MyWestworld

The Mystery of Maya Blue

Posted on 17. Dec, 2008 by Kerry Banks in International

A few years ago I travelled to Mexico to see the fabled Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza. I stayed at the Hacienda Chichen, which is located only a few hundred metres from the main gate, so I could be on the grounds the first thing in the morning. It was a wise move. By doing so, I had several hours to explore the site virtually by myself, before the busloads of tourists began arriving from the surrounding towns and the Yucatan’s infamous humidity began to melt my brain. Chichen Itza was a magnificent place, beautiful, awe-inspiring and seemingly touched by magic in the drifting mist of the dawn.

The great pyramid of Kukulcan, the best restored and preserved of all the Mayan ziggurats, stood just inside the gates, and I can vividly recall standing in front of the steps and clapping my hands together and being delighted to hear the returning echo of a bird’s squawk. The noise is eerily similar to the cry of the quetzal, the sacred bird of the Mayas, an acoustical marvel that still puzzles scientists.

Yet, along with the sense of magic there was also a distinct creepiness to the ruins. This was once a vast ceremonial site where human sacrifice was actively practised, and no one here tries to disguise the fact. Even the evening light show features a human voice screaming in agony as he is killed. Of course, it’s diificult to miss the abundance of death imagery embedded in the stone. Jaguars and eagles are depicted ripping away at hearts and grinning skulls stare out from the sculpture and reliefs. There is even a structure called a Tzompantli or “skull rack” on which heads were once mounted. Some of these grisly trophies undoubtedly came from the Chichen Itza ballcourt, the largest in Mesoamerica, where one of the teams (academics debate whether it was the winning or losing side) would be put to death after the game had ended. Heads also used to roll at the Temple of the Warriors and its amazing assembly of 1,000 columns, which houses the famous reclining sculpture of Chaac-Mool, a sacrificial plate resting on his stomach.

Others met their maker atop the pyramid of Kulkucan in an elaborate and bloody ritual. The victim was stripped before being placed face-up over a convex altar. His arms and legs were held by specially designated priests while a fourth, called the nacom, would penetrate the victim’s chest with a flint knife just below the left breast. Reaching inside the chest cavity, the nacom would pull out the still beating heart and hand it to another priest, who would then smear the blood on the idol to which the sacrifice had been made. The corpse would be thrown to the courtyard below where priests of lower rank would skin the victim except for the hands and feet. The skin would then be worn by the officiating priest as he solemnly danced among the spectators. If the victim had been an especially brave warrior his body might be butchered and eaten by the nobles and other spectators.

Yet even creepier is the sense of dread one gets gazing into the murky, olive-green depths of the Sacred Cenote, a water-filled pit, 60 metres in diameter and rimmed by sheer limestone cliffs, from which Chichen Itza gets its name: Mouth of the Well of Water Sorcerers. These natural sinkholes are the only source of groundwater in the Yucatan and thus are highly prized, but this particular one was not used for drinking but rather as a place of pilgrimage by the ancient Maya. They believed the cenote was a gateway to the afterlife and would conduct human sacrifices here during times of drought, tossing in men, women and children along with material offerings.

The Sacred Cenote was dredged from 1904 to 1907 by the American adventurer and diplomat Edward H. Thompson, who purchased the entire site in 1894 and transformed it into a cattle ranch, while living in the Hacienda Chichen, my place of abode. Thompson recovered artifacts of gold, copper, obsidian and carved jade, as well as the first-ever examples of pre-Columbian Maya cloth and wooden weapons from the bottom of the well. He also found 127 human skeletons. He shipped the bulk of the artifacts to Harvard University’s Peabody Museum, but in 1926, the Mexican government seized his plantation, charging he had removed the artifacts illegally. In 1944 the Mexican Supreme Court overturned this decision and ruled in Thompson’s favour. Thompson, however, had died in New Jersey in 1935, so the Hacienda Chichen reverted to his heirs, who sold the property to the Barbachano family, who continue to own it today.

The skeletons recovered by Thompson confirmed early Spanish accounts of human sacrifice, which many scholars had previously dismissed as wild exaggeration. But another of his discoveries–the presence of a thick, four-metre high layer of blue residue at the bottom of the cenote–remained a perplexing mystery. At least it did until earlier this year, when a team of researchers led by Gary Feinman, curator of anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, analyzed traces of blue paint on a pottery bowl left in the bottom of the well. They discovered that this was not just any pigment. Instead, it was the renowned Maya Blue, an important, vivid, and virtually indestructible turquoise pigment. Historians now know that the Maya associated the colour blue with their rain deities. When they offered sacrifices to the god Chaak–either by cutting out their hearts on an altar or throwing them into the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá–they would paint them blue in hopes he would send rain to make corn grow. Blue paint was also used on murals, pottery, copal incense, rubber, wood and other items thrown into the well. Eventually, some of the pigment washed off and settled at the bottom of the cenote.

The investigators also noticed that the pottery bowl had a wedge of incense along with white flecks and the blue pigment. The incense was copal, made from a tree sap common in Mesoamerica, whose smoke was thought to feed the gods. The white flecks were of a white clay mineral named palygorskite. Previous studies had shown that Maya blue was created through the fusion of palygorskite with pigments from the leaves of the indigo plant. But no one knew how exactly, as the two substances do not readily react.

“Nobody has ever really figured out how those two key ingredients were fused into a very stable pigment,” noted Feinman in an interview. “We think that copal, the sacred incense, was a third ingredient. We’re arguing that heat and perhaps copal resin were the keys to fusing the indigo extract and the clay mineral.” In fact, the copal may have been the binding agent that allowed the colour to stay true for so long. The research team also believe that making Maya Blue was part of the sacrifice ritual. “My guess is that they probably had a large fire and a vessel over that fire where they were combining the key ingredients,” said Feinman. “And then they probably took pieces of the hot copal and put them into the vessel.”

“The Maya used indigo, copal incense and palygorskite for medicinal purposes,” explained anthropologist Dean Arnold, the author of the study. “So, what we have here are three healing elements that were combined with fire during the ritual at the edge of the Sacred Cenote. The result created Maya Blue, symbolic of the healing power of water in an agricultural community.”

Interesting stuff. Now if only some of these researchers could offer us a convincing explanation of why the Mayans, a people so advanced in mathematics, astronomy, art and architecture, felt compelled to base the fate of their civilization on the practice of savage human sacrifice.

Photo Credits:

#1: thehistoryblog.com

#2: dallas.net

#3: pro.corbis.com

#4: olympus-tours.com

Tags: Chichen Itza, Mayans, Mexico