MAYA 19th CENTURY SCHOLARS TRIED TO LINK BEGINNING OF CIVILIZATION TO YUCATÁN MAYA

 

A fabricated myth about a Maya princess named Queen Moo and her warrior king brother, Prince ChacMool, seduced two prominent Maya scholars, August LePlongeon and wife Alice Dixon, into promoting an unfounded theory that civilization began in the New World with the Maya.

LePlongeon and Dixon were viewed as the Maya world's 'new age' scholars because of this far-fetched belief, and the theory branded LePlongeon as an eccentric crackpot, earning him the disdain of those in his field.

A DREAM OF MAYA

The belief that the Maya held the key to civilization fueled their desire to explore the Yucatán's ancient pyramid sites in the late 1800s. Larry Desmond and Phyllis Messenger's book, A Dream of Maya, gives deep insight into LePlongeon and Dixon's lives, explaining their controversial views and documenting their hard-nosed earnestness and early pioneering excavations—from digging up ruins, to drawing architectural floor plans, to tracing murals, along with their detailed photographic records. They were also early-on students of a photographic technique that used glass and plate negatives.

As Desmond explains, if history had been kinder to the LePlongeons, it would have depicted an extraordinary couple whose lifelong work had not been fairly appraised. Their explorations occurred during a time of historic uprising, the Caste War of Yucatán. They were there at its height.

OFF TO PERU

LePlongeon, a Frenchman, left France after a distinguished university education to study earthquakes in Peru and to explore the country's archeological sites. This launched him into a lifelong study of scrutinizing ancient ruins and looking for clues about their builders. In Peru he began to form his ideas on the origin of the world's civilizations.

While there he heard about the California gold rush and jumped a ship to partake in that historic event, spending several years in gold rush country where he speculated on land and came away with thirty thousand in profits, enough to fund his South American travels.

During his stay in California he apprenticed under a physician for three years and received a certificate as a doctor's tutor. But before heading back to South America, he sailed to Europe where he stumbled onto a new photographic technique using paper instead of metal. He urged the inventor to teach him the process which would serve him well while uncovering Yucatecan ruins, enabling him to document his discoveries. His photos of sites Uxmal and Chichen Itza remain some of the best ever taken as they show the ruins as they stood for eons, long before archeologists re-discovered them. Sadly many of LePlongeon's negatives and photos have been lost. 

ENTER ALICE AND THE YUCATÁN

LePlongeon met Alice Dixon while in Europe. They were married and for their honeymoon, set sail for Cuba, then onto Progreso, Mexico. They landed in 1873.

A bout with yellow fever for Alice dampened their arrival but LePlongeon nursed her back to health. During her recuperation the two began to study Yucatecan Maya and became acquainted with local scholars. They believed communicating with the present day Maya was an important step to interpreting the past. Alice remained a champion of the Maya her entire life, and wrote about them long after she left the Yucatán.

Their first visit to see pyramids was at Uxmal, forty miles south of Merida. They were awed by the size of the site and camped in the Governor's Palace, sleeping on hammocks. They took photos, cleared the land to better see the site, and were determined to return again later.

CHICHEN ITZA AND CHACMOOL

The number one item on LePlongeon's bucket list was Chichen Itza. He'd heard from a local that a sacred book or codex (hieroglyphic text) was buried there, in a building with many chambers, called Akab Dziba. Destiny called and LePlongeon believed he could further his theory of Maya world supremacism if he could locate the text.

At the time, however, all areas surrounding Chichen Itza, including the nearby pueblo Piste, were overrun with invading Chan Santa Cruz Indians who were doing battle in the Caste War of Yucatán. War or no war, LePlongeon was determined to test his theory, asking local authorities to post soldiers around the site while they searched for the text.

On locating the Akab Dziba, LePlongeon noticed the presence of glyphs on a lintel which he believed would further his theory. He took 500 stereoscopic photos including close-ups which showed hieroglyphic details. In their early excavation of the site, he and Alice also traced a number of murals and made molds in bas relief.

QUEEN MOO AND PRINCE CHACMOOL

They fixated on the Upper Temple of the Jaguars, near the ball court. The year was 1875. The workers discovered a large slab with carved figures holding outstretched arms. LePlongeon called it Atlantis. Murals on walls in the Upper Temple depicted village life, war scenes, and rulers in court. The explorer concluded this was a generation of Maya rulers whose totem was an eagle or macaw. He declared it a symbol of a Maya princess who he christened Queen Moo (Maya for macaw). Her brother he named Prince ChacMool, powerful warrior, a reference to the jaguar in Mayan. This flimsy attempt at a scholarly decision became the basis for his Maya myth and led to much of the derision that plagued his career.

After studying the mural for weeks, he determined Queen Moo of Chichen Itza had been forced to flee to Egypt bringing with her all the philosophies of the Maya, thereby cementing his idea that Egyptian civilization was founded by Maya.

So much for far-out theories. But LePlongeon was soon to discover "through stones that spoke to him," a small mound, and under it, through what he determined was spiritual guidance, the famous statue ChacMool, five feet long weighing hundreds of pounds. A replica, on display at the Anthropology Museum of Merida, is virtually synonymous with Chichen Itza and the ancient Maya.

Originally spelled Chaacmool—Maya for powerful warrior—the word was misspelled as ChacMool  through a mistranslation by one of his missives to a benefactor. The LePlongeons' struggled to bring the statue to the States to display in Philadelphia at the America Centennial Exposition, but the Mexico president denied their request.

"SURROUNDED BY ENEMIES"

In the meantime, they sent other Maya artifacts to the US to display at centennial ceremonies, but the objects arrived too late. Also, photos that LePlongeon had labored over were stolen by another archeologist who claimed them for his own. Soon even their main benefactor would give up on their excursions. At times they found it difficult to find money to eat, so meager was their situation.

"Surrounded by enemies, Remington always at hand, death lurking in every direction," Alice wrote in a letter to a friend in 1877, describing their predicament. The Mexico government had refused to pay them for the extensive work they'd completed in not only finding the incredible artifact but in delivering it to the pueblo Piste; they picked up and went on to other ruins—Mayapan, and also to sites in Honduras.

Their travels would continue for nearly twenty more years, and they would write prolifically about the Maya, both fact and fiction. Alice became well known for a series of articles written for the New York Times and other publications that romanticized the Maya world. They both lectured non-stop in Europe and the US, promoting the Yucatán pyramids and the Maya.

Augustus LePlongeon died December 1908 in Brooklyn at 82. Alice died two years later in 1910 leaving the balance of their findings with a friend, Gladys Blackwell, who was instructed to distribute their materials to "someone who would listen."

When reviewing the troubles, excursions, and the rebuffs this couple experienced, all to try to illuminate information on an ancient civilization, it boggles the mind. They were robbed of their efforts and disparaged because Augustus LePlongeon's vision was to try and discover through linguistics, field study, and comparative religions, the Maya way. Surrounded by enemies indeed.

For more information on my writing, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. My first book, a travel memoir titled Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya is available on Amazon, as is Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, which is a journalistic overview of the 2012 calendar phenomenon. Books two and three of my Wheels Up cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival and Tulum Takedown are also available on Amazon. Subscribe above to keep up to date with further blogs on Mexico and the Maya and the Yucatán.

Vintage photographs come from Larry Desmond in A Dream of Maya.

THE MAGIC OF YUCATÁN'S MARKETPLACE AND CUISINE

 

If you've traveled to Mexico, you know Mexican food has more flare than just a bite at Taco Bell or a mere plate of enchiladas, rice, and beans. On Mexico's dueling coasts, one is bombarded with a potpourri of seafood, from shrimp and lobster to delectable fresh fish—bonito, dorado, albacore—the likes you've never tasted elsewhere. And in the country's vast interior, every city and pueblo boasts their own local ingredients, depending on what is grown or hunted nearby, using unique herbs, spicy peppers, and recipes from centuries back. Mexican food, especially in Mexico, is a wondrous jolt to the senses.

MAYA AND THE YUCATÁN

Nowhere is the food of Mexico more unique than on the Yucatán Peninsula where the Maya culture reigns. Though inland and other coastal areas employ the triumvirate of corn (maize), beans, and squash, paying homage to Aztec culture, these are also basic foods on the Peninsula. Because the Yucatán was a land apart for centuries, a near sovereign nation, even after the Spanish invasion until the 1700s it carried on in the Maya tradition, employing its own unique set of condiments, plants and vegetables given the region's bountiful resources. Vanilla, cacao, salt, achiote, allspice, a plethora of unique fruits, and as everywhere else in Mexico, chiles, brought in through trade with the Antilles.

Geography played a part in the exclusion of Yucatecan food from foods elsewhere in the country. At one time considered an island, and finally known to be a peninsula, it remained distanced from mainland Mexico by rugged terrain and vast jungles. So thick were they that when Spanish conquistadores led by Cortes went searching for a supposed city of gold (near Mexico's southern border) they rode within one hundred kilometers of the pyramid site Palenque, having no clue they had passed near the outskirts of one of the Maya's greatest ceremonial centers. 

YUCATECAN FOOD—A WORLD APART

Because of its solitaire status, Yucatecan food is not considered to be Mexican food, and Yucatecans will proudly tell you so. As the 19th century progressed, it became easier for wealthy Peninsula locals to travel to Cuba or even Europe rather than to mainland Mexico, so limited was the transportation in between. With newly acquired status as the world's main supplier of henequen, the material used for the popular Panama hat, Merida's fortunes grew, ushering in a new privileged class. The city had a European vibe rather than Mexican. With a trans-Atlantic port at Progreso, twenty miles from Merida, goods were carried  to and from the European continent, and the population grew accustomed to not only European fashions but new flavors and spices, amplifying the evolution of Yucatecan cooking.

THE MARKETPLACE

Inventive cooking techniques fall on the broad shoulders of a proud and inventive people who defined a different type of cooking from that of their inland neighbors: the Maya, who have inhabited the Peninsula for millennia. In the past forty years, famous chefs have visited the region to learn more about the distinctive fare developed by them.  In Mexico and the Yucatán, the beginning of every meal begins with a trip to the local market or mercado—be it the tiniest of pueblos or a thriving city like Merida, capitol of Yucatán. The bustling, thriving Merida mercado covers 156,000 square feet and boasts over two thousand vendors, serving one hundred thousand customers daily. 

The original market consisted of vendors selling on the steps of government buildings in the main zocalo in the 1700s. Eventually it moved to its present location in 1949, and was named after Mayor Lucas de Galvez. Everything from fruits, nuts, meats, fish, vegetables, pots and pans, utensils and knives, hammocks, clothing, poultry, pets, machinery and more is sold, beginning daily at 5 a.m.

 

YUCATECAN STAPLES

The basis for Yucatecan cooking consists of four staples: Recados, the curries of Mexico—exotic blends of spices made into paste or powder and used to flavor savory dishes; beans in some shape or form; salsas to add a piquant jolt to the food, and pork lard, which is flavorful, their form of an oil, and not as toxic as one might think.

In cooking, the Maya often smoke foods, either as a preservative or flavoring, in chiles, meat and fish. Underground "ovens" are used, or p'bil, where the meat is covered in banana leaves, dropped into a pit and cooked for hours on end. Barbacoas are used, a rack above a fire, for roasting, and of course steaming in pots or directly placed in hot ashes is also common.

FAVORITE DISHES

Some of my favorite Yucatecan dishes are cochinita pibil—pork marinated with achiote and wrapped in banana leaves, then put into a pit for hours (known also as pulled pork); salbutes—hand-sized tortillas with shredded turkey and cabbage, pickled onion on top, and avocado slice; grilled chicken marinated in achiote and sour oranges; and one I long to taste—Pavo and relleno negro—wild turkey stuffed with chopped sausage, chicken livers and a hardboiled egg in a black relleno sauce. That is yet to come.

According to food maven Martha Stewart, Yucatecan food may be the world's first fusion cuisine. Makes me hungry just thinking about it!

For more information on my writing, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. My first book, a travel memoir titled Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya is available on Amazon, as is Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, which is a journalistic overview of the 2012 calendar phenomenon. Books two and three of my Wheels Up cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival and Tulum Takedown are also available on Amazon. Subscribe above to keep up to date with further blogs on Mexico and the Maya and the Yucatán.