February 19
For me, today was the highlight of the trip, the thing I was most looking forward to: a visit to a significant Maya site. Genae had done the trip planning for everything else, but today was Greg’s idea. I think he nailed it.
There is a road to Lamanai, but we’re told you’d have to be a masochist to use it. Instead, we signed on to a tour with Lamanai Eco Tours. They can be a bit difficult to find, so we were directed to look for signs for Bat’s Landing, a bar and grille, a few miles from Orange Walk. From there, we’d take a 22-mile boat ride up the New River to the site.
In our travels around Belize up to now, we’ve passed several police checkpoints but were never stopped. Today, just before we reached Orange Walk, we finally passed through an active checkpoint. We were flagged down, and I was asked where I’m from. “Colorado, USA,” I answered. He asked for my driver’s license. He inspected it closely, but I doubt he’d know a valid Colorado driver’s license from a fake one. He read out my name, and I answered that, yes, that was my name. “Go ahead,” he said.
On the trip to the site, our boat captain stopped several times to point out some of the local wildlife. I found this quite impressive. First, the river is a maze of islands and tributaries. Once we were going, the captain would open the throttle all the way, lifting the nose of the boat, throwing lots of spray, and leaving a big wake. Then he’d spot something, throttle down, and nose the boat toward one shore or the other. He’d get his laser pointer out and show us where a turtle or crocodile or iguana or tree full of bats was. I reckon we were going about 22 knots at full throttle. The crocodile he spotted had just its nostrils and eyes above the water. The turtle was just as hard to spot. I can believe that the bats rested regularly in the same tree, but I doubt he was finding the other animals in the same places. Very impressive wildlife spotting skills, for sure.
It took us a bit more than an hour to get from Bat’s Landing to Lamanai.
On shore, we were handed off to a new guide. I didn’t get his name, but he told me he’s been a guide at Lamanai for 23 years. He was most knowledgeable about the ruins. Although I didn’t spot any archaeologists working, it is an active site, with one structure being reclaimed from the jungle only in the last seven months.
We were told that “Lamanai” means “submerged crocodile.” Our guide told us that that’s a bit of a mis-translation. He said it’s actually “Lama’anayin” and means something like “squashed bug”. I don’t recall exactly what he said, so I probably have it wrong. I haven’t been able to verify it one way or another.
As is common with Mayan ruins, the structures were built up over centuries: Postclassic structures were built on top of Classic ones, which were built on Preclassic. The Preclassic structures in Lamanai may also have been built atop Archaic ones, but that wasn’t clear to me. The faces at Mask Temple all have Olmec features. The Olmecs predated the Maya, and “disappeared” about 400 BCE. I put “disappeared” in quotes because the Maya people are still here, post-Conquest, just as I’d guess the Olmec were still around when the Maya gained power.
We toured the major structures – the Jaguar Temple, the Ball Court, the High Temple (“El Castillo”, but not to be confused with El Castillo at Chichen Itza), and the Mask Temple. I was most surprised by the Ball Court. The one at Chichen Itza is the largest ball court in the Mayan empire, much bigger than a football field. The one here is… not playable? It’s only about ten feet wide and thirty feet long and has a round stone dais in the middle of it.
I was glad that we tourists are still allowed to climb on the pyramids. We were lucky enough to do this at Chichen Itza 32 years ago, but they no longer allow it. Here, the High Temple even has a modern set of stairs built on it.
Our guide at one point called out a major difference between Chichen Itza: the water situation. Chichen Itza is on the Yucatan Peninsula, which has no surface water. That is, there are no lakes or rivers there. Their water sources were “cenotes”, which are large sinkholes. In dry times, the cenotes were under threat of failing to meet the needs of the city. Lamanai is built on the shores of a lake, and water was never a problem. At Chichen Itza, they had human sacrifices to appease the gods to supply water. There were no human sacrifices at Lamanai.
Here is a little history of Lamanai, from The Maya, by Michael D. Coe:
Far up the New River, a considerable distance to the southwest of Cerros, is the important site of Lamanai (known as ‘Indian Church’ on older maps of Belize), which has been excavated by David M. Pendergast of the Royal Ontario Museum during a series of field seasons beginning in 1974. Lamanai lies on a long lake formed by the river, and its 718 mapped structures are stretched out in strip form along its shore. There is even an ancient harbor in the northern part of the site, testifying to its entrepreneurial importance in the regulation of ancient Maya trade. While it was occupied from earliest times right into the post-Conquest period, much of its importance lies in the large, imposing, Late Preclassic temple-pyramids which usually underlie Early Classic constructions, including one with a plaster-work mask closely resembling those from Cerros.
Between AD 672 and 751 (considered by many to mark the civilization’s florescence), the number of communities carving new monuments continued to increase, but new construction took place only in already established cities. Maya civilization had ceased to expand geographically. From 751 to about 790, long-standing alliances began to break down, interstate trade declined, and conflicts between neighboring city-states increased (the battle of 792 commemorated by the Bonampak murals illustrates this situation). From 790 to 830, the death rate of cities outstripped the birth rate, while after 830 construction stopped throughout the Central Area, with the exception of peripherally located sites like Lamanai. The katun ending date 10.3.0.0.0 (AD 889) was celebrated by inscriptions at only three sites. And the very last Long Count date to be recorded anywhere was the katun ending 10.4.0.0.0 (AD 909), incised on a jade from a site in southern Quintana Roo.
I can’t help but recall a conversation I had with a couple of Dutch motorcyclists in the parking lot of my hotel in Nürburg last summer. I don’t recall how it came up, but they said something to the effect that “there’s no history in America”. It’s a common misconception, I think. There is quite a bit of history here between the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca, all of whom left major monuments, many of which predate Christ. But it’s not European history, and due to several factors, not as easily understood.
The Maya never developed paper, so all their history is documented in the stone of their temples or the jade of their jewelry. The temples were consumed by the jungle, and the Europeans looted the jade, which is now in museums or private collections worldwide. Even if the Maya had come up with paper, how long would any document have lasted in this climate?
This lack of a “written word” goes hand-in-hand with some other “failures” of Mayan technology. They never came up with the wheel. How primitive! But in this tropical, swampy environment, the wheel is worse than useless. It’s much easier to move building materials on poles carried by men. Any wheeled vehicle would bog down. They certainly had the concept of the wheel, though. In other cultures, the wheel is typically associated (right or wrong) with the arch and the dome. The Maya had arches, but they weren’t curved arches. You can mock up a Mayan arch using Lego blocks. The Maya did have domes, though. There’s the Observatory at Chichen Itza, for example.
The wheel also shows up in the Mayan calendar. Compared to the Maya, the Romans were downright backward when it came to understanding the calendar. The Romans kept having to adjust their calendar every several years because the months kept drifting – months are based on the moon, years on the sun.
The Romans also never came up with the concept of zero. Without a zero, large numbers are difficult to represent, and you can’t perform advanced calculations.
I’m not going to say that the Maya, Inca, and Aztecs didn’t fight wars (the excerpts above call some of them out), but I think there’s a definite difference between American history, pre-Conquest, and the Old World. When Europeans came to America, they brought disease, enslavement, genocide, and theft on a continental scale. It would be nice if Europeans (and those of us of European descent) were less proud of that history and more curious about the indigenous people of the Americas.
The temples are connected with wide limestone gravel paths. Our guide pointed out that the path we were walking on was a narrower version of the original Mayan road. The new path was edged in stone. A few feet on either side of the new path was another set of boundary stones. The old set delineated the ancient Mayan road. I won’t say that these Mayan roads are as robust as ancient Roman roads, but the jungle is a much harsher environment than central Italy or rural England.
Early on the tour, the path took us beneath a large tree. The guide pointed to the upper branches where a group of howler monkeys was sleeping. A few steps later, we came upon a red stain on the path. Some predator had gotten one of the monkeys last night or the night before, and this was a blood stain.
After walking through the site and climbing on the pyramids, we gathered for a lunch of chicken and rice and beans, then went through the gift shops, where I found a shirt that could pass for an Aloha shirt.
A short while later, our boat came back to pick us up and return us to Bat’s Landing. The return trip was a bit quicker – not stopping to point out any wildlife, the captain kept the throttle wide open the whole time. On both the ride there and back, we were going fast enough that I had to take my cap off. If I didn’t take it off, it would have blown off. Without my cap, I managed to get a minor sunburn on my head. So it goes.
We were back to the car by 2:00 pm and had an uneventful, police-free drive back to Corozal.
I love visiting these old ruins and thought the day was a great success.