Birthday at the Ruins

Corrie's birthday was one of the motivations of this trip, and spending her Saturday at the ruins at Copan afforded us with a trip that gave us a chance to see the Habitat settlement she worked on in Huite (we missed it) as well as to get to a nice set of ruins. Tikal, in northern Guatemala, is the big, bad, bossman of Mayan ruins.

Our original trip was a bit larger circle through Honduras, into Belize, and through northern Guatemala--and Tikal--and back down to the airport in Guatemala City. That trip was more like our European trip, of go-go-go. Looking back now, a week removed, I think we might've been able to pull it off, but I'll never be upset about our more relaxing trip.

Copan, in today's Honduras, was the seat of one of the Mayas most important cities in the south east region of their empire. It's height of power and influence was during the Classic Period for the Maya, about 300 CE to 900 CE. Around 900 Copan was attacked and toppled by one of their subjugated vassals further to the east, and this started the decline. By 1200, the city center had been mostly abandoned, and by the time the Spanish arrived, the Maya in general were shells of their former selves, Copan was basically already ruins, and the Aztec, further north in present day Mexico, was the real power broker.

There was one of the ball-courts on the grounds, one of the larger and more important ones still around. After important games, the loser would be vanquished. The ball court is one of the highlights of Copan's ruins.

The other main highlight are the sculptures. There are so many spectacular stela--large ornate rectangular statues, not unlike decorated obelisks. Besides the stela and altars--spots for sacrifices in front of the stela--there are the mostly intact "hieroglyphic stairs". The large staircase going to the top of one of the walls had hundreds of years of Mayan history carved in glyph form spread from the floor of the city to the top of the building. Today a protective canvas tent structure covers the stairs, which are inaccessible to visitors' feet.

Here's a sense of how it all would have looked back at the height of the city's eminence.



When you first arrive at the ruins, you pass through a macaw sanctuary. They are beautiful and big. Also, they're loudmouths. They screech and scream and holler and shout. I'm pretty sure that "macaw" is a Mayan word for "won't shut the hell up." The scarlet macaw is the national bird of Honduras.



Then, once in the grand plaza, you first encounter a small step pyramid. This is a thing that they allow people to climb. For how much longer is anybody's guess. The stairs on these pyramids are deliberately spread out farther than current building code allows. They're far like that so you don't "turn your back on god" when descending. It is very difficult to walk down the stairs like you would normal stairs, rather, you feel like backing down them.



The stela are spread out, each telling the story of the king who erected them over the years. The remaining stelae seem to cover from 600 CE to around the late 800s CE.



The ball court (the slanted sides facing each other) and hieroglyphic stairs are right next to each other (as you can see from the first depiction of the classic period).



From those points we ventured around the back;



...to the living quarters of the royal family.




I even found a hole on the grounds of the royal family.



I jumped down into it, just to see what I could see. When I got down in there, a weird buzzing sound began to hit my ears. It wasn't so much a buzz as it sounded like the low glottal voicing of the vocal chords, a low "eeeeehhhhhhhhhh" in my ears. Whatever it was, it sparked a wave of get-me-outta-here's in me, so my stay in the hole wasn't very long.

Next we went over to the back of the Acropolis. Through the years the Mayan at Copan would build over the initial structure to better match the time's design sensibilities. This leads to elaborate structures buried beneath the newer ones and a maze of tunnels left over for viewing the various burials. We didn't take any tunnel tours (overpriced for what you can actually see), but you can see the entrances.



From there you slink around to the top and can look over the plaza and ball court, in a spot reminiscent of the painted picture of the classic period.



Up here also is one of the Old Men (just a head in the lower right hand corner of this picture).



The Mayan mythology has the world being held up by the Old Men standing on the back of a crocodile. If completely reassembled and restored, the Old Men would be the tallest human figure statures at any Mayan site.

Nearly worn out, here are a few more random pictures from the way out and around to the museum. We spent a serious amount of time over there, but I'll put another post up about that later.