Mexico City: Anthropology Museum

Writers tend to use superlatives when describing the National Museum of Anthropology, and I cannot be an exception. Rebecca West, this blog’s patron saint, wrote:

Its substance is exquisite. The walls are made from stone bricks of subtle colors, pale grey, storm grey, violet-grey, grey-blue, blue, rose-grey, rose, and they shimmer as if alive and breathing.

And I couldn’t agree more. It feels not so much like a museum as it is like walking into the pages of a novel or an epic poem. The story it tells does not begin with the first cities in Mexico, nor with the original farmers or shamans. No. It begins with the evolution of primates. Dioramas of monkeys on a savannah, followed by an uncanny rendition of a hominid giving birth, give way to a mural that depicts fur-clad peoples crossing the Bering Strait. We used to believe, the museum tells us, that nomads wandered in and hunted ice age mammals to extinction beginning about 11,000 years ago. We now know that people were in the Americas well before that time. The original settlers may have been more sedentary than we had thought, and they may have relied on fishing or vegetables for their food, rather than big game. "Therefore," the museum says, "what previously was considered a highly monotonous cultural landscape today lies before us in a period of grand social and cultural activity."

The distinctive cultures of Mesoamerica became apparent at about the same time as the fall of Troy or the reign of Pharaoh Rameses II. It was then that people in Mexico began to carve statues whose feet curved around to their heads, now called "acrobats." This was also the beginning of the ball game, a ritual that continued through all of the region’s subsequent empires. I cannot pretend to understand its importance, but it was associated in various ways with death and human sacrifice, and it "determined the dangers faced by the sun on its daily journey across the heavens."

Here is a replica of the ball court, followed by an example from the Mayan city of Palenque. The object was to hit a rubber ball through the hoops using your hips or forearms.

 

A traditional museum often resembles an old castle, a place of twists and turns where you can lose your way and discover hidden treasures. Here, all of the rooms branch out from a vast outdoor space, where you can view the doorways to each of the exhibits as if they lie along the points of a compass. As you enter the museum, the Aztec rooms are straight ahead on the far end of the quadrangle, while the cultures that predated them are to the right and their contemporaries are on the left. The courtyard also holds a pool of water with reeds, which might (but this is only my guess) represent the swamp in Aztec mythology where an eagle told them to build a new home.

There was a young couple next to me in one of the exhibit rooms, standing before the statue of a second-tier member of the Aztec pantheon whose name I can’t remember. "You know what that god did?" the boy (who was Mexican) asked his girlfriend (who was American). "He gave us the ability to love." That explanation did not match the placard, but it seemed to do justice to the complexity of a religion where the names of the gods kept changing according to circumstances. But the Aztecs believed the earth started out as a toad roaming over the water. Trees, flowers and plants sprung from its hair and its mouth became rivers and caves. "They imagined the surface of the earth," the museum says, "to be an immense interweaving of reptiles." Among the many ancient relics on display is a green headdress of quetzal feathers ten times the size of any normal head, intended to be worn by the emperor. Then there are statues of the gods Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl, rulers of the land of the dead:

They were represented as skeletons, hair sticking up and eyes bulging, and talked and breathed death; they carried sacrificial knives in their mouths and in pear-shaped holes.

(All of this information is hopefully accurate, but necessarily inexpert and brief. A very exciting book on prehistoric settlements is here; a classic book on Aztec culture, although I haven’t read it, is here; and a general introduction to the history of the Western Hemisphere is here.)

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Comments

[nub]

More info on the ballgame here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame

If I understand correctly, you could use your thighs, knees, elbows, head, and upper (not fore) arms.

The Spaniards were evidently quite startled by this rubber stuff, some going so far as to attribute its bouncy-bounciness to evil spirits. I always assumed rubber was native to southeast Asia (where it is now cultivated widely) but apparently it wasn't introduced there until the late 1800s by the British. Regard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber

[nub]

P.S. Rubber latex is found in the common dandelion as well.

Yes, I now let wikipedia do all my thinking for me. It's so much better than books.

[Avery Palmer]

Will attempt to verify the Wikipedia ...

[Avery Palmer]

I have yet to track down a definitive authority on Aztec daily life, which would answer my question about the ball game. One essay did come up that explains a modern form of the game is still played in the Mexican state of Sinoloa. In one version players hit the ball with their hips, in another with wrapped forearms.

The essay is found here:
http://linux1.north.denver.k12.co.us/~gmoreno/gmoreno/Mesoamerican_Ballgame.html

It describes the ancient forms of the game as follows:

"On each side of a playing alley were two long parallel walls against which a rubber ball was resounded and bounced from team to team. Points were scored when opposing ball players missed a shot at the vertical hoops placed at the center point of the side walls, were unable to return the ball to the opposing team before it had bounced a second time, or allowed the ball to bounce outside the boundaries of the court. The ball itself was of solid rubber and weighed around 6 pounds; injuries or even death could occur from its impact on vital parts of the body. A number of ways of playing the game are known; one used a bat, another used a paddle or padded hands to hit the ball and still another allowed the ball to be kicked with the feet. However, in the dominant and best known form of the game, the ball could only be struck with the hips, buttocks, knees,or elbows. It drew many spectators and almost always involved heavy gambling."