I’ve had a long absence. I traveled around state to state to get hooded, for Christmas with my family, and then for holidays with my girlfriend’s family, and then we took a vacation to the Yucatán.
Map of gravity anomalies in the Chixculub crater. The circular portion is ~180 km across. The white line is the superimposed coast of the Yucatán Peninsula; the white dots are mapped cenotes. Image from the Geological Society of Canada.
Geologically, the Yucatán Peninsula is a big slab of limestone – an interesting enough rock; I like caves and karst as much as the next guy, but it’s not really my cup of tea. Of course, the Yucatán is the site of the great Chicxulub impact that occurred at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) transition and which may have killed the dinosaurs, the ammonites, etc. You can see it from satellite and you can image it by geophysical methods, but the only surface manifestation is a concentration of sinkholes in the karst around the rim. These water-filled sinkholes are called cenotes (dzonot in Mayan) and were important to the ancient Maya as sources of water and as ceremonial entrances to the underworld. We saw a few cenotes and swam in one, and that was my only geological undertaking on this trip, except for identifying onyx, limestone, and obsidian on the souvenir tables.
The Cenote Sagrado at Chichén Itzá. It was dredged twice in the 20th century; in it were found bodies of infants and adults along with jade and other precious items.
We had a good mix of ruins, cities, and beaches. We stayed in Cancún (the city, not the monstrous beach hotel zone), Vallodalid, Mérida, Ticul, and Tulum. We spent New Year’s eve and day in Mérida – a beautiful colonial city with a strong Mayan influence (like all of the Yucatan that we saw). We drove some back roads, which was an adventure in itself. We stayed on the beach in Tulum to finish our vacation with a bit of luxury after budget hostels and inns elsewhere. We ate great food everywhere – my favorites of the local delicacies were cochinita pibil (meltingly succulent pork cooked in banana leaves and served with pickled onions) and sopa de lima (“lime soup”). I also had some wonderful posole (hominy stew with pork, chicken, and chiles), but it’s more of a Jalisco than Yucatán dish. Though I love tamales, they are seldom served in restaurants and I had only one, bought at a street market and taken as a package lunch to Ek’ Balam. Along the Caribbean coast we had great seafood in Italian- and Thai-styles dishes that incorporated varying fusion with Mexican cuisine. This might seem odd, but all three traditions – Thai, Italian, and Yucateac – prize seafood, fresh vegetables, and chiles, and the latter two especially prize tomatoes, which of course the Yucatecs had before the Italians. I’ve never seen prettier tomatoes than in the markets of the Yucatán.
Shrimp and octopus pizza on the beach in Tulum.
We saw ruins in Tulum, Ek’ Balam, Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, X’lapek, and Labna. Uxmal was our favorite – a truly spectacular site nestled in the Puuc hills. Uxmal, along with Kabah, Sayil, X’lapek, and Labna, defines a particular Puuc style of Mayan architecture marked by elaborately decorated protruding facades also evident in the Classic-era (pre-850 AD) Chichén Itzá buildings. Later buildings at Chichén Itzá (and some at Uxmal) show more influence from central Mexico Toltec culture. There doesn’t seem to be much agreement yet as to whether this purported Toltec influence was from invasion or cultural osmosis, as it’s known there was widespread trade throughout Mesoamerica. But it’s interesting that the Maya “collapse” in the highlands and southern lowlands precedes a flourishing in the northern lowlands (including all of the area we visited) that is accompanied by increased Toltec influence. Though human sacrifice was apparently practiced throughout ancient Mayan history, it peaked in the post-classic, Toltec-influenced period (after about 850-900 AD). Though drought is often invoked as a cause of the Mayan decline, the northern lowlands where the resurgence occurred are the driest part of the Mayan world, so it’s more complicated than sometimes portrayed. (I should move on, because I’m straying dangerously far from my expertise.)
View of Uxmal from the platform of the House of Turtles. The ball court is in the center and the Pyramid of the Dwarf is in the distant right.
During the trip I read Michael D. Coe’s Breaking the Maya Code about the decipherment of the Mayan hieroglyphics. It’s a very good book and I recommend it; if you want a detailed history of the Mayan cultures you may want to start elsewhere, as this is really an intellectual history of the investigation. Coe is a Yale Professor Emeritus and an important Mayanist himself, having written one of the foremost textbooks on ancient Mayan civilization and playing a part in the decipherments.
Puuc architecture at Kabah. This is a wall of more than 250 Chaac (a rain god) masks. Some still have their protruding noses intact.
Coe is quite critical of the Mayanists who he feels delayed progress by clinging to romantic notions of Mayan mystical symbolism or by underestimating Mayan practicality and sophistication. Either way, many workers refused to believe that the Mayan hieroglyphics have a phonetic basis and record a spoken language. In the end, Mayan writing yielded to the same techniques used to crack Egyptian, Assyrian, and Hittite scripts, though it took much longer. Coe’s book documents the failures of science that stem from the human flaws of its practitioners – be they racism, romanticism, or just stubbornness and vanity, but it also shows the truth winning out in the end.
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