The Bogaards in Mexico: Palenque!

We drove from Misol Ha thirty minutes to Palenque. We started in the museum, then we went to the ruins themselves, after, of course, some delicious, cheap, roadside tacos, mango, and tamales. We hired another great guide, Edgar, and shared him for two hours with a couple from Australia.

Here are some quick facts about Palenque:

***It was a Mayan city-state that flourished in the 7th century. The Palenque ruins date back to 226 BC to its fall around 1123 AD.

***Palenque is a medium-sized site, much smaller than such huge sites as Tikal or Copan, but it contains some of the finest architecture, sculpture, roof comb and bas-relief carvings that the Mayans produced.

***Historians now have a long sequence of the ruling dynasty of Palenque in the 5th century and extensive knowledge of the city-state's rivalry with other states such as Calakmul and Tonina.

***The discovered area covers just 1 sq. mile, but it is estimated that less than 5% of the total area of the city is explored, leaving more than one thousand structures still covered by jungle!

***An ancient name for the central core of the city currently consolidated was Lakam Ha, which translates as "Big Water", for the numerous springs and wide cascades that are found within the site.

***One of the main figures responsible for rebuilding Palenque and for a renaissance in the city's art and architecture is also one of the best-known Maya leaders - Pakal, who ruled from 603 to 683. At the time Alberto Ruz Lhuillier excavated Pakal's tomb it was the richest and best preserved of any scientifically excavated burial then known from the ancient Americas.

Liesl and Jeremiah in Palenque museum.

Everything in the museum was found on the grounds of Palenque. This was a fearsome representation of a Mayan God, in a sitting (meditation?) position.

J is in front of a model of the main palace that we would soon visit.

These are reproductions of Mayan hieroglyphs - part symbol, part word or part of word (syllable) that could be read (I think) left to right, top to bottom. Mayans filled their palaces,stellae (large, public stone monuments), etc with these hieroglyphs to record history. The elites in many of these big city states created huge books, codices, that recorded their histories: leadership, religion, astronomy, warfare, etc. Only a very few of these codices remain, as everything else was destroyed by the Europeans. What is amazing is that these hierglyphs have been slowly deciphered over time. Today, virtually all these glyphs can be read, and this has deepened profoundly our understanding of the Maya and history and development.

They are pictures, complicated pictures that represent words, ideas, and/or syllables.

Pictures of leaders engaged in specific activities are often coupled with glyphs to explain what is happening and when (in accordance with the Maya calendar, of course). Based on our understanding of these symbols, we know, for example, on what day and year specific elites were born, ascended the throne, succeeded in warfare, married, died, etc.

This is a perfect replica of King Pakal's sarcophagus. Made of solid stone, it measures roughly 2 meters by 4 meters. The top and bottom together weigh roughly 30 tons. The tomb of Pakal, Palenque's grandest leader, was only discovered in the last several decades, deep inside a pyramid tomb that he modestly built for himself before he died. This sarcophagus is covered with symbols of agricultural gods - for maize, corn, avocado, nance, and others. It was intended as an offering to the agricultural gods, to encourage their blessings. For the leaders of settlements like Palenque, the line between humans and gods was blurred. These leaders were physical manifestations of gods on earth.

This shows Edgar, explaining the Palace of the Skull. Palenque was abandoned in the 12th Century. Locals knew of it, and showed the Spaniards in the 16th century, but they were not impressed - no gold! It was "rediscovered" in the 1920s, when locals led Franz Blom, a European explorer and archeologist to the area.

The skull, in the palace of the skull.

J in front of Pakal's tomb on the left. On the right, under tarps, is a brand new operation that began just two weeks ago, with the discovery of a new tomb. We weren't allowed to get close.

In front of Pakal's tomb.

More from Edgar, with the main palace in the background. Hard to imagine how this would have looked at its apogee: the main plaza where we are standing was pure stucco - no dirt, to trees. Perhaps it was painted red with cinnabar, a mercury-based mineral that prevented growth of moss, plants, etc. The palace was also covered in stucco, bright red, with lots of paintings and images designed to intimidate, awe, and inspire.

Inside the palace meditation chamber. The king, at the start of the planting season, would meditate in the dark, apparently in yoga-like positions, for 9 days - the same amount of time that it would take just-planted maize seeds to break the earth with green shoots. The king's job meditating was to encourage a full, rich crop.

This is graffiti on the palace walls from Spanish explorers - Augusto I. D. Channey?

Placido Gomez...

This is dragon on the palace wall that looks strangely similar to Chinese dragons. Pre-European trade is well documented between Asians and First Nations of the Americas. Is this a Chinese-inspired sculpture?

The aqueduct serving the elite of Palenque. Water still runs through it. It had been covered. Mayans brought water up to the Palace from the aqueduct by using progressively smaller pipes...

This tower in the palace leans several degrees to the south. At first, it was thought to have been poorly constructed or had settled over time. Then it was discovered that the lean was intentional. This tower was built specifically so that on the equinoces (March 21 and Sept 21), a beam of sunlight would penetrate a hole in the roof that would shoot straight down the tower and hit a central spot on the tower's floor. And, with the exact lean, with the sun at its zenith on these two days, it would cast no shadow. Pretty sophisticated stuff.