This passage is adapted from an article entitled “Portrait of the Past” (© 2006 by Laura Harbold).
San Bartolo
- When archaeologist William
- Saturno went to Guatemala six
- years ago, nothing worked out the
- way he planned. None of the local
- guides could take him to see the
- carved monuments he wanted to
- research, leaving him with nothing
- to do. “Not being particularly good
- at sitting around and twiddling my
- thumbs,” Saturno says, he decided
- to investigate a rumor that three
- hieroglyphic Maya monuments had
- been uncovered by looters in the
- jungle nearby.
- After an arduous, twenty-two-hour
- journey, Saturno and his group
- finally arrived at the San Bartolo
- site, which wasn’t the one they
- were looking for. Exhausted and
- dehydrated, Saturno ducked into
- a looter’s trench to escape the
- oppressive heat. “I shone my
- flashlight up on the wall,” he says,
- “and there was the mural.”
- The image that Saturno’s flashlight
- had illuminated turned out to be
- only a fraction of a complex
- narrative unfolding across the walls
- of a large stone chamber. Dated
- about 100 B.C.E., the murals are
- the earliest known examples of
- Maya painting. The discovery
- suggests a level of sophistication in
- pre-Classic Maya culture previously
- unsuspected by archaeologists.
- “Things are a lot more complicated
- than we thought,” Saturno says.
- “One of the things that’s neat about
- these murals is that they imply a
- sort of narrative tradition.”
- According to Karl Taube,
- iconographer for the San Bartolo
- project, the murals represent a
- myth that dominated Maya culture
- for fifteen hundred years. In the
- first scene, a man stands in water,
- sacrificing a fish to the principle
- bird deity. In the second scene, a
- man stands on land, offering a
- deer to a second bird in the second
- world tree; in the third, he floats
- in the air, presenting a turkey; in
- the fourth, he hovers in a field of
- flowers.
- In the final scene, the Maya maize
- god stands in front of a fifth world
- tree, establishing the center of the
- universe. The maize god crowns
- himself king, wearing a headdress
- made from the body of the bird.
- The wooden scaffold upon which
- he sits is the same throne depicted
- in the coronation of Maya kings for
- centuries, Taube says. The depiction
- of the maize god in the San Bartolo
- murals is surprising because of its
- similarity to later, geographically
- disparate examples of Maya
- iconography, Saturno says.
- “We have this depiction of the bird
- deity at 100 B.C.E. and see an
- almost identical carved version
- of the same bird a thousand miles
- away in the Pacific highlands of
- Mexico,” he says. The similarity
- suggests regular circulation of
- artwork and ideas among Maya
- cities in the pre-Classic period.
- “Archaeologists used to believe
- that the pivotal aspects of Maya
- civilization began first in the
- highlands and moved to the
- lowlands,” Saturno says.
- “Because of San Bartolo, talking
- about a singular point of origin
- and migration doesn’t work
- anymore.”
- The San Bartolo murals also
- suggest a staggering longevity of
- ideas in Mesoamerican culture.
- According to William Fash,
- director of the Peabody Museum
- at Harvard University, “the
- depiction of the maize god is very
- Olmec.” The Olmec, considered
- the mother culture of Mesoamerica,
- flourished circa 1200 to 400 B.C.E.
- Similar imagery of the maize god
- appears in the only four extant
- Maya books, dated in the late post-
- Classic period around the sixteenth
- century C.E.
- “One of the most exciting things
- about San Bartolo is that it suggests
- that there are a lot more of these
- things out there,” Saturno says. His
- team has already discovered
- another room close to the original
- chamber. “People are going to be
- working on San Bartolo long after
- my lifetime,” Saturno predicts.
- According to Fash, the
- sophistication of the San Bartolo
- paintings suggests that the term
- “pre-Classic” might be a misnomer.
- “These murals are actually some of
- the most beautiful in all of
- Mesoamerica. It’s silly to call them
- pre-anything. They’ve astounded
- everyone.”