Yaxchilan

Back in the 1980s, travel from Palenque to the two Classic Mayan sites of Yaxchilan and Bonampak was a multi-day trek along muddy roads through the jungle followed by hiring boatmen to paddle you and your gear along the Usumacinta River – the border between Mexico and Guatemala. These days it's a more-straightforward all-day trip along paved roads until you reach the river; you still need to hire boatmen but now they use 70hp outboard motors, mostly at full throttle. Getting to the ruins via high-speed jungle-boat ride is half the fun.

GB and I generally prefer DIY tourism so that we can explore places at our own pace, but given the number of visitors, the length of time required to visit both sites (12-13 hours), and the boatmen's very strict schedules in January 2015, it made more sense to join a small group of strangers in a van tour instead of having to wait on standby for two seats to maybe-possibly become available in a boat going each way to each site. We got lucky with our tour group; nobody acted like a jackwagon or caused any significant delays so everyone was able to use all the daylight to maximum effect.

Artifacts found in Yaxchilan suggest it may have been a riverside settlement as early as 300 BCE. It grew in boom-and-bust cycles over the centuries to flourish between about 359 CE-808 CE, with most of the major structures having been built during the 700s. In the 9th Century the population trickled away and the jungle quickly covered the vacant buildings until archaeological exploration started in the late 19th Century. One. Thousand. Years. Later.

Over here on the left you see how we entered Yaxchilan via a trail leading up from the riverbank to The Labyrinth, a building with a narrow entrance and a series of small vaulted rooms set on top of a platform. (Protip: bring a flashlight to work your way through The Labyrinth – I did. Check the batteries – I didn't.) The narrow, dark path winds through these rooms with abrupt steps up and down, which are quite a challenge to navigate without a functioning flashlight. But after some groping and stumbling you come out the other side and into Yaxchilan's main plaza. What an entrance. Over there on the right is what The Labyrinth looks like from the main plaza. The short stacks of rock on the roof are the remnants of an ornate openwork roofcomb, which many of Yaxchilan's monumental structures had.

Interpretive signs placed around the site include renditions of what some of the structures placed on the tops of the pyramids may have looked like in all their glory. Decorative roofcombs towered above the buildings themselves. Building 33, for example (aka The Great Acropolis), looked something like that sketch in the far left pic when it was in use. These days, it appears more modest, as shown in the middle pic…until you turn around and view the 130-foot-high pyramid platform you've just climbed up to reach it.

We could have spent a full day just in Yaxchilan. The stelae placed at the bases of pyramids were full of ornate carvings and glyphs, and low-key stone altars were set in front of the stelae, suggesting that these items were still in ceremonial use by the locals (see pic to the right). Massive stone lintels covered with carvings still sat above the remains of doorways. In places the original stucco remained intact — after some 1300 years in the jungle climate. Some of the carved images were, ahem, explicit in that they depicted bloodletting ceremonies. Instead of spilling blood in battle the ruling class spilled their own blood in the comfort of their own homes when the occasion called for it. Men tended to pierce their penises to draw blood; women pierced their tongues; everyone pulled a knotted cord through the hole to really get the blood flowing. They collected the blood in ceremonial vessels to later be burned with copal incense as offerings to the gods as well as a demonstration to the general population.

I for one advocate that our oligarchs of today should be required to follow such rituals, as long as they're avoiding the draft and not paying their fair share of taxes and all.

m