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 OTHER SIDE OF CHICHEN ITZA—WAS IT THE FIRST CANCUN?

Is Chichen Itza one of the Maya’s most revered and renowned pyramid sites or a glorified shrine-museum concocted by slick politicians to reap tourist dollars? It’s no secret that the Mexico National Tourist Corporation (MNTC) designed Cancun with the intention of creating a luxury destination that would pull in coveted currency to fill state and government coffers—and if some spilled over into the private sector, so much the better.

BIRTH OF CANCUN

In 1967 the Mexico government’s aim was to find the best locale for an international tourist resort with the finest beaches, the most beautiful water, and the fewest hurricanes. Another requirement would be proximity to its wealthy northern neighbor, the US, so flight times would be minimal.  A strip of unpopulated sand at the northeast tip of the Yucatán Peninsula fit the bill—Cancun—a destination so easily accessible that at 9 a.m. one could be in New York and by noon, landing at Cancun International, moments away from a white sand beach and a pitcher of margaritas.

And with that very same intent, as early as the 1920s, long before Cancun was even a glimmer in MNTC’s eye, the Mexico government, along with help from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, was priming Chichen Itza to become Mexico’s first full-fledged tourist destination.

Fullbright scholar and former Assistant Professor of Anthopology at University of Washington, Quetzil Castaneda detailed this in his book, In the Museum of Maya Culture: Touring Chichen Itza. Through prolific research, Castaneda's book explains how it all came about.  

TOURIST DESTINATION

Chichen Itza, translated as mouth at the well of the Itzas, had been a tourist destination for over five hundred years when MNTC and the Carnegie Institution hatched their plan. After being twice abandoned by both the Itzas (750 AD) and the Maya (1194 AD) the site became a pilgrimage spot for religious groups in the 1500s because of its sacred cenote. A tourist Mecca for centuries, Chichen Itza was a place the Maya came to pay homage to their gods.

Early explorers Edward H. Thompson and John Lloyd Stephens, artist Frederick Catherwood, along with others fueled the flames of discovery and from their explorations the Yucatec and Hispanic elite, according to Castaneda, began to create a Maya myth or identity—distinctly different from  that of  either Spain or Mexico.  

CITY OF FABLES

In the 1920s, the Mexico government organized excavations under its agency Monumento Prehispanicos, and permitted the Carnegie Institution of Washington, headed in the Yucatán by explorer Sylvanus Morley, to conduct ‘multi-disciplinary’ research in the Yucatán and to excavate and restore what Castaneda calls ‘a city of fables.’ In his book, Castaneda insists the main goal of the Carnegie Institution's Excavations Department was to create a tourist Mecca rather than to restore the site to its original state.

Castaneda believes not only do economic interests (from local to international levels) now compete at the site but different government agencies and levels of state jurisdictions also compete for the slice of Chichen Itza’s tourist pie. Castaneda’s book maintains that the Maya civilization, although very real, has been ‘tweaked’ by competing government agencies to make the ‘reproduction’ of the archeological excavations more desirable to tourists.

In his book he calls Chichen Itza a museum exhibit which represents the Maya through the epochs. The exhibit implies the Maya came from ‘a primitive society or race’ and then rose to a high stature through the creation of the pyramids. But Castaneda argues that the Maya are examined through ‘the eyes of European civilization,’ by which all civilizations are compared and judged. In many ways, Castaneda’s views are similar to those of author Daniel Quinn in his controversial book, Ishmael, which divides the world into two camps:  the takers—modern Western civilization—and the givers— indigenous cultures.  

Quinn’s premise is that  Western man usurps indigenous cultures and these ethnic societies and their “myths” are then lost forever, so that the takers can impose their myth—science—onto the entire world. Quinn equates this with the destruction of all indigenous societies. Castaneda’s book basically concurs with this premise, and in his lament for the Maya, calls what the state and government have done at Chichen Itza a “violation” against Mayan society, and goes so far as to call it on par with rape.

EQUINOX PHENOMENON

Castaneda theorizes the height of the deception takes place every vernal and autumnal equinox (roughly March 20, September 21) since 1974—when Mexico figured out these date were significant to the Maya. According to Castaneda, specific knowledge of the phenomenon dates back to when Morley was excavating the site in 1928, but it was ignored by archeologists, local Maya, and Yucatecos until a thesis was published in Mexico City in 1974 by researcher Luis El Arochi.

 El Arochi, after years of study, noted that at 3 p.m. on these dates, sunlight bathed the main stairway of the pyramid Kukulkan (feathered serpent), creating a serpent-like shadow which crept down the pyramid’s massive stairs. El Arochi called this the “symbolic descent of Kukulkan,” and believed it related to Maya agricultural rituals. 

Once word was out about the equinox display of light and shadow, Chichen Itza’s Kukulkan pyramid became a tourist magnet. Tourist numbers jumped thirty percent that year. A star was born.

In 1921, Yucatan Governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto signed an agreement with Carnegie Institution that gave Sylvanus Morley a renewable ten year permit to conduct scientific study at the ancient Maya city. Among the site projects, studies would be conducted in geology, botany, zoology, climatology agronomy, medicine, physical anthropology, linguistics, history, archeology, ethnography and sociology.

Through these studies the Maya way of life could be dissected. Castaneda insists this allowed the structure of an evolutionary fable that created “ a museum of history” at Chichen Itza.    

"With Maya labor from nearby towns, the jungle was peeled back to reveal the ancient stones of decayed buildings. Chichen Itza was restored as a replica of itself and reconstructed into a life size model of an ancient Maya city.

Y TU, FELIPE

Castaneda even goes so far as to state that Felipe Carrillo Puerto, progressive governor of the Yucatán, permitted Morley and the Carnegie Institution to conduct research to create a class consciousness amongst the Maya and forge an ethnic group identity onto them, which was essential to complete the socialist revolution in the Yucatán for which Carrillo Puerto was striving.

In the Yucatán, however, the plan would serve another purpose as well. It would bolster a long stagnant economy based on the former reign of henequen—an all purpose fiber used for making rope and Panama hats—with something yet unseen—tourist dollars.

This contradictory view of Chichen Itza only heightens the mystery of the Maya. For a culture whose entire past was wiped out in an afternoon bonfire conducted by a fanatical priest in 1539, it makes one wonder anew—who were the Maya?

Nancy Drew Author Had Connections to Maya Pyramids and Central America

(Photo from Jennifer Fisher, founder of Nancy Drew Society, of The Secret of the Old Clock).

     Who of us girls, as young teens, did not love Nancy Drew? The sleuth with a voracious appetite for getting into scary trouble, being at the center of crime scenes and mysteries? Who taught us how to signal SOS with a tube of lipstick, break out of a window using spike heels, and to always keep an overnight bag in the car, just in case?

CAROLYN KEENE? NO

     For years I thought Carolyn Keene was Nancy's author but later discovered that was a pen name for Mildred Wirt Benson who would write 135 books and 23 of the first Nancy Drew detective tales that came to shape Nancy's "steely bravery" according to an article by Jennifer Fisher in Zócalo. Benson's image of Nancy would create "the tenacious, bold and independent heroine we have come to know." The real author of our favorite "girl" detective was an Iowa homegrown born in 1905, daughter of a country doctor, and the first student—male or female— to earn a masters degree in journalism from University of Iowa (later home to the Iowa Writers Workshop). For fifty years Benson worked in journalism when not penning famous mysteries, covering the courthouse beat and crime and corruption at The Toledo Blade and The Toledo Times.

HEADING TO NYC

     As a child Benson was an avid reader of children's classics. Her first short story, "The Courtesy," appeared in St. Nicholas, a children's magazine, and won her second place in a monthly contest. Finding Iowa too dull for a woman with an agenda, she ventured to NYC and landed a job with an icon in publishing, Edward Stratemeyer. Fortune Magazine said of Stratemeyer in 1934, "As oil and gas has its Rockefeller, literature has its Stratemeyer."
     Stratemeyer published The Bobbsey Twins and The Hardy Boys and famously hired ghost writers for a flat monthly fee. Benson's pen name remained a mystery until the 1970s when researchers discovered Benson was the Oz behind the curtain. During the Great Depression and WWII, parents were candid with their children, according to Fisher's article, and didn't hide life's gravities. Enter Nancy Drew, a new kind of heroine for a new age of young girls. Stratemeyer penned a three-page outline for Benson and depicted her as an "up-to-date American girl at her best—bright, clever, resourceful, and full of energy."

TREATED AS AN EQUAL

     In 1973, Benson wrote an essay about her famous heroine, stating Nancy was treated as an equal by her father and by many in law enforcement and she never gave up when the going got tough. Her spirit struck a chord. Nancy Drew personified "the dream image which exists within most teenagers," Benson said. According to Fisher's article, this 1930s teen remained culturally relevant for more than 80 years, even as young women's roles changed dramatically. Mothers and grandmothers passed the books down to their daughters. "Women still tell me how they identified with Nancy Drew and that Nancy Drew gave them confidence to be whatever they wanted to be," Benson told an interviewer in 1999.


MAYA CONNECTION

     But Benson, perhaps, was her own best role model for the very Nancy Drew we all came to love. She trained as a pilot in the 1960s. Traveling solo, she flew down to Guatemala to view ancient Maya pyramid sites. She traipsed through crocodile-infested rivers and hacked her way through jungles with a machete. In a particularly harrowing very Nancy Drew like experience, she was even locked inside a room in Guatemala by locals who thought she knew too much about criminal activity in their town. Channeling Nancy, she overpowered one of her captors and escaped. "Like any good sleuth," Fisher goes on to explain, "she later returned to Guatemala to learn more about what had happened to her."

THE SMITHSONIAN

     In the 1990s, twenty years after dedicated Nancy Drew lovers had discovered Keene's real name and ID'd Mildred Wirt Benson as Drew's creator, Benson donated a series of papers she'd written about her heroine, along with her trusty Underwood typewriter used for creating Nancy, to the Smithsonian where it sits to this day. And finally, the mystery author got public credit in her native Iowa in 1993 when the University of Iowa had a Nancy Drew Conference. That same year, she was named Person of the Week by ABC's Peter Jennings.

     Asked later if she would ever give up writing, Benson said, "The undertaker will have to pry me away from my typewriter." That's pretty much what happened. At 96, in 2002, she was sitting at her trusty Underwood when she died.