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By Jeremy Carter - Guest blogger traveling in Merida, Mexico.
Skulls, Monkeys and Flamingoes (oh my!)
The school hosting the Yucatan Spanish Institute, the program I'm participating in, has done a phenomenal job of planning excursions for those of us studying there. On Wednesday, we went to the Museo de Antropologia e Historia, which is operated by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia that I blogged about earlier. The museum, which is housed in a restored mansion on Merida's historic Paseo de Montejo, is filled with artifacts about the people who have occupied the Yucatan peninsula for the past 4,000 years or more. The first floor of the museum is devoted to the history of the Mayan people, in particular from the Pre-Classic (2,000 BC-250 AD), Classic (250-900 AD) and Post-Classic (900-1500AD) periods. (I hope I got those dates right.)
One of the most fascinating exhibits was the one showing skulls of ancient Mayan people. Mayan people used to believe that a sloped forehead leading to a nose of about the same angle was the ultimate in beauty and a sign of nobility. As a result, they would often force this slope by tying boards and other objects to the foreheads of babies. At the museum, we saw skulls of adults and children who had this slope, either naturally or by force, and the shape was indeed striking.
Also interesting was an exhibiting showing the various materials Mayans used as "canvases" for their artwork. Jade, pottery and stone were the most common mediums, but they were even known to carve intricate carvings in bones from deceased people and animals. (As a side note, we learned from Armando, our Mayan culture instructor, that no ovens for firing pottery have been found at ancient Mayan sites, so anthropologists aren't sure if ancient Mayans fired their own pottery or imported it from nearby cultures/countries.)
On Thursday, we took a trip to the city zoo, which is located just outside downtown and, due to the fact that it's government-funded, admission is free. Since there's no direct public funding for the zoo, it's not as expansive as many zoos in the states, but we got to see many animals native the Yucatan peninsula that you wouldn't otherwise get to see.
Today, however, was a definite highlight of my two weeks here. This morning we boarded a bus and went to Celestun, a town and neighboring nature preserve that serve as home to North America's only mainland population of pink flamingoes. Here we took motorboats out into the water to see these beautiful birds, which number in the tens of thousands during the winter months, but there are still a few thousand of them this time of year. We also stopped at an "ojo de agua," or freshwater spring, for a quick swim. After that, it was off to the town – a quaint, sleepy pueblo fronting the gulf – for dinner. This evening I'm so tired I can barely stand up, but with only two weeks left, there's much more to see, so tomorrow I'm planning a trip to the nearby beach at Progresso.
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