Mayan Temples at Palenque

Woke up to Howler monkeys screeching in the trees. The sun was just rising and quite a big rodent was crawling around by the ruins. The morning was cool, and the rain had made it very comfortable to sleep. At least our tent was waterproof.

Robbie made some lekker sarmies and we headed off to the famous ruins of Palenque.  A $51 pesos entrance fee and we entered the area. The first thing we saw were the iconic steps of the pyramids, with the lush jungle sprawling in the background.  We walked up the stairs, avoiding people – there were a whole bunch, but not too many – and took some snapshots.

The main temple at Palenque.

It’s beautiful.  Templo de la Clavera (Temple of the Skull - because it has a rabbit or deer skull in one of its pillars apparently), was the first one we went to.  It was cool to be on a Mayan temple. Every single thing that we saw was built without the use of metal tools, pack animals or the wheel! Can you  imagine that?! Pure slave labour. The temples were truly impressive. We met a South African girl who went to Rhodes  viva! She recognised us, what a small world. Us Rhodents are everywhere ...

On the Temple overlooking the beautiful iconic Templo des Inscriptiones.

 Templo XIII had an excavated tomb – Tumba de la Reina Roja (Tomb of the Red Queen)- her sarcophagus was tainted red from the embalming process. The rocks in the tomb are ‘melting’ due to all the condensation from breath, so bad. On the outside we saw several other buildings. The biggest and most iconic one was Templo de las Inscripciones, a 25m high pyramid with 8 levels and 3 large stair cases leading to several rooms on top. The roof was held by pillars, with sculptures of noblemen. This is where the most famous king , Pakal , was buried. Interestingly these Mayans buried themselves with elaborate death-masks made with jewellery and jade. It was stolen in 1985, and is probably in some Mafioso’s private collection somewhere.

A palace was built next to the pyramid, made for noblemen, meetings with other leaders from surrounding tribes and also where they kept their war captives. I keep thinking of the Mayans dressed with their feather head-dressers, decapitating their captives and watching the squirting head roll down the staircases.  Don’t know if Hollywood is influencing me too much here…

There were some sculptures of people decapitating captives, but they were badly preserved and you wouldn’t recognise it. Walking around we saw an Iguana basking on the rocks.  After our little picnic lunch of tuna sarmies by Templo X (cool place to have lunch), we kept walking around the Archaeological Park. Some more interesting temples, and some well-preserved carvings later we wondered into the unrestored section. It was cooler, completely overgrown and so awesome but unfortunately it was off limits.

10 points if you can find the iguana on the rocks.

The unrestored section at Palenque. This entire area is full of ruins, waiting to be discovered (or rather left in their natural state).

I love you!

The park was great, it was awesome seeing Mayan temples and artifacts. They even made their own aqueducts to prevent floods. After leaving the temples we tried to read up on them, but there’s no internet here, so chilling by the pool we gathered as much info as we could by reading and chatting to people. This is what we found:

A view from one of the Temples, stunning!

Mayan philosophy:

Firstly, this is religion and philosophy, so what I write here is just personal opinion, and you take what you want from it. Reading the plaques, guide books and chatting to locals has given us some information about the Mayas. Knowing nothing, this is what we found out:

The Mayans at Palenque lived around 100BC - 800AD and flourished. Palenque was an important archaeological place. The kings were manifestations of gods on earth – depicted by their names, such as Jaguar Serpent III etc.  Chatting to Santiago, we learned that it’s not that the Mayans worshipped the sun, the plants, or specific gods, but that everything was interconnected and that the Mayans were the wind, trees, animals etc. Everything has a positive and negative, like ying and yang, it’s not good or bad, it’s a matter of perspective. It’s philosophy, a field foreign to me, but it’s interesting, and in this case & especially with religion – I think it’s personal preference. Whatever you believe is your thing, I won’t tell you if you’re right or wrong.

On one of the Temples an important carving depicted the birth of the Mayans. A god held a figurine made from corn and local plants in the palm of his hand. He was blowing smoke or wind into the figurine, breathing it to life. Wind thus represents life and death; you draw your first breath when you are born, and exhale your last when you die.  This notion of wind is an essential theme throughout their culture and evident in their architecture.

This is a similar sketch I found on the internet....

What intrigued us were the ‘T’ shaped windows. These were said to represent the Ceiba tree – the tree that holds up the universe. The ‘T’ shaped windows funnelled wind from the jungle into the buildings, allowing the Mayans to become the wind and become the universe. From what it sounded like it was a sort of meditation or trance and you literally became everything around you. It’s really hard to explain.  Everything has a whole metaphoric meaning, but don’t know enough to say definitively what it is.

'T'-shaped windows.

 It could all be a bunch of crap, I could (prob. did) misinterpret everything and there could be well-researched articles and theories as to what the Mayans believed, how they lived and what their perspectives of the universe were, but I don’t have the internet and I can’t do any reading because I’m in the bundus. Anyways, make up your own mind!