Ally the Archaeologist

After my crazy backpacking adventures, I arrived home to find that my friend John, who was supposed to be joining me this week, would be unable to come. Instead I convinced my friend Leslie that she should come on some of my costal adventures with me. First on our list, the archeological site Tak’alik Ab’aj, or Standing Stone.

Leslie and I set out from Xela this morning. We took an hour and a half long bus ride to the city of Retalhultu. The bus ride usually takes an hour, but we were delayed by a political protest, complete with burning tires blockading the streets. Then we took a taxi to the nearby town of El Asintal. Finally, we paid a fellow with a pickup truck Q4, about 50 cents, to take us the remaining distance to the site.

The site was amazing. It covers some 6.5 square kilometers, with 83 buildings and 270 stone monuments. Unfortunately, like almost everything else in Guatemala, much of the land has been sold to private enterprises, and the site is spread over a number of fincas, as well as the national park, so we weren’t able to see all of it. More sites are still being excavated. We got to see an archeological dig, where they were excavating with pick-axes, brushes, sieves and the like. They had built a structure over the dig to protect it, cordoned off quadrants with string and were numbering individual stones. Tromping through the jungle and watching the excavations, I was sad that I didn’t have a pith hat to wear.

The site is strategically located in a mountain pass, and would have been part of an important trading route between Pre-Colombian Mexico, El Salvador and other parts of Guatemala. Cacao, salt, quetzal feathers, pyrite, obsidian, and jade were all traded through Tak’alik Ab’aj. There are also large amounts of igneous rock at the site, which was evidently quarried near Tajumulco, more than a hundred miles away.

The site was first occupied by the Olmecs in the Middle Pre-Classic period, between 800 and 400BCE. The Olmecs terraced the land with giant stone staircases, erected large stone steale above altars which were used for offerings and sacrifices and carved squat, pot-bellied sculptures featuring were-jaguars, crocodiles, frogs and owls. The Olmec culture was gradually subsumed to by the Mayan culture in the Late Pre-Classic period, from about 400BCE to 250CE. You can see the change in architectural style, as the sculptures become more detailed and lifelike, the incorporation of writing and a change in astronomical orientation. The Olmec oriented their observatories towards the Big Dipper, whose trapezoidal shape reminded them of the sacred jaguar's mouth towards. The Maya oriented their observatories two degrees east, towards the star Eta Draconious, which is extremely bright shows up in the same place every year, making it an ideal calendar star.

Around 250CE, in the Early Classic period, the society appears to have undergone some sort of collapse. There was no new construction and the population quickly contracted. Some statutes were defaced, indicating armed conflict. This collapse predates that of many other Mayan city states. It appears that a reorientation of trading routes, to favor Eastern sites like Quiriga and Coban led to Taka’lik Ab’aj’s decline. However, the city was not completely destroyed and in the Late Classic period, between 600 and 900CE, Tak’alik Ab’aj experienced a revival, where many of the mutilated monuments were reerected.

The park also included a little zoo. The zoo had jungle owls, monkeys, pizotes, turtles, mountain warthogs, an ocelot, and, best of all, a raccoon. Since raccoons are uncommon here, they're often kept in zoos or as pets. Makes me feel good about that rabies shot I got!