Water and Sky on the Way to Lamanai

This morning we got up early and took a fast boat up the so-called New River to Lamanai. The river is a myriad system of waterways which reminded me very much of the Amazon region in Brasil. Sometimes the river was very wide and sometimes the river was very narrow. Often lily pads lined the banks, and birds would walk along them watching for bites to eat in the water below. At least once we caught the bubbles of a crocodile as he (or she?) slid below the surface so as to escape our eager gazes.

Eventually we made it to Lamanai, and upon disembarking the mosquitos began to devour us. These mosquitos were huge! I have seen lots of mosquis before, but never this big. Needless to say, I was glad to have started taking my malaria meds last week, because the lightweight citronella hoighty-toighty organic nonsense I had in my backpack was no match for these monsters.

The Maya site at Lamanai includes 718 mapped structures, an ancient harbor and a well defined sacbe, which is a Maya road leading in and out of the city. All of this suggests that Lamanai was an extensive and important site for the Maya in the region. Furthermore, although some of the structures show evidence of being constructed earlier, Lamanai is important for its Middle Classic traits which combine elements of both Early Classic and Late Classic artistry.  

Early Classic is the period which generally runs from about 250 - 600 CE, and is considered the beginning of the high point in Maya political development, art and architecture. Most of the motifs in Maya art and culture have been clearly established by the Early Classic, including social hierarchy, ball court construction, glyphs, the calendar and the pantheon of gods. Interestingly enough, it is also during the Early Classic that we begin to see the first influence from Teotihuacan, which is the great city in Central Mexico and a pre-cursor to the Aztec.

The Middle Classic is really just an overlapping era which runs from about 500 - 700 CE. What's important to keep in mind is that the Middle Classic differs from region to region. Here in the Belizean lowlands the Middle Classic appears a bit later than it does further south in the highlands of Guatemala.

The Late Classic runs from about 600 - 800 CE. This era marks the beginning of the end of Maya greatness, although that decline also differs from region to region.

One of the more significant finds includes a structure that was excavated in the ceremonial section at Lamanai. The building was given the ignominous name N10-27 by archaeologists. The drawing below suggests its appearance when the Maya constructed it, and it's pretty likely that it was named something different by the Maya too. I photographed this from an article so the flower at the top of the picture is the artwork on the hotel room bed covering.

This is what the structure looks like today.

Lamanai was originally settled around 900 BCE. The spot where this structure is located began to take on important sacred meaning for the Maya by about 200 BCE and, as a result, they just kept constructing new temples over the older ones so that there are layers of buildings underneath this one.

By the time we get to about 600 CE this structure has been modified into it's last iteration as an administrative and religious complex which includes the enclosure with three doorways that can best be seen in the drawing above. A stela was placed in the middle doorway of this enclosure. Underneath the stela was an offering pit, which contained the remains of five children ranging in age from infants to about eight years of age. There were also shell beads, chert and obsidian placed in the offering pit. David Pendergast, one of the archaeologists who worked at this site in the 1980s claims "the five children were sacrificial victims ... [because the] remains bear no signs of violent death." Pendergast asserts that the final stage of construction, along with the placement of the stela and the offering of children, was part of a ritual. It's full meaning and importance is poorly understood.

What we do know is that the stela depicts a king of Lamanai known as Lord Smoking Shell. He is dressed in clothing which suggests his accession to the throne, and the writing on the stela tells us this auspicious event took place in 608 CE. The stela itself was placed in the doorway of the structure in 625 CE.

The text from the stela reads,

Wucub ahau ox pop tzoki te tun waa...
Uuac kib kan zec
Wucublajun tunob kan kinob xikah kaan
chicchan pal ahau...
Ukabale butz anki sol kaan tu ton ain
macuch lakin LAMA'AN'AIN

In case you don't read Maya it reads,

It was on 7 ahau 3 pop that the tree stone of time ended
[a 52-year era ended in 625 A.D.]
He had become ruler 17 yrs 4 days before [A.D. 608] on 6 Kib 4 Zec
He was the youngest son of the heir to the king
His name was Lord Smoking Shell

His celestial Progenitor was the Spirit Crocodile
Lord of the east, of the province of LAMA'AN'AIN

From rubbings, photos and interpretations of the glyphs it is believed that the head portion of the stela looked like this in situ:

Today it looks like this:

In terms of interpreting some of the iconography of the image, Dorie Reents-Budet of Duke University Museum of Art has done a nice job in her essay entitled "The Iconography of Lamanai Stela 9."

In her essay, Reents-Budet explains that Lord Smoking Shell's torso is depicted frontally but his head is in profile. Furthermore, Lord Smoking Shell wears a headdress which is similar to other Early Classic images in the Guatemala highlands. Interestingly, Lord Smoking Shell's head "emerges from an open-mouthed serpent headdress." This can best be seen in the drawing above as the serpent is colored blue and surrounds the king's head. In this case, the serpent represents origins so depicting the ruler's head as coming out of the mouth of the serpent is the Maya way of saying the king is great because he is associated with the origin of the world. His head emerges from the center of the beginning.

The king also holds a "double-headed ceremonial bar diagonally across his body." The ceremonial bar is something akin to the king's sceptor and represents his power and authority. This particular ceremonial bar also contains imagery in it that associates Lord Smoking Shell with the two Hero Twins of the Popol Vuh. Furthermore, Lord Smoking Shell's left hand holds a zoomorphic image of Venus, which is a celestial monster. Reents-Budet explains that because of the placement of the ceremonial bar and the symbols embedded in it, the artist of this stela is presenting the viewer with a "Classic Period model of the cosmos, with the front head of the celestial monster (Venus) in [the king's] left hand and, cradled in in his right arm, the ceremonial bar from which emerges" one of the Hero Twins who represents the underworld sun. All of this, according to Reents-Budet, "demonstrates Lamanai's innovative manipulation of the royal symbols that were being reconfigured during the Middle Classic."

Orange Walk Town

This morning we left San Ignacio by bus and headed north. We are now in Orange Walk Town, which is a gritty little city of about 20,000 people situated in a predominately agricultural region -- sugar cane, mostly. The town sits on the banks of the New River, which was aptly named by the English because it was new to them. It was not, however, new for the Maya who have lived in these parts since at least about 1000 BCE. They called the river the Dzuluinicob, which means "foreign men." Perhaps they named it this because the river is a deep water channel and a means by which foreigners can navigate up it.

This part of Belize has an interesting history which can be compressed into distinct periods of time. There is evidence of human habitation going back at least as far as 7000 BCE. Then between about 7000-1200 BCE there is evidence of a kind of formative pre-ceramic people. Neither of these two groups are considered to be Maya.

Some time around 1200-900 BCE we find evidence of a ceramic society. These are people thought to be the earliest Maya in the region. They are constructing waddle and daub structures which is essentially plaster stuck between and on top of small wooden poles. What's really cool about this is that very tiny fragments of cotton with textile weave have been found pressed into the plaster.

So picture this: some man is building his house around 1000 BCE. It's hot so he takes a little break to wipe his brow and catch his breath. He leans back against the wet plaster that he just laid and it creates an imprint that dries in the form of the weave of his clothes.

Three thousand years later, we are finding that imprint. And what it tells us, along with the the type of construction of the house, is that weaving and textile making were in place by 1000 BCE. It also suggests that cotton production is already in place by this time because surely whoever this man is, he's not the only one around wearing cotton textiles. Furthermore, agricultural production suggests a sedentary, rather than a nomadic, form of society.  We have all the ingredients for a settlement.

This era from 1200-900 BCE is known as the Cunil Phase. Beyond the agriculture, textiles and housing construction other items have been found that are associated with these people. Those items include small ceramic figurines, carved jade objects, obsidian blades and some slate carvings. Since some of these materials are not from the Upper Belize River Valley, scholars suggest that by 1000 BCE extensive trade networks had been established between Honduras in the south, Guatemala in the west and the coastal plains of Tabasco and Veracruz in the north. It is what Jaime Awe calls a "pan-Mesoamerican" network. Furthermore, early motifs associated with both the Olmec and the Maya are beginning to appear in the artifacts. These are also considered "pan-Mesoamerican motifs" and include a slate crocodilian effigy. This last item is important because it relates to one of the oldest temple sites in the region known as Lamanai.

Lamanai was recorded by the Spanish when they arrived in the early 16th century as Lamanay or Lamayna. This is a twist on the Maya word Lama'anayin, which means "submerged crocodile." Apparently the crocodile was symbolically important to the people of the region as far back as 1000 BCE, and it continued to be important to them when they began constructing a portion of the temple complex known as the Mask Temple in 200 BCE.

Perhaps most important for our discussion here is the fact that the Mask Temple at Lamanai not only is "clearly related to characteristics of Olmec iconography" -- which supports that pan-Mesoamerican motif theory, but that the masks on the temple appear with an "up-turned upper lip and broad nose. The masks are each adorned with a headdress representing a crocodile. This symbol validated the ancient site name recorded by the Spaniards as Lamanay, 'place of the crocodile.'" All of the quotes come from Jaime Awe's book entitled Maya Cities and Sacred Caves: A Guide to the Maya Sites of Belize.

Happily, I report that tomorrow we will take a boat up the river with Jaime Awe to visit Lamanai.