The Spanish conquistadors systematically pillaged temples and pyramids of the conquered Maya and Mixtec to build their own towns. Cholula was stripped of stone to build Oaxaca, similarly Puuc buildings for Mérida. However, not all was lost. Successions of scholars—among them Michael Coe, Charles Gallenkamp, and Jacques Soustelle—have deciphered Mayan writing and their system of numbers based upon twenty (rather than our decimal system). They have also decoded the Dresden and Paris codices, which tell us a great deal about Olmec and Mayan art. Knowledge of the extent of Olmec and Maya influence across Central America grows by the day—it is difficult to keep up with developments.
Before leaving on our expedition through Mexico and Central America, we gathered more than a hundred books and articles to digest. The trip began and ended in Cancún, for a tour of the Yucatán. We drove across the dry, flat, scrubland of the peninsula, visiting Chichen Itza and Uxmal pyramids on the way. These were built by the last Maya and Toltec, sometime around 1000 A.D.—nearly three thousand years later than the oldest pyramids, which we planned to visit later. We then drove south along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to La Venta, birthplace of the Olmec, created before 1600 B.C. Then into the mountains up the Grijalva River to Palenque, a classic Mayan city stuffed with exotic treasures and founded around 300 A.D.
From Palenque we continued into the mountains to San Cristóbal de las Casas, where there are Indian villages whose people still live much the way their ancestors did. We returned from San Cristóbal by the Grijalva River, descended via the Pacific slope to the lowlands, then climbed the altiplano to Mexico City to visit the great pyramids of Cholula, the world’s biggest, and Teotihuacán, with its pyramids of the sun and moon. From Mexico we flew to Guatemala for a visit to the great rain forest city of Tikal, where the Maya had been building skyscraper pyramids for more than one thousand years. To this day they tower over the jungle, monuments to an amazing political system that inspired people for generations.
Our expedition covered not only different geographical areas but also different epochs, illustrated by the Olmec pyramids of La Venta (1600 B.C.) through the pyramids of Teotihuacán and Cholula (started c. 300 B.C.), to Monte Albán, a transitional Olmec/Mayan site, to early Maya (Tikal), classic Mayan (Palenque), and late Mayan (or Toltec) at Chichen Itza and Uxmal. We saw how pyramid building evolved over three thousand years and also how mathematics, art, astronomy, agriculture, and civil engineering developed in that period.
Sometimes Cantravelers split up—while Marcella and I went to Cholula, the others went to Mitla. Some went as well to Labna and Sayil while the rest of us revisited Uxmal. Whenever possible we stayed at jungle lodges built originally for the archaeologists whose dedicated work brought the sites from the jungle to the world’s attention. In towns we stayed at haciendas that had been the estates of Spanish conquistadors who carved out their fortunes in jute, or at former palaces of Spanish merchants. None of these were particularly expensive and they provided a charming reminder of the life created long ago by the adventurous but ruthless Spaniards who conquered Central America.
Rather than describe our tour chronologically I have selected three typical days along the way, first in the rain forest at Tikal, Guatemala, then a day in the villages where life was much as it was one thousand years ago, and finally in the marshes of La Venta. The pyramids have a chapter to themselves, as does the art of the Maya and Olmec; two chapters are devoted to DNA of the peoples, and the plants which Olmecs and Maya collected and shipped to the Old World long before the Spanish arrived.
A DAY IN THE RAIN FOREST OF TIKAL
We flew into the airport at Flores, capital of Guatemala’s Peten department, in a small aircraft across marshlands from neighboring Honduras. This is the access point to Tikal, the great Mayan archaeological site in the jungle. The road from Flores to Tikal leads through a great national park, part of the huge rain forest (the world’s fourth largest) that cloaks Guatemala. Beside the road, every few miles we saw signs warning of jaguars, snakes, or crocodiles. At the Jungle Lodge at Tikal three jaguar carcasses had been dumped quite recently by farmers who shot them for having stolen their cattle. It was dusk when we reached the lodge, but there was enough light to light our mosquito coils, start the ceiling fans, change clothes, and drink chotapeg sundowners on the balcony before dinner. We could hear the roar of the jaguars.
We were surrounded by black jungle, from which erupted a continuous cacophony of noise, largely from howler monkeys that wind each other up like opposing football teams. Suddenly the noise would stop as if by an unseen conductor. But an hour before dawn the howler monkeys were at it again, making sleep impossible. At daybreak, we met our guide, Antonio, a graduate of the University of Florida, whose family have been archaeologists at Tikal for fifty years.
The site is so vast we needed a truck to circumnavigate it, nearly ten miles from end to end. The view from the tops of the pyramids was breathtaking—the jungle canopy far below: one felt to be up in the clouds with the gods. This awesome stone city dates from 600 B.C. to 726 A.D.—dated from inscriptions, the Dresden Codex, and radiocarbon dating of wood used in building. More than one hundred scientists from the universities of Pennsylvania, Florida, and Arizona have been exploring different aspects of Tikal for years. They have bored the lake, extracted snails, and by analyzing the isotopes of oxygen in their shells have dated Tikal’s collapse to 869 A.D., a collapse caused by years of prolonged drought. Copan followed, then northern Mexico sites in 909. That was the end of the Maya civilization.
For nearly fifteen hundred years, priests of these Mexican civilizations garnered the collective energy of tens of thousands of people, starting their epic work before ancient Greece or Rome, and continuing to build these colossal structures century after century. They built magnificent edifices, often one on top of another. The structures typically surrounded a central plaza, the focus of ceremonial worship then and now. The most important buildings were nearest the center, the priests having the most favored location.
The surplus labor required for these massive projects could only have come from a very rich environment. Tikal was blessed in many ways. There was (until the widespread droughts in c. 850 A.D.) abundant rainfall—eighty inches a year—and a reservoir that held ten million gallons of water. Sea fish swam up rivers from both the Pacific and Atlantic (Tikal is on the ridge separating them) to spawn. Pheasants and agoutis were plentiful and the jungle was rich in all manner of plants—to be discussed later.
Tikal was also a center of trade, using spondulix (shells) from Ecuador as coinage. Cinnabar (to paint buildings), flint, and jade were exported to Monte Albán and Teotihuacán in the north and to Honduras in the south. Hallucinogens extracted from water lilies, bark, or toad were exchanged for hardwood from Belize. Architectural influences of Teotihuacán were deployed in the pyramids. There were four ball courts (compared to nineteen in Copan); the players were coached and played “away matches” with rivals. An interesting book, The Graffiti of Tikal, shows Asian merchants arriving on a three-masted ship. Kings were treated with reverence and were buried inside the pyramids accompanied by great quantities of carved jade (the ruler Pacal with thirty pounds of the stuff!).
However, it was the rain forest that provided Tikal with one thousand years of wealth. More than one hundred medicinal plants were a stone’s throw from our hut, varying in size from a seventy-foot-tall ficus to the guisador, a small ground shrub. The peoples of the rain forests use 90 percent of the forest for some purpose or other—by shamans for hallucinogens; as palms for thatch; for an endless variety of medicinal purposes; as vegetables and fruit, stimulants and sedatives, aphrodisiacs, soaps, tobacco, for all manner of drinks and vitamin additives.
An astonishing array of trees, shrubs, and their leaves and bark are used for medicine. As with medieval Europeans, people of the rain forest are keen on purges; they use piñon blanco, the roots of chiric sanango, latex from the oje blanco tree (the most powerful purgative of all), and the
root of the piro sanango. Equally popular are remedies against diarrhea. The young tender leaves of the cachu tree mixed with salt and sugar produce an effective remedy against dehydration. Leaves of the guya abaya, rich in tannins and potassium, not only cure diarrhea but also have antimicrobial properties. All sorts of remedies are available to cleanse blood—again reminiscent of medieval European man: cafe, a concoction of leaves; quoin—ginger root used all over the world for this purpose; or boiled bark of the puna tree. Interestingly, this bark is now being tested in the United States to discover whether, as claimed, it attacks the AIDS virus. Shinto vari leaves cure snakebites. Abscesses are treated with leaves of the prickly pear, jergon sacha. Piripiri bulbs soothe strained muscles. The latex from sangre de grado relieves toothaches and stomach pains; the crushed roots of the guisador have anti-inflammatory properties and cure herpes sores. Cedro blanco and piñon colorado resin is used for insect bites.
The rain forest has a diversity of trees for every purpose imaginable. Tall balsa trees provide the lightest wood known to man—with a density of 0.21–0.25, balsa is soft and porous, yet solid. At the other end of the scale is lignum vitae’s greenish brown heartwood, seven times as heavy as balsa. In between these two come all manner of woods and canes, flexible for bamboo and cane furniture, with high tensile strength for bows, other wood hard and light for arrows. The dining room chairs and tables at the Jungle Lodge in Tikal were carved from long-lasting ironwood.
The profusion of fruit and vegetables would take several books to describe. A few yards from our hut were wild bananas—bunches hung in our rooms. Yuccas are a delicious alternative to bread and potatoes. Climbing marrows or squashes come in all shapes and colors; cooking oil is extracted from their seeds. Tomatoes are rich in vitamins A, B, and C. Manioc or cassava, with tubers weighing about fourteen pounds, are roasted, dried, and ground to produce sago meal, used instead of rice or with coconut for milk puddings and for thickening juices of wild berries. The juice of the manioc preserves meat. Of all the vegetables of the rain forest, manioc and yucca seemed to be most commonly used at the Jungle Lodge.
A wide variety of beverages are extracted from jungle berries. Cacao (Anglicized long ago as cocoa), a thirty-foot tree, flowers throughout the year; the shell of the fruit, which ripens in all seasons, is about nine inches long, resembling a short, pointed gherkin covered with furrows and warts.
Inside the cacao shell are five rows of beans. The shell is crushed and the wet, fresh beans are fermented to develop their flavor. They are then rinsed and killed to prevent germination. The beans contain fat (cocoa butter) and caffeine, a stimulant. For chocolate, the beans are first roasted and ground, then sugar and vanilla—both available in the forest—are added. Alternatively, a butter is pressed out of the beans to produce cocoa. The tree grows all over the rain forest, in areas up to about one thousand feet above sea level. It yields crops for forty years. Caucho masha, a sap resembling milk, is used for baby food and as a tonic when sweetened by cana negra (“black cane”), a variety of sugar cane. Herb Louisa—sometimes called lemon verbena—is used today for Inca cola, the popular equivalent to Coca-Cola, sold throughout South America. Mexicans have been drinking cocoa since 1900 B.C.!
Before setting out on this adventure, I had imagined rain forest life would be a battle for survival. When seen at first hand, the richness of the rain forest explains what I had hitherto thought incomprehensible—that the people, where their habitat is undisturbed, may live a perfectly healthy, comfortable, well-fed existence by fishing and by gathering fruits, roots, and vegetables of the jungle. If they fall ill they can apply the remedies derived from the trees and shrubs that grow so abundantly around them.
In 1600 B.C., life in this Garden of Eden was virtually identical to what it is today, or indeed was in 1400 A.D. What has changed is the continued shrinkage of natural habitat. Today the world’s rain forest covers less than half the area it did in 1947, only about 6 percent of the Earth’s surface rather than the estimated 14 percent of earlier centuries. Valuable timber is being ruthlessly felled as the land is cleared for gold mining or agriculture. With deforestation, fertile soil is blown away or washed into the rivers, with the inevitable outcome—drought, flooding, and loss of wildlife. It is estimated that 20 percent of the world’s cultivated topsoil was lost in the forty years from 1960 to 2000. Even today, the rain forest of Peru and Brazil, although halved in area, is substantially larger than all of Western Europe.
As interesting as the profusion of flora in the New World is the evidence that plants were transmitted there from the Old World in the five millennia before Columbus. For this we have to thank Professors Sorenson and Johannessen for their lifetime of work. In the two millennia before Christ, produce indigenous to the Americas was transported to Asia: agave, love-lies-bleeding, spiny amaranth, cashews, peanuts, pineapple, and custard apple. Can one really imagine hunters trekking across thousands of miles of ice and snow to the Bering Strait, taking (along with their wives and children) pineapples and custard apples or Mexican poppies, sweet potatoes, or purslane?
During the Song dynasty, milkweed, kapok, chilis, squash, sage, arrowroot, bog myrtle, tomatoes, frangipani, and morning glory were transported from the Americas to Asia—again it is absurd to believe these were carried across the Bering Strait. A mass of plants including cross-pollination cotton was brought from the Americas to Asia by Zheng He’s fleets as well as hibiscus, bottle gourds, yam beans, and potatoes; mulberry trees were taken from Asia to Middle America, as was mugwort to Mexico.
Centuries later, we are still counting further riches. The tropical rain forest yields oils from cedar, juniper, cinnamon, and sandalwood; spices, gums, and resins used in inks, lacquers, and linoleum; tanning and dyeing materials; drugs, poisons, rubber, feathers, hides, fruits, vegetables, beverages, and woods of every description, for almost every purpose.
Our second destination was the colonial town of San Cristóbal de las Casas, nestled in the mountains of the Mexican state of Chiapas. One approaches on a road that wends westward from Tikal, a seven-hour, 345-mile drive through the mountains, a tortuous route with wonderful views of waterfalls, torrents, and cascades. San Cristóbal itself is a peaceful backwater in a pine-clad mountain valley at an altitude of 6,900 feet. The Mayan peoples took to the highlands after Palenque and Tikal were overrun by the Toltec. The Spanish aimed to farm sisal and built beautiful haciendas that line the main street and square today.
We arrived at San Cristóbal on November 1, the Day of the Dead, and found that the ancient Mayan funeral customs of the day are still observed. We visited two nearby Indian villages, San Juan Chamula and Zinacantán, where traditional Mayan culture was in evidence. The villages retain autonomy in certain aspects of life. The elders, for example, can expel women for marrying or having affairs with Europeans. These expelled women rejoice in long black dresses as they walk along the squares of San Cristóbal—exulting in their expulsion. Minor crimes are punished under San Juan Chamula law rather than Mexican.
The main cemetery of San Cristóbal was full of families observing the Day of the Dead. They had brought food for picnics and chatted happily, sitting among the graves of their loved ones; bottles of the deceased’s favorite beer and wine were placed on their tomb or gravestone. We felt rather intrusive and drove down to San Juan Chamula, about eight miles away, a unique town that preserves much of traditional Mayan culture.
At San Juan, we were met by our guide, Alex, a well-known figure in these parts. By way of introduction and without explanation or preamble, and rather surprisingly so, Alex exposed the top of his buttocks in the area of the coccyx to show us his “Mongolian spot.” He said this identified him as a true indigenous Maya from San Juan Chamula. He had this spot at birth, as his ancestors were Mongolian people from Asia. Alex told us that almost all the indigenous Indians were born with such a spot. I decided to ask him for more information that might lead to evidence of Mongolian or Chinese ancestry among local people.
/> Alex took me to a local church, where we saw people praying on a bed of pine needles. Here, as I observed the service, I asked questions based on my knowledge of Chinese religious practices. Sixteen of eighteen answers coincided with both peoples, Chinese and Mayan, though both cultures were separated by hundreds of years and thousands of miles.
At the left side of the altar a black chicken was being killed by breaking its neck—not by cutting its throat. I then asked about the Chinese practice of making paper effigies at religious festivals and then burning them. In fact, the same routine is carried out there in southern Mexico. Children, Alex said, make paper effigies that are then placed in a paper bag and hung from the ceiling. They are then given a pointed stick with which to destroy the paper bag.
I went down my list of Chinese practices and he almost always replied with an exact local equivalence:
“Do local people see a rabbit in the moon?”
Yes, Alex told me. “We have a children’s story that a wicked prince was turned into a rabbit and sent to the moon.”
“Are red clothes worn at weddings?”
“Yes—but not always. People can wear white.”
Who Discovered America? : The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas (9780062236777) Page 8
