Below: perched like one of the many birds in the area on the edge of the Temple of Inscriptions.
I first learnt about the Mayans when I was 12. My family had just purchased our first PC after my PSLE, and at that age I used the computer only for games and the Internet (still dial-up). One of these games I came across was called MayaQuest. But for me the Americas, much less pre-Columbian America, were in another galaxy - there was little to separate Aztec, Inca and Maya in those ignorant days. Well, fast forward 17 years, and I still know little more than I did. And that's why we were in Copan. However, we kept postponing our trip to the ruins hoping that Mary would heal sufficiently to come too. The main plaza's fine to walk, it's like a golf course, Howard assured us. In the end, Mary decided she needed to rest on our last full day there, so I went on my own.
The ruins at Copan scarcely match up to their more visually imposing counterparts in Tikal, Palenque or Chichen Itza. What sets Copan apart is its art, nowhere as rich and well preserved as they are in its sculptures and stelas. I'll be honest - for me soaring pyramids beat intricate stonework hands down. The 12-hour bus ride from Guatemala City to the Peten (Guatemala's northern lowlands where these impressive ruins are situated) would be tolerable enough one-way if not for the fact that we would have had to retrace our steps, since we had no intention to end up in neighbouring Belize. Copan Ruinas was a compromise choice, wedged between the scenic highlands of both El Salvador and Guatemala which we wanted to visit.
Below: view of the surrounding countryside from the acropolis, the higher part of the ceremonial centre which only kings, nobles and priests could access.
Their sylvan setting reinforces not only a certain sense of dispossession, but also one of repossession. Man here seems to have been rebuked by Nature for his audacity to claim what does not ever belong. Copan was gradually abandoned to the forest from the ninth century, until reports by first a Spanish surveyor in 1576 and then a Honduran General in 1834 brought it back briefly to public attention. General Jose Galindo's report piqued the interest of John Lloyd Stephens, an American traveller. Stephens eventually bought over the plot of land on which the ruins stood, shunned by the locals for the perceived evil which lingered on in fallen pagan stone. At a knockdown price of $50, it was an absolute steal, even in those days.
Below: The forest which surround the ruins also bore life, exemplified in all its unreserved resplendence in the resident flock of scarlet macaws (below). The path to the main plaza could have been one through a zoo, except there are no enclosures.
Below: two yellow-winged tanagers foraging acrobatically.
Below (top to bottom): it's a deer, no it's a rat, no, it's an agouti, which is actually related to the rat; a variegated squirrel, much shyer than their New England cousins.
Both the extent of Copan's artistic achievement and what these portrayed reflected its considerable regional sway between the fifth and eighth centuries, a predominance which it shared with Calakmul, Palenque and Tikal in this time known as to historians as the Classic Period (roughly third to tenth centuries). But where are the Mayans today? And the question on most interested observers' lips - why did Mayan civilisation seem to collapse so precipitously at its height? The most widely accepted hypothesis presently is that a Malthusian combination of war, over-exploitation of natural resources and drought condemned the Mayans to the historical scrapyard of fallen kingdoms.
Above (top to bottom): first sight of the conveniently-labelled Structure 4 in the main plaza, as one approaches the ruins from the entrance; a profile of Stela A with Structure 4 in the background. It was discovered that these stelas also functioned as astronomical and mathematical tools, marking where the sun would rise on equinoxes and solstices, and even functioning as sundials. But what would the ancient Mayans have made of our unimaginative renaming of their landmarks?
Below: posing in front of the Petroglyph Staircase, the carvings on each step recount the history of Copan. The blocks which make up the staircase have since been reassembled by archaeologists, who found it in a state of severe disrepair and who still do not know enough to decipher fully its writing. A large ungainly sheet of tarpaulin today shields the monument from the elements.
Below: the ball court in the main plaza, as seen from the acropolis. Ritualized games were played there, generally involving players keeping the ball in the air using their thighs and hips (doesn't sound too easy, which just might explain why many Latin American footballers today are outrageously skillful). These games were typically played against an unfortunate band of prisoners condemned to losing thrice successively - on the battlefield (which explains their subsequent presence on a foreign ball court), on the ball court (they could not win) and then their lives on the altar in sacrifice to the gods.
However, the curtains of history did not fall on the Mayan people. Mayan city-states continued to exist right up to the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century, though they never attained the heights of their forebears in the Classic Period. And the Mayans have certainly not vanished. They still dwell in the hills around Copan, and I speak of people not spirits. In Guatemala (where 40% of the population remains Mayan), Mayan culture has not only survived but is mounting a revival after the violent civil war years of the 1980s.
Below (top to bottom): roots are the only climbers of the acropolis these days.
Mystery and nostalgia aside, the relative emptiness of the site on a Monday afternoon was an indication that tourism in Honduras has seen better days. There seemed to be more groundsmen, stewards and guides (whose presence put paid to any Indiana Jones and El Dorado fantasies) than visitors. The last-named looked like uniformed sages, as they walked around on thin wooden staffs tipped with a single macaw tail feather, which they used to point out sights to visitors.
I spoke to an elderly moustached groundsman, assigned to a patch on the acropolis which he kept spick and span by assiduously picking up any fallen leaf or twig. He confided that he is paid pittance in a job he has laboured in day in and day out without rest (not even Saturdays and Sundays, as I clarified) for the past eighteen years. He also said wistfully that tourists who hanker after the Mayan experience prefer neighboring Guatemala. Tsk tsk.
That there are fewer visitors in Copan presents an opportunity for those who have chosen to come. The nearby town makes a pleasant base, and is within strolling distance (although I took a tuktuk to save time), unlike in Tikal where one'd have to arrange transport between Flores and the ruins. The locals aren't pushy too, which is refreshing. I write this in hindsight, after having visited the tourist trap that was Panajachel in Guatemala.
Copan Ruinas definitely deserves more than being a compromise choice.
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