Wednesday, 9 March 2011

PALENQUE

El Palacio
Palenque is Spanish for fortress; this is a beautifully presented Maya city site. We had a guide, Victor, who helped us understand what had been discovered at Palenque. Victor did not have the typical facial features of a person of Maya descent. He spoke English well and had a sense of humour.

We started with templo XIII, the Tomb of the Red Queen. The tomb, which is painted in cinnibar red, was only discovered in 1994 hidden deep within the pyramid. It is the second most impressive tomb at Palenque with a jade mask and many precious stones, pearls and obsidian.

Outside the tomb was the skeleton of a woman lying face downward and the skeleton of child lying face upward. The suggestion is that the woman and child were sacrificed to accompany the Red Queen into the afterlife. The next building is named the Templo de las Inscripciones for the many gliphs carved into the interior walls. Archeological exploration within this pyramid led to the discovery of the magnificent tomb of Pakal down a well-hidden interior stairway some 1.44 metres below the surface of the plaza.

The lid of the tomb, weighing around ten tons, depicts the governor (king) either descending to or rising from the underworld. The lid is so heavy that it could not be moved and has been left in place. Our guide pointed out that Pakal is taller than the ordinary Maya, but that he had one leg longer than the other.

Our guide said that the royal family of Pakal's time, like the Lacandones of the past century, did not marry outsiders. The family of the governors/kings married within the family group. The guide called it "incest" but I am not sure that is what he meant. It seems that there developed some inherited genetic features -- six fingers and disproportions.

After a visit to the Templo del Sol and the Templo de la Cruz Foliado we went to the Palacio. The Palace structure is one of the most complex and elegantly constructed of the Maya world. There are corridors using the Maya arch in its largest form, a series of toilets washed clean by water passing below, rooms for sleeping and a central open courtyard that received foreign dignitaries and prisoners of war.

Only a tenth of the extent of the Palenque ruins have been excavated. There are over a 100 pyramids in the area.  The question that many ask is how it is that in the 9th century these huge stone cities came to be abandoned? Was there a change in the weather, the depletion of the fertility of the surrounding agricultural lands, a series of destructive wars?  Where have the Maya gone?  As our guide pointed out -- there are the peoples of Maya descent in the surrounding villages.  The vendors selling craft goods to the tourists are of Maya descent.


For centuries the stone cities sunk beneath the encroaching forest. Today with the tourist industry generated by these sites and with the sense of a pride in Maya achievements and identity, there is a growing realization that the Americas had highly developed cultures prior to the arrival of the Europeans. For the purposes of the ISW program there is the question of what are the dynamics of the rise and fall of empires? On what basis did the Maya city states rise to the point they did and on what basis did they decline and disappear into the shadows of memory?

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