We went to bed with howler monkeys outside our window, trying to convince the world of their status as large apex predators, guarding territory.
“Tikal is not the name the people used for this place,” our guide the next day explained in passable Spanglish. “It’s the name people used later. Like ‘echo’. The whisper of souls that were here before.”
But what were they doing here, these Mayans? There’s no reason to be here. No ocean. No lake. No river. No wells. No springs. No natural quarries. Not even a few insignificant creeks. Except for the rainy season, no water. A bunch of people looking to hide from enemies in a place no one would conceivably expect them to go? A band of hunter-gatherers passing through one day just decide to take an evolutionary leap into farming?
Whatever the reason, they put up their first major structure about 800 BC. And guess what? this primitive people have, uh, architects. Because inside this first pyramid, archeologists discover, 2800 years later, a scale model. A scale model of the building, the temple? That would be remarkable enough. But no – a scale model of the entire complex that over the next 1600 years would become a major city in the midst of a featureless jungle. Why? how? why?
Whoever they were, these people were no dummies. They experimented with various tree saps, clays, soils and ground rocks to build cisterns and drainage systems to hold rainwater year around. They built their pyramids to reflect the four directions and the rise and set of the sun and moon at the equinoxes and solstices. Western calendars attempt to reconcile cycles of the Earth, Moon and Sun. The Mayan Calendar, and counting system, included the periodicity of all the visible planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn.
A little different than “here’s a river, let’s set up a few huts and maybe it’ll expand into Pittsburg.” These people had a purpose and a plan. We only have clues. For instance, east-west temples and pyramids face each other. They’re yin-yang, dynamic tension. But north-south buildings align with each other. The result, our 31 year old guide, who has given all this more than a little attention, is that the entire complex of buildings in Tikal – we covered about six k’s in five hours of hiking, and saw roughly 15% of what’s been cleared – is the human chakra system. Like a mag-lev train, the energy is propelled in a specific direction. At least that’s what I think he said. He did say ‘chakra’, But maybe that’s what I think. Or my guides. Or only some new age nonsense. But if it’s nonsense, then somebody else make sense of the complexity displayed. The Mayans weren’t building mausoleums for the dead. They had a mission for the future.
Another interesting argument our guide made: the Mayans didn’t believe in gods. That’s a western overlay. The Jaguar Temple for instance does not represent workshop of a Jaguar God, but of an elemental force of creation represented by a Jaguar motif. More like an archetype. While the massive headdresses worn by rulers represent the responsibilities that rested on their shoulders.
The next day: You know, one of those times when you walk into a coffee shop and find someone you haven’t seen in 15 years and you tell him you’re going to visit some Mayan ruins and he tells you he happens to know a Mayan priestess who lives there, and gives you her FB connection, so you reach out and don’t hear anything until the day before, when she writes back and tells you, “I’m not around, but don’t miss out on . . . “.
So here we are in Yaxha. Which is the next set of ruins down the road in the direction we’re going anyway. Yeah, it happens that way a lot, right?