Today we're going to the Copan ruins! Our final ruins but one of the more famous ones & the whole reason for us going to Honduras. It was one of the major capitals during the classic Mayan period & its peak dates back to the 5th century to the 9th century AD. This site is famous for it's hieroglyphic stairway & statues depicting the kings who ruled here.
There is not a lot of information on the internet about Copan, but luckily we had a very good guide. He had a dry sense of humour (which I got) & was extremely informative!
He first explained the Mayan human blood sacrifice using tools made from trees, bones & plants. He even showed us the trees that were used to grow & harvest the spikes.
Interestingly at times of human sacrifice, the person was generally high & the Mayans were known to use poison from frogs, cactus & mushrooms to achieve this. Being high made them feel closer to their gods & they believed getting high & making sacrifices linked them supernaturaly to their gods.
Some other plants that we saw at Copan were imported at the time of the city's apex which proves the importance of it & how far reaching the Mayans trade capabilities reached. A few examples of what we saw were:
Coffee, which is from Ethiopia, Bananas from Papa New Guinea.
Cannabis from Nepal/Asia,
Palm oil trees from Africa &water melons specificay from Egypt.
Roses from England & Eucalyptus from Australia.
He explained the Mayan concept for human life & how the gods created us from out of corn cobs. Corn is a very important part of Mayan life & modern Latin American life.
The Mayan people used Corn cobs used as food, offerings to the gods, it features heavily in their art & surprisingly it was used as toilet paper. Their are still native American Indian tribes that live indigenously & still use corn cobs as toilet paper. Can you imagine it ?!
In the west plaza we saw statues of a Hybrid zoomorphic creation that are hybrids & gods.
Here is the underworld guardian called K'anan. The statues & the detail at this Mayan site is amazing!
The king Butskan statue & the deformities, which in Mayan beliefs were devine. Some deformities such as the flat faces & elongated skulls were done intentionally to attain a status of beauty. Infants had wood boards strapped to their soft skulls to attain this look. Other deformities from birth were common in Mayan royalty because of inbreeding.
These ruins are definitely not the biggest we've been in, but it's always hard to tell how much the dense jungle hides. Archaeological excavations are expensive, as is the upkeep. We were told 25,000 People were estimated to have lived in this city complex.
Copan is built out of volcanic stone which is different to the other Mayan cities which are built out of lime stone. The statues we saw outside of the tomb were green from the copper reaction.
The hieroglyphics on the stairway were restored after they were discovered as rubble, but not in a chronological order.
The stairway gave enough clues & had enough intact hieroglyphs to allow 80% of the hieroglyphs to be deciphered.
The stairway tells the story of human kind creation & astrology & it's evolution & relation with other Mayan cities. This was really cool to see. Unlike the Egyptian hieroglyphs that were deciphered after the discovery of the Rosetta stone, no such thing has been found for the Mayan hieroglyphs & there was likely hundreds of Mayan dialects spoken.
Our guide explained about the hip ball game that was played in an arena here & the sacrificial consequences of the loosing team. Funny enough, no one offered to volunteer for a game.
It was a great morning & we were conveniently done by midday.
I am starting to feel like my body is fighting something off. I'm really tired, uncomfortable & achy. I hope I don't get sick!
Once we walk back to the hotel, I go to bed to sleep & Tom has a quiet afternoon hanging out with our new tour members.
- Alli
There is not a lot of information on the internet about Copan, but luckily we had a very good guide. He had a dry sense of humour (which I got) & was extremely informative!
He first explained the Mayan human blood sacrifice using tools made from trees, bones & plants. He even showed us the trees that were used to grow & harvest the spikes.
Interestingly at times of human sacrifice, the person was generally high & the Mayans were known to use poison from frogs, cactus & mushrooms to achieve this. Being high made them feel closer to their gods & they believed getting high & making sacrifices linked them supernaturaly to their gods.
Some other plants that we saw at Copan were imported at the time of the city's apex which proves the importance of it & how far reaching the Mayans trade capabilities reached. A few examples of what we saw were:
Coffee, which is from Ethiopia, Bananas from Papa New Guinea.
Cannabis from Nepal/Asia,
Palm oil trees from Africa &water melons specificay from Egypt.
Roses from England & Eucalyptus from Australia.
He explained the Mayan concept for human life & how the gods created us from out of corn cobs. Corn is a very important part of Mayan life & modern Latin American life.
The Mayan people used Corn cobs used as food, offerings to the gods, it features heavily in their art & surprisingly it was used as toilet paper. Their are still native American Indian tribes that live indigenously & still use corn cobs as toilet paper. Can you imagine it ?!
In the west plaza we saw statues of a Hybrid zoomorphic creation that are hybrids & gods.
Here is the underworld guardian called K'anan. The statues & the detail at this Mayan site is amazing!
The king Butskan statue & the deformities, which in Mayan beliefs were devine. Some deformities such as the flat faces & elongated skulls were done intentionally to attain a status of beauty. Infants had wood boards strapped to their soft skulls to attain this look. Other deformities from birth were common in Mayan royalty because of inbreeding.
These ruins are definitely not the biggest we've been in, but it's always hard to tell how much the dense jungle hides. Archaeological excavations are expensive, as is the upkeep. We were told 25,000 People were estimated to have lived in this city complex.
Copan is built out of volcanic stone which is different to the other Mayan cities which are built out of lime stone. The statues we saw outside of the tomb were green from the copper reaction.
The hieroglyphics on the stairway were restored after they were discovered as rubble, but not in a chronological order.
The stairway gave enough clues & had enough intact hieroglyphs to allow 80% of the hieroglyphs to be deciphered.
The stairway tells the story of human kind creation & astrology & it's evolution & relation with other Mayan cities. This was really cool to see. Unlike the Egyptian hieroglyphs that were deciphered after the discovery of the Rosetta stone, no such thing has been found for the Mayan hieroglyphs & there was likely hundreds of Mayan dialects spoken.
Our guide explained about the hip ball game that was played in an arena here & the sacrificial consequences of the loosing team. Funny enough, no one offered to volunteer for a game.
It was a great morning & we were conveniently done by midday.
I am starting to feel like my body is fighting something off. I'm really tired, uncomfortable & achy. I hope I don't get sick!
Once we walk back to the hotel, I go to bed to sleep & Tom has a quiet afternoon hanging out with our new tour members.
- Alli
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