Mayan Field Report #2

December 16, 2024

The trip has wrapped up. I’m back home. The first things I did when I got back were to drink water out of the tap and flush the toilet paper down the drain and not put it in the basket beside the porcelain throne. Ah me, America.

I way over packed for this trip. I was sick just before going and didn’t do a purge of my selected clothing. Rather, I threw everything into the bag. Big mistake. 

I was feeling okay a day or two before the trip and my sinus and chest congestion went completely away by day two. That only left my out of shape body to deal with. Because I had been sick before the trip I hadn’t done any conditioning. I have found if I do a series of exercises in the morning my back doesn’t hurt, and I did them. But then my hip joints ached. One of the women on the trip asked me if I had taken any ibuprofen. No, I had’t. She promptly gave me some of hers that she was carrying. I told her I had some back at the hotel. I discovered on my return that I had not one, but two bottles of the meds. 

Now here’s where it gets weird. I always carry the stuff in my medicine bag, but I never take it. You know, you might need it and you don’t want to waste it. Yeah, I know, Now. That’s crazy thinking, but hey. It’s what I was doing. In my mind, the last dot was connected for me with the simple question, “Do you have any ibuprofen?” And then I realized Oh that’s what it’s for!

I know it’s kind of crazy. No, it is crazy. But after years of therapy you can sometime figure this stuff out. And the hardest to unravel is the crazy stuff. Because to admit it is to tell the world, and who wants to look stupid? But now I realize, yeah, I’m willing to look stupid. Like when you were hanging out trying to look cool and someone asked, “Don’t you get it?” Of course you’d say, “Yeah.” Because you didn’t want to admit you had no idea (because you’d look stupid. Now? “NO.” 

So moving on. I took ibuprofen every morning before we started out and kept some with me, taking another round when my hip joints started to quietly yell.

My Oura ring had a step count goal of 8,000 steps a day. Most days I had reached that by 11 am. By the end of the day I was up to 14 or 15,000.

Yikes.

The purpose of the trip was to investigate and visit the sites of the Snake Kingdom. Snake in Mayan is the word “Kanul.” There’s a glyph for it. Typically, a snake face in  profile with fangs.

Earlier this year, I had given a talk to the folks at The Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) about the Snake Kingdom. When I signed up to do that talk I was under the impression that the Snake Kingdom was at a site called El Mirador. This because of a TV show that claimed it to be so. Turns out most people don’t believe that to be the case, but it makes for a great TV episode title. 

Now I was stuck. I had a talk I was supposed to give about a Mayan kingdom that I really didn’t know much about. I did research and found that many of the archaeologists were also confused as to where the snake kingdom was. It was a Calakmul. No, it’s a site we’re not sure where, called Site Q. No, it started at a Dzibanche and moved. Maybe, to Calakmul; maybe Site Q; maybe somewhere else.

When I gave my talk I had it pretty well nailed down. I sent a note to Simon Martin. He was one of the authors of the book on Mayan kingship. He wrote back and said that it started at Dzibanche, went to Calakmul (probably) and then to a few other places and back to Dzibanche. And without any more evidence that’s where the question of the Snake Kingdom rests.

Well, guess what? Yeah. There’s another site. It is probably, maybe, where it all started. It’s called Ichkabal.

It’s a huge site. Why hasn’t this been mentioned much? Well, you see, ha-ha. It was recently discovered. Recent, being ten or twenty years ago, and there’s been some, but not a lot, of excavation and little has made it’s way into the literature. When I say little has been excavated that’s deceptive, because a lot has been done, but in proportion to the whole site it’s a small percentage. There’s a large plaza. that can hold I’d guess four football field, maybe six. On one side is a huge pyramid of which the top part has been cleaned up and restored. Consolidated is the term used by the archaeologists. The rest is still a giant earthen hill. 

Very typically Mayan pyramids have a set of stairs to a level area, the another set of stairs to another level area, and then a short set of stairs to the very top, which can’t be seen from the ground because the raised top platform is set back from the edge. This makes for fun (Not!) climbing. As you reach the second level you think you’ve made it to the top, only to discover there’s one more level to go.

It was the top most level that had been cleared and consolidated.

INAH, the official archaeological bureau for the Mexico has been working on The Mayan Railroad and that is a huge project, which will, and has, radically transformed the Yucatan. Ichkabal is one of those sites. The small road that used to access the site has been replaced with a modern thoroughfare, cutting the time to get to the site from our hotel from two and a half hours to one. 

It seems most of the effort at this time is to make sites accessible and cleaned up. To understand a site more deeply archaeologists need to tunnel into a pyramid to see what earlier structures were covered up. To my knowledge this has not happened here. But enough is known to say it was part of the 

Snake Kingdom and probably before any of the other sites. Therefore, this is where the Kanul kingdom started (at least, that’s the thinking now. Today. By David Stuart, who led our expedition. I’ll see what Simon believes (almost wrote Says, wouldn’t be prudent. “Simon Says” ! Get it? Nevermind.)

Our understanding of these kingdoms is now understood to be royal families that intermarry and fight amongst themselves. So the kingdom is not a place as much as it is a dynasty. At the time of the Snake Kingdom there was another powerful dynasty, The Mutul dynasty, which ruled out of Tikal. We now understand that the two engaged in warfare and marriage. Betrayal and switching sides. (Think Romeo and Juliette – the Capulet and the Montague families. Or the ancient Greek city/state organization. Or spaghetti westerns where the sleepy Mexican with the big sombrero found near the town’s plaza has a thing against the Roja family. And they are in a running argument with another family. Or Yellowstone. …)

We have come to understand that what we thought were place names, may well be, but perhaps they are dynastic families that are living at a particular place and then, in some instances, move to another place.

Then it all went away. The dynastic families no longer had stelae carved. No more inter marriages. No more counting of captives.

Why?

We just don’t know.

Maybe it was lack of water and famine. Maybe, the people serving the nobility got tired of it. We don’t know. It seems drought was a factor.

If the model of ancient Egypt is similar it might well be that the purpose of the king (or pharaoh) was to keep order and make sure the gods are satisfied and then the weather will be good for growing. But evidence shows there was a long drought in the Mayan region. if it’s a year or two the people can probably survive, but if it’s longer? Then the king must go. He’s not doing his job.

There are cases where the evidence suggests there was a revolt against the royals: Cancuen and Teotihuacan. Cancuen is a Mayan site where the bodies of the royals were found in a large rectangular pool. Teotihuacan, the place north of Mexico City which certainly played a huge factor in Mayan life shows evidence of its city center where the royals lived of being burned. It was burned but nowhere else. There seemed to be no external attack. It seemed to come from within. Maybe, something happened and the peasants had enough?

Archaeology tries to answer the age old question, “What happened?” We will never know for sure. 

But LIDAR has revealed that the Mayan civilization was much larger than anyone thought even a few years ago. The search for answers continues.

And I, and my alter ego Bryce Holliwell, will be on the trail.