Mesoamerican history was one of my favourite courses in university. This could be partially because of my professor who remains utterly brilliant (we’ve kept in touch), but I think it was more to do with the subject matter. I was used to studying all of this proper, well formed, European art – which, while stunning and detailed and many other things, was far far from the concept of primal.
Mesoamerican is primal. I found it – and still do – utterly fascinating.
That’s one of the many reasons I jumped at the opportunity to go to Tikal in Guatamela, and it was the major reason that Amras and I had long planned to go to Huaca del Luna (Temple of the Moon) while in Peru. Unfortunately, this was not something I thought was going to end up being possible due to the unexpected scheduling of a general drill first thing in the morning. General drills take at least and hour and a half and they aren’t easily excused from, in fact, they’re basically not excused from; and today was a short port. Goodbye sacrificial temple, hello standing on the deck for an hour watching tugs chug around the harbour.
Needless to say, I was somewhat disappointed, and was really quite prepared to just stay in the rest of the day; but Amras convinced me to at least go out and look at the market on the dock, because they have some fun stuff there (ooooh fuzzy llamas!)…
That boy, can keep a secret far too well sometimes.
As I’m minnowing my way through the throng of taxi drivers on the dock I noticed that he’s not behind me, in fact, I notice he’s actually speaking to someone. And it’s not a taxi driver, it’s a proper tour car operator.
It turned out the temple is only 20 minutes away, and he had intended on taking me there all along.
Surprise
Why you…how long have you known we were still going?
And he just smirks.
I’ve been to Peru before, but I’ve never really explored it much; the flagship didn’t offer a lot in the way of big groups of people to hang out with and I didn’t feel quite secure going out on my own, so going beyond the dockside market was a first for me. But it was totally worth it. The drive out to the temple wound through little twisty streets that passed farmlands and cacti side by side with palm trees. Everything seems to bake under the Peruvian sun, and yet unlike some places in the world there are still outbursts of colour here.
The Huaca del Luna stands in what seems like the middle of the Peruvian desert; though if you stand at the main entrance and look behind you you can see the city stretching out into the distance, something I found very surreal.
Unlike the Maya – who are always branded with the human sacrifice brush but didn’t actually practice as much as Hollywood would have you believe – the culture that created Huaca del Luna definitely did participate in ritualistic battle that concluded with ritual sacrifice. It is very eery to stand in the shadow of those adobe walls and stare at the alarmingly bright blue stones that spill down the hill; and know that those are bloodstones, those boulders once ran red. Being sacrificed was considered a great honour, the commoners were not even permitted to watch the ceremony, but I still don’t’ think I would want to hear what was said if those adobe walls could talk.
Because the walls – and the colour on them – are original. Mud, straw, water and shell, crushed into building material and standing longer than some modern structures. The temple is an inverted pyramid; every 100 years (according to the guide, though I couldn’t quite understand the details) they would seal off the completed floor and build a new, larger one above it – using the same paintings and the same designs, just bigger. Archaeologists are sure that there are at least 5 layers below where the current dig is taking place.
As you stand at the top of the temple and look out to the Huaca del Sol (which is not open to the public, and I really wish I knew what was under there!) you look across what used to be a city. All that’s been excavated so far is the basic outlines, and only a few buildings; but that was a city once, a living breathing city where people went about their daily rountine in the shadow of two massive temples that probably ran their lives. It’s a sobering and awesome thought really. Dust to dust and such things. They hope one day to excavate the whole area, and I remember my professor telling me that they believe there was once a causeway that connected both temples, but so far it’s just that smattering of low walls in the middle of the desert, all that remains of an entire culture.
Walking through the temple corridors, with dust in my hair and on my shoes, I remembered just how much at one point I wanted to be an archaeologist. I was all ready to sign up for the courses in university, but they required you to take advanced math, and at the time there was no way I could pass such a thing – so I did art history instead. The closest I could get to digging up the past. Other than performance, that was the only thing I’d ever really wanted to do, though I never really talked about it much. Lately I seem to have been thinking about it more, perhaps because I’ve been lucky enough to visit some amazing pieces of history as of late. Either way, I started vaguely remembering things I thought I had forgotten long ago, faces, symbols, what different rituals might have meant. It’s all very fuzzy in my head, but it’s all there somewhere.
I used to know this stuff.
Once we finished the tour of the temple proper , we wandered through the shaded area of the souvenir shops and I found myself completely caught by a pair of peruvian silver earrings in the shape of a sun and moon. I just stood there staring at them.
See something you like Skittle?
Those, I really really like those.
And I press my finger against the glass to point out which set so that the clerk can take them out so I can look at them.
How much are they in dollars?
Those earrings are now in my ears. Amras spoils me sometimes.
Eventually we did make it to that dockside market just…a little later than expected!
I find the Inca and Aztec equally interesting, but I think the Maya had a more complex history and society. Definitely a better math system than the Romans at the time.