From the start, I thought the world was joining me in mourning my loss through their celebration of Pearl Harbor Day.  Historical understanding was to come many years later.


But things soon changed.  Even though he is two years younger, we shared a life of puppies, kittens, and fort-building.


When he joined me at Powers Elementary, I was already one of the Big Kids in third grade.  He was a first grader.


After school one day, I got into a fight with my best friend, Mike Pinson, who was picking on Darrel.  After all.  If anyone was going to beat on my little brother, it was me.  Not someone outside the family.


It is fun to reminisce now and then.  But the more important memory is the one that is being created right now.  Today.  Those are the relationships that count.


I am proud of him -- as a man, as a father, as a husband, as a grandfather.  But even more than that, I am proud to call him my brother.


Even if he is getting real, real old.


Here's to you, bro.  I wish I could be there.

la ruta puuc

Big is not always better.  At least when it comes to ruins.

I am as fascinated as anyone with Big Buildings -- the monumental structures of civilizations.  The places that make us ponder: "How did they do that?"

But, like most big things, the awe inevitably fades.  And what was once inspiring becomes merely another pile of rocks -- just bigger.

I discovered forty years ago that ancient sites mean much more to me when I can actually feel the presence of the people who once lived in the cities.  The place they called home.  It is hard to feel that way about a building that looks as sterile as a bank in Saint Paul.

Sure, it is possible to get sucked into the imaginative scenarios of virgins being sacrificed on giant pyramids.  But we have all seen enough Hercules movies to not need much imagination for that scenario.  (For those of you under 40, substitute "internet" for "Hercules movies.")

On the other hand, Big Events on Big buildings -- to keep Chac's anger at bay -- were not how people lived out their daily lives.

That is the major reason I truly enjoyed our visit to the "minor" sights along la ruta puuc.

"Puuc" is derived from the Mayan word for "hill."  And hills there are in this southern region of Yucatán -- primarily karst limestone. 


Not big hills.  But hills nonetheless.  As Islagringo and I discovered on the sometimes-useful GPS.  At one point we crossed over a hill at 400 feet above sea level.

That may not sound like much, but compared to the Yucatán flats, we almost expected to run into Julie Andrews and a bunch of nuns.

The hills are why the Mayans came here.  Not for the water.  There is none.  But for the defensive position offered by the hills.  And for the relatively good soil where they could raise their vegetables -- such as corn and squash.

The four sites we explored reached their peaks between 600 and 900 AD -- in the late and terminal portions of the Classical period.

The four cities share a building style with Uxmal -- not surprisingly, the style is called Puuc.  Easily recognizable.  The walls are usually plain at the bottom with detailed stone mosaics on the upper part.  That is the same style we saw earlier on the walls of the Nunnery in Uxmal.

But, with this common style, I was surprised how much each site varied from the other.

Kabah


Our first stop was Kabah.  Like Stonehenge, it is right on the main road.  Stop the car.  There you are.


And that makes historical sense.  Kabah was connected to Uxmel by an 11-mile raised pedestrian causeway with arches at each end. The Mayans were the Roman builders of their time.  But without the Ben-Hur chariots.

The main building of this medium-sized complex is the Coz Poop (all of you fifth graders please calm down), a palace decorated with the face of the ever-present Chac -- represented over and over (about 250 times) on one wall.  That type of repetition of one figure is unique in Mayan art.

Both Islagringo and I braved the climb to the upper level of the building -- and we were well-rewarded.  A Mexican archaeological team was in the process of sorting and reconstructing part of the structure.  They had laid out thousands of pieces of stone -- just like a jigsaw puzzle.

The place was impressive, but still small enough in its over-all scale to let us believe people -- and not just film crews -- populated the site.

Sayil


Our second stop was Sayil.  The site's major building is a multi-tiered palace where both the elite and their bureaucratic lackeys lived.

Sayil is one of the few Mayan sites that has revealed how the ordinary Mayans lived.  Archaeologists have excavated small dwellings on the outskirts of the city -- along with the detritus of common life.

In a rush to restore and preserve the Mayans' buildings, archaeologists and anthropologists have not spent a good deal of time discovering the underlying life in the cities.  The rush was understandable.  Putting the buildings together brings in tourists -- few of whom are interested in how the society itself operated.  As a result, there is still much to learn.

Sayil is also a good site to see how the jungle enveloped most of the sites when the civilization itself collapsed.  All of the buildings were covered by jungle.  Unlike Uxmal, where the jungle had been generally cleared, we had to walk through stretches of jungle to get to each new sight.

But we had not yet seen just how completely jungle can hide the remnants of dying civilizations.  That we saw at Xlapak.

Xlapac


Xlapak was the only ruin we visited on this road trip where admission was free.  I suspect because it is very difficult to see most of the site.  The jungle has reclaimed its own.

But there are a few monumental buildings that have been cleared and partially reconstructed.  A palace.  A temple. A house.  Still primarily piles of rubble.  And lots of impinging nature.

While we were there, we were the only visitors.  But that was true for three of  the four sites.  With the exception of Kabah and its tourist bus hoards, we generally did not see other visitors during our walks.

The quiet, the scale of the sites, and the lack of other tourists made it quite easy to imagine Mayans living their daily existence.  Farmers coming to market.  Tax-collectors plying their trade.  Young men seeking the eyes of young women.


Labná


Even though I liked Xlapa's decaying ambiance, my favorite site was the fourth -- and last -- in the puuc region: Labná.


The structures at Labná are not as massive -- or jumbled -- as those at Uxmal.  But their scale and arrangement give the place a whiff or Mayan Paris.  Sophisticated.  Understated.  Chic.  No gaudy pyramids here ruining the effect.

The inevitable palace anchors the site.  With a large ceremonial causeway stretching to a small temple -- on a partially-restored pyramid of rubble -- and court yard at the other end.  (You can see a portion of the causeway at the lower left of the photograph.)


At the temple-end of the causeway stands my favorite Mayan structure.  The gateway to an aristocratic family compound.  Looking almost exactly as it did when the explorer Frederick Catherwood first saw it a century and half ago.


You can see it at the top of this post.  I thought it deserved star treatment.


The family's residential compound no longer stands.  But the gate is subtly magnificent, and simultaneously inviting.  As if it is saying: "I belong to a family who lives here.  They matter.  You are welcome."


And it was that last sentence I had been waiting to hear on this visit to a vanished civilization.  A voice from history saying: "We are different from you.  But we are much like you.  Look.  And remember."


It was a voice I would not hear at our next stop: Chichén Itzá.
 

death on the flats

Sometimes you read a news story and hope it is an April Fool's joke.


Or a headline in The Onion.


That is what I felt when I read: "2,300-Year-old Maya ruins destroyed for pastureland."  A story in Friday's FoxNews Latino.


The cultural stereotypes are overwhelming.  Rancher destroys buildings that pre-date the birth of Christ -- to get a little bit richer by growing tough beef.  It could be right of the Amazon.


But it was true.  No joking.  No leg pulling.  No sardonic wit wrapped in irony.


You may have heard the name Chicxulub.  To most of us, it is the name of the impact crater created when an asteroid or comet struck the Earth and turned dinosaurs into PEMEX fill-ups.


But it is also a village.  Almost at the exact center of the crater.  Thus, the name.


But it will soon be known for another disaster.


Here are the basic facts. 


About three months ago, a rancher bought some land near the village of Chicxulub.  There were some mounds that were too irregular for cattle grazing.  So, he hired some heavy machinery to bulldoze the land into billiard board pastureland.


The problem is that the mounds were the ruins of a registered Mayan settlement from the Pre-classical period.  Some of the buildings were 2,300 years old.


The machinery destroyed walls, roofs, and stairways of the main complex, as well as seven buildings and two altars that stood in the main square -- the largest more than 10 feet tall.


And this was no small grouping.  It covered 250 acres.


The National Anthropology and History Institute (INAH), the Mexican agency responsible for protecting registered sites, determined the settlement suffered "irreversible" damage.  The nucleus of the settlement was directly affected.  "Total and irreparable" was the conclusion.


I felt almost as outraged as I did when the Taliban destroyed the Bamyan Buddhas.


Of course, the rancher took the usual two-step denial.  I didn't do it.  And no one told me it was an archaeological site. 


Really?  Mounds on the Yucatán flats.


What did he think they were -- South African termite hills?


He didn't bother with the true subtext: "I thought I would get away with it."


On our trip, Islagringo and I talked about the number of ruins that are still undiscovered throughout the Yucatán.  And there are many.  But this one was rather obvious.


And only a few kilometers from Dzibilchaltún -- the first site we visited on this trip.


The whole thing makes me sad.


It will be interesting to see what happens.


But I think I already know that story, as well.


And it has an ending no happier than the end of the Mayan cities we visited.


Tomorrow, we will return to the road trip.  I just could not let this one pass without comment.

looking into chac's eyes

"Close your eyes."

She was a woman of a certain age.  Prematurely black hair tumbling over the neck of her turquoise and white caftan.  Accessorized with enough silver and stone necklaces, rings, and bracelets to make a carnival crystal ball reader blush.


Her tour group huddled in front of her.  Peeking through half-closed eyes at the immense pyramid in front of them.


"Feel the waves of the power of the god Chac wash over you from his home.  Feel his loving power."


I almost turned in my crystal.


We were in Uxmal -- one of the major Mayan sites.


Most of the Yucatán is flat.  So flat that some of my blogger pals in Mérida joke about driving out to an overpass to get a mountain experience.


Uxmal is not flat.  It is on the edge of Mayan hill country.  And it takes full advantage of its position.


Approaching Uxmal from the north, I almost confused it with a resort hotel.  It appears that immense -- even from a distance.

Uxmal is exactly what tourists expect to see in a Mayan ruin.  The place is huge.  And it requires little imagination.  As if a theme park designer had taken all the tough stuff out of getting The Experience.


At its height in the late Classic period (850-925 AD) (Now, I warned you we were going to be using those few facts we learned two posts ago.), Uxmal dominated the region around it.  It was the Chicago of the hill country.  A massive administrative and f religious center that allowed the city elite to control the local rural folk.


Much of the city was still visible (and lightly inhabited) when the Spanish arrived in the mid-1500s.  Most of the population had dispersed around 1000 AD.  But the buildings were so well constructed from cut stone, they had not seriously deteriorated.


The Spanish immediately went about slapping fanciful names on the structures.  The Magician's Pyramid.  The Nunnery.  The Governor's House.  Not knowing the purpose of any of the buildings.


The grand round-sided Magician's Pyramid is the focal point of the sight.  The name is understandable.  It looks as if Saruman could walk out of the mouth of the god Chac near the top of the pyramid.


The pyramid is the stuff of legend.  Literally.  A less skeptical world believed a magician dwarf (probably related to the mummies at Santa Elena) built the place in one night.  Anyone living in Mexico knows that would not be merely magic; it would be a miracle.


Less-imaginative scientists tell us the pyramid was built between 500 and 900 AD in five separate stages.  One temple building on top of the next.  Something of a deity condo.


The fourth temple can be seen near the top of the pyramid.  Its facade is the face of Chac (the rain god) -- complete with froggy eyes, a Simon Legree mustache, and a gaping mouth entrance lined with teeth.  All the better to eat you, I suppose.


The structure must have been quite a sight in its prime.  Painted red with details in yellow, blue, and black.  Now, it is merely naked ivory-hued limestone.


But Uxmal is much more than a Wagnerian opera set for human sacrifice.


The complex has two more major pyramids, additional temples, palaces, a ball court, and administrative buildings.  All of them designed to show that Uxmal was a place of refined power.  But power, nonetheless.

The Mayans developed an interesting style for their stone buildings.  The facades are essentially giant mosaics of gods and animals -- and geometric shapes.  And they are some of the most beautiful sculptures I have seen.


While Europe was stuck in an era of representational art, the Mayans were developing a cross between cubism and expressionism.  To great effect.  And that form reached an artistic height on the walls of Uxmal.


The complex has enough layers of interest that a multiple-day stop would not be excessive.  I could have spent a full day cataloging the intricate designs on the walls of the Nunnery.  I may want to schedule a return visit to do just that.

If I return, though, it will not be for the iconic Magician's Pyramid.  The Power Buildings hold little interest for me.  They are a bit too Neuschwanstein.  But I find the smaller buildings fascinating -- where some of the City People lived their lives.


The bejeweled tour guide can have her Chac talk.


Give me the people -- and how they lived.

first steps into mayaland

That first day in Athens sticks in my mind.


Even though I knew I would be stationed there for a year, I wanted to see the attraction that had drawn me there.


Athens was -- and still is -- a jumble of a city.  More like a village suffering from the urban equivalent of elephantiasis.


The traffic was terrible.  But for a moment my focus shifted up and to the left.  And there it was.  The Acropolis.  The essence of ancient Greece.


I can still feel the catch in my breath at the sight of the sun flashing off of those columns.  Almost as if the entire hilltop of marble was internally illuminated.


I was hoping my first Mayan site (Dzibilchaltún) would be as memorable.  In one sense, it had to be.  Like imprinting, this would be the template I used for all other Mayan sites.


The choice was not scientific.  The site is midway between Mérida and Progreso.  We decided to stop there first simply because it was convenient -- not because it was the best of all possible sites.


I knew a little bit about the place before we got there. 


That the name meant "place with writing on flat stones." 


That it had been inhabited since around 300 BC, and remained inhabited right up to the arrival of the Spanish -- one of the oldest places we would visit on this trip. 


That it was rediscovered in the 1940s. 


That its population ebbed and flowed with a high point during the late Classical period (600-900 AD) when it grew to 20,000 inhabitants.  It was an urban center -- at one point.


None of that prepared me for my first impression of what the Mayans accomplished. 


There are no truly monumental buildings at Dzibilchaltún.  The site consists mainly of  a central plaza surrounded by a small pyramid and the ruins of administrative buildings. 


The only building that approaches monumental status is the Temple of the Seven Dolls.

As I mentioned earlier, the Mayans had developed amazing mathematical and astronomical skills.  The evidence of that shows up in this little temple. 


Scientists have discovered (much to the delight of New Age types) that on the spring equinox, the sun rises in one window and shines directly through the other.  (We will discuss a similar, but far more creepy, event when we get to Chichén Itzá.)  This assumes, of course, that when the temple was reconstructed the windows were oriented correctly.


But the building has other mysteries.


The temple got its name from small clay dolls discovered buried in front of the altar -- some with deformities.  No one knows exactly what the ritual importance of the deformed dolls was. 


Substitute sacrifice is a wishful theory, even though Mayan religious rites would suggest a far less happy reality.  But there are other possibilities suggested in contemporary Mexican religious life.  Perhaps they were distant relatives of the healing charms (milagros) seen in Mexican Catholic churches.


We did not get to see the dolls.  They are located in the site's museum.  But we were there on a Sunday.  And the museum is closed on Sunday.  (A curse that has traveled with me around the world.)


The temple is tied to the rest of the complex with the remains of another Mayan innovation -- a sacbe: a paved street constructed of a layer of limestone over stone and rubble.  When it was in its prime, its must have made an impressive connection.  Today, it has the look of a bovine path.

Islagringo's favorite structure on the site is a small Franciscan chapel -- built between 1590 and 1600.  The stone portion of the building was recycled from rubble found at the site.  At one point, a palapa acted as a nave.


I share Islagringo's enthusiasm for the small chapel.  It is a reminder of a simpler time when Franciscan missionaries did their best to bring the local Mayans into communion with the church universal by preaching in the midst of the natives. 


Unfortunately, the rest of the Spanish invasion was set on far more worldly pursuits.


And there are still some worldly pursuits on the grounds of Dzibilchaltún.

 

The site is home to a modest cenote -- a natural spring.  It is undoubtedly one of the reasons the Mayans settled here. 


Water is a precious commodity on the Yucatán.  And Dzibilchaltún has a pot of gold in its spring.  (I should add that comment is a metaphor.  Similar comments by Indians caused the Spanish to vandalize Mexico in search of Leprechaun gold.)


The cenote no longer has a religious or utility purpose.  Instead, it is simply an incredibly refreshing swimming hole.


When we were there, it was evident that many Mexican families (and a few painfully pale German tourists) had come to seek relief from the November heat.  And to simply have a good time. 


They were not there to celebrate the past.  They were celebrating the moment.


I did not really have an Acropolis moment at Dzibilchaltún.  What I came away with was an admiration for the ability of the Mayans to build large urban centers on a human scale. 


And to appreciate the engineering skills necessary to build their stone structures.  Even though the temple of the Seven Dolls is small, it feels as if people actually stood there in awe of their surrounding.


It was a good starter site.  And it turned out to be a very good place to begin my journey into Mayan civilization.

gone to ruin(s)

 

I grew up with Indian names -- and with Indians.


Clackamas.  Willamette.  Coos.


It always amused me when friends out east would visit and stumble over the pronunciations.  The names were simply part of my culture.


Somewhere the Karma pot is bubbling over with laughter -- because I am getting my comeuppance with the pronunciation of Indian names -- Mayan  names, to be exact.


Dzibilchaltún.  Uxmal.  Kabah.  Sayil.  Labná.  Xlapak.  Chichén Itzá.


Each a Mayan ruin.  Once, proud cities.  Now, piles of rocks with reconstructions of uneven effect.  And my tongue stumbles over the syllables as much as my feet did over strewn rocks.


I had intended to combine all of the sites in one essay.  But that simply was not going to work.  Each place was too interesting to relegate it to "and then we saw another pile of rubble."


So, here is what I would like to do.  I will write a series of four essays on the sites in the same order Islagringo and I saw them.

• Dzibilchaltún -- on the road between Mérida and Progreso

• Uxmal -- home to what some Madison Avenue-type dubbed "The Magician's Pyramid"

• Kabah; Sayil; Labná; Xlapak -- four "minor" sites on la ruta puuc

• Chichén Itzá -- truly the big enchilada with its Cecil B. DeMille El Castillo

But a little context may help.  I know that some of you have no interest in Mayan history.  But these few basics will help us to put each of the sites into a bigger picture.


Mexico had several great civilizations prior to the arrival of the Spanish conquerors in the early 1500s.


The greatest in the Yucatán was the Mayan.

The city-states that constituted the Mayan civilization were based around cities with monumental stone buildings administering a farm culture.  But it was far more than that. 


The Mayans developed remarkable mathematical and astronomical skills -- including incredibly accurate calendars.  (And we all know the urban myth associated with that calendar.)


By the time of the Mayan Classic period (200-900 AD), the Mayans were building cities in the southern Yucatán that still awe archaeologists with their pyramids, administrative buildings, and palaces.


New Age types have long touted the Mayans as the Athenians of Mexico.  As opposed to those nasty Spartanesque Aztecs.  Mistakenly believing the Athenians were pacific.  They weren't.  Neither were the Mayans


Those allegedly idealistic city-states never coalesced into an empire, but each one was built at the expense of its neighbors.  And their religious ceremonies were filled with the same blood lust. 


Those awe-inspiring pyramids were built not so much to buy the love of their god, but to purchase his forbearance with someone else's sacrifice.  They were no worse than their neighbors, but they were no better.


It all started tumbling down in the southern Yucatán in the 800s.  No one knows why for sure.  But something went drastically wrong between the city-states and their environment. 


One of the chief causes was a lack of food to support the cities.  But whether the root cause was bad stewardship or drought, no one knows for certain.  But the jungle soon reclaimed those magnificent monuments to the folly that man controls his destiny.


But that was not the end of the Mayans.  The city-building shifted north in the Yucatán during the Post-Classic period (1100-1550 AD).  Many of them were still operating (as mere shadows of their earlier greatness) when the Spanish arrived.


Lacking an emperor, the Mayans were not as quickly conquered as the Aztecs.  It took almost a century to subject the full Yucatán.

The Spanish then undertook the destruction of the civilization it found -- including an attempt to eradicate the language.


They failed, at least with the language.  It is still spoken.  One of the touching aspects of the current ruins is that the explanatory signs are written primarily in Mayan.


Even the jungle could not hide the secret of the Mayan ruins.  During the past two hundred years, archaeologists have uncovered the secrets in the jungle.  And only a small percentage has been recovered.

So, sit back.  Over the next four days, we will take a look at the once-great Mayan city-states -- or, at least, a sampling of them.

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.