Sunday 27 October 2013
Started
today at a beautiful hacienda in a cool little Mexican town. Then onto Cantona. Only the first archaeological site we are
visiting on our Mexican holiday and oh my god.
It was fantastic! Unbelievably
beautiful. Of all the sites in Mexico
this one is high on the mountains and quite dry (compared to those in the
jungle). This site had the most ball
courts, lots and lots of them. Why is
this significant? Because they would
play a game something like a cross between basketball and baseball but with two
players; the winner would then be sacrificed.
The fact that this site had so many ball courts would seem to imply they
had a big love of human sacrifice (more than typical in meso-America). They have found human remains at the site and
evidence of decapitation, dismemberment and cannibalism. Very cool.
Then
onto the Archaeological museum at Xalapa, where they have the biggest
collection of colossal Olmec heads. Also
very cool. Thought we would do a quick
“in and out” on the Olmec heads but had to drag ourselves away in the end after
seeing all the exquisite artefacts; sacrificial gods, the flayed god, all these
little statues from over one thousand years of history. The Olmecs were the “mother culture”, the
other later art, ritual and human sacrifice, wearing human skins, decapitation
and the ball game, all came from the Olmecs, who appear to have made it all up
without any reference to any other culture.
Very cool. Very freaky.
