Before we went to Mexico, I was fairly well prepared not to see much of the actual country. Granted, it wouldn’t be too difficult to escape the confines of the all-inclusive resort, but still, the main purpose of the trip was to meet the family. We did make plans for a day’s outing, split into two groups. The hard-core culture fans (my father’s partner, Gudrun, and I) went to the ancient city of Coba and then on to the port city of Tulum, while the rest (brother Björn, brother-in-law Ívar, his son Benedikt and Gudruns son Robert) also went to Coba (but on a separate tour) but then on to fly around on ziplines and swim in a cenote.
The last bit I truly envy them of. Most of the Yucatán peninsula is rather poor of natural resources and the ground pretty much just a slab of limestone with surprisingly little topsoil after all this time. Limestone is soluble which probably accounts for how flat the landscape is, since water seeps straight down into the ground until it hits firmer ground and forms long underground rivers. Rather than carve out the surface, these rivers therefore form underground caves which trees must stretch their roots into. These are called cenotes in Mayan language. Fig-trees are not only exceptionally good at finding these cenotes but often crack the top of these caves making them accessible.
The water in the cenotes is so clean that one can see the bottom tens of meters below the surface. In the exposed cenotes, an ecosystem furthermore helps keep them clean. Catfish in these cenotes live of droppings from bats that live in these caves and collect fruit outside. What happens to the fish, I don’t know.
Still, I’m not sure I would have traded traded Victor for that. Victor was our guide for the day. A Mexican who lived in Germany for seven years (and spoke brilliant German; was even cracking jokes all day long), studied Mayan archeology, brought home a German wife who bore him a child in Maya land where they now live. While not a Mayan himself he was extremely passionate about sharing their story, culture … and lessons.
His first point was that the Mayans never disappeared. While their grand cities were deserted and their civilisation of thousands of years largely discontinued, the people are still here. And will be. Long after the multi-ethnic communities that now add to the community of the Yucatán peninsula will be washed away by the tides of time, the Mayans, he assured us, would still remain. That was their nature; to prevail.
Interesting stuff, eh? I was very happy with his guidance. He was fairly level-headed, portrayed the Mayans as normal humans and didn’t waste much (if any) time on academic things like naming architectural styles but rather tried to give us insight into Mayan life. By a large look-out structure built by one of the many great Mayan roads (trade made the Mayans rich, there not being much in th way of natural resources) he broke open a container of seeds revealing inside a dozen or so seeds covered with a fine dark-red substance which the Mayans used for dyeing and their women for colouring their lips. Then from the ground he picked a small flower, asked for a cigarette and with the embers heated the pink petals, turning them blue. These were examples of the scarce resources available to the Mayans, and an example of their great empire that they could gather them in sufficient number to dye clothes and colour their buildings, such as the top of the tower above us.
He also gave us some chewing-gum. Not the derivative of the Japanese synthetic, sweetened latex gum, but the original Mayan gum made from tree sap. It’s mostly tasteless, the consistency pretty much the same as real (i.e. fake) gum, but lasted for hours without becoming stale. Useful too, as I used it to mend the crappy sunglasses I bought in the souveneir shop (where we stopped for a toilet break, “this is not a shopping trip, with me” said Victor) to save my eyes from the sun. Only before dinner when we stopped at this beautiful white beach for lunch did I toss the gum away, happy in the knowledge that it would decompose sooner than the plastic bag in which it went…
On the way from Coba to Tulum, Victor decided to give us a break from his lecture, but urged us to ask if we had any questions. A couple did, and after that he retreated to the front alongside the driver. Curious as I am, but lacking the courage and concrete questions, I asked Gudrun if she reckoned I could just go up to him and ask him a few things. She figured it would be OK, so I did.
We had a nice chat where he explained the rought history of the Mayans, how they migrated along the coast from modern day Guatemala, set up their cities but regularly had to abandon them for various reasons, which often had something to do with failing crops from drought or soil over-use (I’m sure there is a technical term for that).
The ground deplete of metals or hard enough rocks, the Mayans were never a great military nation and the aristocracy gained their power through knowledge and faith, which at the time were one and the same. The shape of the Mayan towers (or “pyramids”) was influenced by the reverence of the time of year when the sun, at noon, stands straight avbove and one can stand on one’s own shadow. At that time, the towers don’t cast a shadow and rain is near.
With this ability to predict the coming of rain, the scientist-priests claimed to speak to, and on behalf of, the gods, demanded a (human) offering to the gods and received rain in return. The Mayans, however, were never tied to a city and often migrated from place to place. When the rain failed to come, they lost faith in their masters’ ability to speak to the gods or concluded that the gods had abandoned the city, and thus sought a new place as well.
As we started discussing the downfall and it’s causes, Victor offered a piece of his own theory; one that has a relevant lesson for our day as well. He figured that while individual cities ran their course and others were built, the ultimate end of that era came when there was a split in the scientist-priest community. The one arm stuck to astronomical observations and math, while the other became convinced of their theology themselves. Ignoring science as a tool for understanding nature they weren’t prepared for changes in climate and vegetation. Large scale deforestation shifted and modified the seasons and no amount of offerings could resist that tide.
Stuck in the framwork of their religion, the ruling class turned to force to discipline the masses, but the Mayan’s weren’t used to loyalty to people or force, and the military had no effective weapons to beat them into submission, so the last great cities of stone were abandoned for villages of huts.
Thus was the end of the ancient Mayan civilisation, but the people still exist today — they are the shorter, rounder Mexicans with almond-shaped eyes, betraying their Asian origin — as do their stories.
