Mural at front desk
When planning your stay in Belize you face a host of ruins. Half a dozen classic Mayan cities, towns, and settlements are being found and tidied up all over the country and in neighbouring Mexico and Guatemala. For a field trip, I picked one at random, Cahal Pech. Later, I learned, Place of Fleas. Peachy.
Did I take pictures? Nooo. So just now I googled Cahal Pech and tapped Images. Wonderful images show you what it looks like. The height of the civilization was about 800 CE, giving the forest 1200 intervening years to work on it. Today the ruin first appears as a pile of rubble studded with trees. Archaeologists have dug into the rubble, sifted it, and figured out how the original structure was built. Because funds and manpower are limited, they dig out one face of a building, so you can get the idea of what the settlement looked like. At Cahal Pech, much remains covered.
The step pyramids are, basically, piles of square stone blocks, but there is method to them, and much symbolism. The classic Mayans recognized thirteen heavens and nine layers of the underworld. So there are nine huge (about 2 ft high and 2 ft across) steps up to a flat place where the ruler appeared, with a stone throne for him to sit, and then thirteen steps above and behind him. Thus could he sit between heaven and hell.
Our tour brought us out on that flat place between heaven and hell, and the most direct way to the ground was down those first nine steps. My balance has never been anything to write songs about and it has gotten worse. Dance nimbly down those nine blocks like the tour guide could? Hardly. However, my grandson Noah has a similar lack of balance and he likes to go downstairs on his butt, bouncing from step to step. He’s really good at it. So I sat on a step, slid down to the next, sat…it took a moment or two, but I landed safely and triumphantly in the main ball court.
Stacks of housing are being uncovered here and there. Military personnel and defenders lived in ground floor rooms smaller than your bathroom, I don’t care how small your bathroom is. Midlevel wonks lived higher up and of course, the elite occupied the top.
There were no human sacrifices at this location apparently, but in some towns, the ball games were life and death, literally. Sort of like the NFL. The captain of the winning team was sacrificed (willingly, in fact), an honor that sent him directly to heaven without having to navigate those nasty lower depths.
Quarterbacks, take note.