San Ignacio, Belize

This morning we got up early and took the bus south to the Belizean border. After going through customs we had to switch buses and drivers, and then we headed southwest into Belize. Almost immediately the terrain changes, the buildings are different, and the language is understandable. Palm trees intersperse with pine, and some areas are quite marshy. The buildings are usually constructed by wood or brick and often painted bright colors. The exterior of the place where we are staying is painted bright lime green.

English is spoken in the market but I have heard people speaking Spanish too. When I approach they switch to English. As for currency, Belize is 2 to 1 on the U.S. dollar. So earlier today I picked up two bananas in the market and it cost me B25 cents, which is about 12 cents U.S. Pretty cheap! Here's a picture of the market that I walked through this afternoon.

This evening we had a seminar with William Saturno, who had just flown in from Boston. He will be the archaeologist leading the seminars with us for the next few days.

Tonight's talk was about the recent (2001) discovery of paintings inside a temple at San Bartolo, Guatemala. The images are early -- dating to about the 1st century BCE -- and advance our understanding of language and text development in pre-Classic Maya. In particular, "This early Maya writing implies that a developed Maya writing system was in use centuries earlier than previously thought, approximating a time when we see the earliest scripts elsewhere in Mesoamerica." According to Saturno, the instruments Maya scribes used to make paper have been dated back to about 1800 BCE. This suggests that if people were making paper they were also writing on that paper, so writing in the Americas may be much older than previously believed. Unfortunately paper is a very perishable material and there are no known books on paper that date back this far.

And, while the glyphs are fascinating, so are the images that accompany them. The scenes that are known include a series of four separate events. Each scene can stand alone, but really they are intended to be viewed in sequence. In the first scene, a figure known as Principle Bird Deity sits in a tree. He is large and imposing, and he represents the chaos of the uncivilized world. To the left of the Principle Bird Deity is the figure of a man, who Saturno believes is a representation of Hunahpu. This figure is from the story of Popol Vuh, and he is known as one of the Hero Twins. Hunahpu, along with his brother Xbalanque, are considered the beginning of the human race.

As the viewer's eye moves through the four scenes, Hunahpu embarks on a quest of sacrifice. He pierces his penis and slaughters a different animal in each scene. By the time the viewer gets to the last scene, Hunahpu is victorious over the Principle Bird Deity, which is now depicted as dead. As Saturno explained it tonight, it is necessary to conquer the Principle Bird Deity in order to create an organized, civilized world. Hunahpu slays the chaos and in doing so, creates civilization.

Thus part of what makes the discovery of these paintings so important is the dating of the glyphs, but also the correlation of the imagery to the known story of the Popol Vuh. This is the oldest known painting of events from the Popol Vuh.

Unfortunately, because of the political situation in Guatemala right now, we will not be able to go to the site at San Bartolo.