Quirigua, Guatemala
Today we visited the ancient Maya city of Quirigua. We marveled at the beauty and variety of glyphs adorning stone monuments, including this one, on Slela D. This glyph seems to be symbolic of everything about the ancient Maya – it’s beautiful, mysterious, and just disturbing enough to be intriguing. Though glyphs have puzzled scholars since their rediscovery in the early 1800’s, most can now be read. This one says nothing more arcane or spooky than “15 years” – part of a series of units of time measured from a mythological genesis.
The reading of glyphs adds much to our understanding of the city of Quirigua. Long under the domination of the king of Copan, Quirigua’s ruler rebelled against his overlord. The revolt was an astonishing success. The king of Copan was captured, dragged back to Quirigua, and decapitated in bloody sacrifice to the gods. Quirigua, once a minor satellite, vaulted instantaneously to regional preeminence. The result was the frenzied creation of monuments that, after 1300 years, still amaze us.
We gaped at the monuments; meanwhile our ears were delighted by birdsong. Liquid whistles of clay-colored robins dribbled down from the treetops, and the woods echoed with the hoarse calls of mot-mots. Mot-mots, once found, proved to be the very fantasy of a tropical bird – richly colored and extravagantly plumed.
Later in the day we boated down the Rio Dulce through a tree-clad canyon to the sea.
All together, today was filled with the variety and richness of both cultural and natural history that make Central America a joy to visit.
Today we visited the ancient Maya city of Quirigua. We marveled at the beauty and variety of glyphs adorning stone monuments, including this one, on Slela D. This glyph seems to be symbolic of everything about the ancient Maya – it’s beautiful, mysterious, and just disturbing enough to be intriguing. Though glyphs have puzzled scholars since their rediscovery in the early 1800’s, most can now be read. This one says nothing more arcane or spooky than “15 years” – part of a series of units of time measured from a mythological genesis.
The reading of glyphs adds much to our understanding of the city of Quirigua. Long under the domination of the king of Copan, Quirigua’s ruler rebelled against his overlord. The revolt was an astonishing success. The king of Copan was captured, dragged back to Quirigua, and decapitated in bloody sacrifice to the gods. Quirigua, once a minor satellite, vaulted instantaneously to regional preeminence. The result was the frenzied creation of monuments that, after 1300 years, still amaze us.
We gaped at the monuments; meanwhile our ears were delighted by birdsong. Liquid whistles of clay-colored robins dribbled down from the treetops, and the woods echoed with the hoarse calls of mot-mots. Mot-mots, once found, proved to be the very fantasy of a tropical bird – richly colored and extravagantly plumed.
Later in the day we boated down the Rio Dulce through a tree-clad canyon to the sea.
All together, today was filled with the variety and richness of both cultural and natural history that make Central America a joy to visit.
