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Caracol is the most important Ancient City

          

The Aztecs, Laws and Politics

October 30, 2010

The Tlatoani, or rhetoric, had many tasks of the political situation. He was head of the judiciary, the priesthood and the army. It would also talk to the Aztec gods.

The Aztecs had severe sanctions. The criminals were taken to court where there was a group of judges who decide the punishment if guilty. Sometimes the emperor would pronounce sentence. In this way, the justice system Aztec was something like ours today. The emperor would act as a judge and specially selected members of the community would act as a jury.

Crime Punishment
adultery death
commoner found wearing cotton clothes death
cutting down a living tree death
drunkenness 1st offense -head shaved, house destroyed

2nd offense – death
handling stolen property sold into slavery
moving a field boundry death
kidnapping sold into slavery
selling substandard goods loss of property
major theft death
minor theft sold into slavery
treason death, loss of property, destruction of land, children sold into slavery

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Aztecs, Schooling

The sons of the noble class attended a calmécac, a school for children of the nobility that was attached to the temples. Girls and boys were separated from calmecac schools. The children have learned to live prudently, to govern and to understand the history and ways of their elders, under strict priestly leadership. Learning in the calmécac was essential for advancement within the imperial administration macehualtin. The (literally, “workers”; traders, farmers and manufacturers) children attended a local school, telpochcalli call. He learned his skills, elements of the war, and citizenship. The children learned the basics of history and religion.

Macehualtin some children who were bright were sent to a calmécac, where they have more emphasis on scholarship in preparation for careers in technology. Fifteen (15), children participated in one or calmécac Cuicacalli. The calmécac was led by priests who taught religious and administrative affairs. Students also Calmecac extra religious duties, and lessons of history, astronomy, poetry and writing. The Cuicacalli was more of a military school. All children were trained for war and there was great rivalry between the schools, which often leads to fights. In addition to enrolling all children also had to work hard on their family land.

Aztec girls were mostly taught at home and began shooting at four (4) and the firing of twelve (12). Their education is essentially a training for marriage, but the girls spent a precious year of twelve (12) or thirteen (13) assists in the temple, and some were professional priestesses. Women took little direct part in public life, but has had much influence behind the scenes.

Aztec fathers and mothers raised their children carefully, making sure that children know their responsibilities and have mastered the skills necessary for life. They warned the children against the vices of gambling and theft, gossip and drink, and when children misbehave, punishment was painful. A form of punishment had parents with their children to fire pepper and forcing them to inhale smoke pepper.

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Aztecs, Food and Drink

Maize, a type of corn was the main source of Aztec food. The Aztecs also ate tomatoes, avocados, atole (a kind of porridge), tortillas and tamales, a kind of wrapper steamed maize stuffed with vegetables or meat.

Aztecs also ate chocolate. In their culture chocolate was reserved for warriors and nobles. A drink of cacao mixed with ground corn is believed to provide stamina and was used in sacred rituals. The chocolate was a drink for the elite.

The Aztecs ate twice a day and the main meal is eaten during the hottest hours of the day. Some edible things available in an Aztec market were fruit, vegetables, spices, flowers, edible dogs, and birds.

The Aztecs had an alcoholic drink called octli. A combine octli take the sap of the maguey plant and put it in a large pot. Then let the putrefaction of the sapwood, then they drink it. Octli was strictly reserved for nobles, royalty, and warriors. All the nobles who have been abused (drunk) the divine drink of the Aztecs would be sentenced to death. A good vendor of agave sap is boiled until it is like honey to a bad seller would be diluted.

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For the archaeological work in and around Caracol

May 18, 2010

caracolnet 10 300x165 For the archaeological work in and around Caracol

For a quarter of a century, two archaeologists and their team slogged through wild tropical vegetation to investigate and map the remains of one of the largest Maya cities, in Central America. Slow, sweaty hacking with machetes seemed to be the only way to discover the breadth of an ancient urban landscape now hidden beneath a dense forest canopy.

Even the new remote-sensing technologies, so effective in recent decades at surveying other archaeological sites, were no help. Imaging radar and multispectral surveys by air and from space could not “see” through the trees.
Then, in the dry spring season a year ago, the husband-and-wife team of Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase tried a new approach using airborne laser signals that penetrate the jungle cover and are reflected from the ground below. They yielded 3-D images of the site of ancient Caracol, in Belize, one of the great cities of the Maya lowlands.
In only four days, a twin-engine aircraft equipped with an advanced version of lidar (light detection and ranging) flew back and forth over the jungle and collected data surpassing the results of two and a half decades of on-the-ground mapping, the archaeologists said. After three weeks of laboratory processing, the almost 10 hours of laser measurements showed topographic detail over an area of 80 square miles, notably settlement patterns of grand architecture and modest house mounds, roadways and agricultural terraces.
“We were blown away,” Dr. Diane Chase said recently, recalling their first examination of the images. “We believe that lidar will help transform Maya archaeology much in the same way that radiocarbon dating did in the 1950s and interpretations of Maya hieroglyphs did in the 1980s and ’90s.”
The Chases, who are professors of anthropology at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, had determined from earlier surveys that Caracol extended over a wide area in its heyday, between A.D. 550 and 900. From a ceremonial center of palaces and broad plazas, it stretched out to industrial zones and poor neighborhoods and beyond to suburbs of substantial houses, markets and terraced fields and reservoirs.
This picture of urban sprawl led the Chases to estimate the city’s population at its peak at more than 115,000. But some archaeologists doubted the evidence warranted such expansive interpretations.
“Now we have a totality of data and see the entire landscape,” Dr. Arlen Chase said of the laser findings. “We know the size of the site, its boundaries, and this confirms our population estimates, and we see all this terracing and begin to know how the people fed themselves.”
The Caracol survey was the first application of the advanced laser technology on such a large archaeological site. Several journal articles describe the use of lidar in the vicinity of Stonehenge in England and elsewhere at an Iron Age fort and American plantation sites. Only last year, Sarah H. Parcak of the University of Alabama at Birmingham predicted, “Lidar imagery will have much to offer the archaeology of the rain forest regions.”
The Chases said they had been unaware of Dr. Parcak’s assessment, in her book “Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology” (Routledge, 2009), when they embarked on the Caracol survey. They acted on the recommendation of a Central Florida colleague, John F. Weishampel, a biologist who had for years used airborne laser sensors to study forests and other vegetation.
Dr. Weishampel arranged for the primary financing of the project from the little-known space archaeology program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The flights were conducted by the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, operated by the University of Florida and the University of California, Berkeley.
Other archaeologists, who were not involved in the research but were familiar with the results, said the technology should be a boon to explorations, especially ones in the tropics, with its heavily overgrown vegetation, including pre-Columbian sites throughout Mexico and Central America. But they emphasized that it would not obviate the need to follow up with traditional mapping to establish “ground truth.”
Jeremy A. Sabloff, a former director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and now president of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, said he wished he had had lidar when he was working in the Maya ruins at Sayil, in Mexico.
The new laser technology, Dr. Sabloff said, “would definitely have speeded up our mapping, given us more details and would have enabled us to refine our research questions and hypotheses much earlier in our field program than was possible in the 1980s.”
At first, Payson D. Sheets, a University of Colorado archaeologist, was not impressed with lidar. A NASA aircraft tested the laser system over his research area in Costa Rica, he said, “but when I saw it recorded the water in a lake sloping at 14 degrees, I did not use it again.”
Now, after examining the imagery from Caracol, Dr. Sheets said he planned to try lidar, with its improved technology, again. “I was stunned by the crisp precision and fine-grained resolution,” he said.
“Finally, we have a nondestructive and rapid means of documenting the present ground surface through heavy vegetation cover,” Dr. Sheets said, adding, “One can easily imagine, given the Caracol success, how important this would be in Southeast Asia, with the Khmer civilization at places like Angkor Wat.”
In recent reports at meetings of Mayanists and in interviews, the Chases noted that previous remote-sensing techniques focused more on the discovery of archaeological sites than on the detailed imaging of on-ground remains. The sensors could not see through much of the forest to resolve just how big the ancient cities had been. As a consequence, archaeologists may have underestimated the scope of Mayan accomplishments.

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Maya Civilization

May 13, 2010

caracol maya 300x202 Maya Civilization

Mayan civilization is one of America pre-Columbian civilization. The Mayan civilization of Central America as a civilization thousands of years in the southeast of Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala in an area extending ruled.  Mexico’s southeastern five-state founded by Maya (Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Yucatán), the dates for hundreds polish have produced and polish some of today still spoken 21-44 Maya language formation has provided. BC this civilization 600 due to the rise in the past, Anno Domini 3. century to the golden age (the classical period, AD 250-900) was a step, the political turmoil of the city-state has collapsed as a result of MS 900, until the existence of a large area and at the end of Spanish occupation was in the process. , if the Mayan civilization ended in many ways, contrary to common belief, is not no Mayans still live in this country and some of the Mayan languages are spoken.

“Ancient Maya” s (Maya point compared to today’s descendants used phrase), astronomy, mathematics, architecture and art at such an advanced level of civilization in many areas, they are. Rabinal Achim, Popol-Vuh, the Mayan Chilam Balam in such works of literature depicting the life of this culture is. 1697 Spanish occupation of the capital of the Mayan Itza Tayasal’ın  and the capital of Guatemala’s Mayan Ko’woj Zacpetén’in completed by taking the last Maya state of the capital in 1901 (Chan Santa Cruz)  has disappeared with the invasion by Mexico.

It is divided into three regions of the yeast home: South of the “Upper Lands” ı south (or the middle) “The Lands” and the north of the “Lower Lands” ı. “Upper Land” in Guatemala and Chiapas territory includes a high-altitude level. The lands south of the above “Land” takes place just north of Mexico Petén’i (Campeche), Quintana Roo’yu, northern Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador covers. Norton’s “The Land” the Yucatan   Peninsula and the rest covers Puuc expand hill.

Classic-month period from the extraordinary structures built and Nakbé, Mirador, San Bartolo, mercury, such as large cities have set up the Mayan classic period, they set up the famous city of some of Tikal, Quiriguá (both World Heritage List was taken) , Palenque, Copán, Río Azul, Calakmul, Ceibal, Cancuén, Machaquilá, Dos Pilas, Uaxactún, Altun Ha, Negras’tır Piedras. Religious center of Maya civilization in the most interesting monuments are the pyramids. The administrator of the palace, decorated with wall paintings and plaster houses of noble people among the interesting monuments are located. One of the interesting work in Maya, they operate with master stone sculpture, manager of the genealogy, military victories have been described, by Maya tetum (“tree-stones”), called monumental obelisks. Jade trade between the goods of yeast, cocoa, corn, salt, and obsidian stone can be considered. Yeast, such as front-Turks gave special importance to the jade stone.

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Maya Prehistory and Caracol

April 18, 2010

1200 B.C.-250 A.D.

Preclassic Small sedentary villages followed by development of monumentality and larger centers.
ca. 600-900 B.C.
Earliest known habitation at Caracol.
ca. A.D. 70
Structure A6-1st, “Temple of the Wooden Lintel,” constructed and consecrated; locus B34 burial; full Maya ritual complex present at Caracol.
ca. A.D. 150
Elaborate burial placed in Structure B34 locus.
A.D. 250-900
Classic “Peak” of Maya civilization; pyramids, tombs, inscriptions, widespread trade; by A.D. 800 Maya “collapse” is underway.
A.D. 331
Caracol Royal dynasty “officially” founded.
ca. A.D. 480
Unknown ruler’s tomb placed in Structure D16.
A.D. 531
Accession of Lord Water’s predecessor.
A.D. 537
Use of initial tomb in Structure B20-3rd.
A.D. 553
Accession of Caracol Ruler Lord Water.
A.D. 556
“Axe-Event” involving Tikal.
A.D. 562
“Star-War” defeat of Tikal by Caracol.
A.D. 575
Birth of Smoke Ahau.
A.D. 577
One of three tombs in Structure B20-2nd used.
A.D. 577 or 582
Front tomb in Structure A34 consecrated.
A.D. 588
Birth of Caracol Ruler Kan II.
A.D. 599
Accession of Caracol Lord Smoke Ahau.
A.D. 614
Tomb in Structure L3-2nd covered.
A.D. 618
Accession of Kan II.
A.D. 626-636
Naranjo wars; major expansion of Caracol follows.
A.D. 634
Woman’s tomb in Structure B19-2nd closed.
A.D. 658
Accession of Caracol Ruler Smoke Skull; Death of Kan II.
A.D. 680
Naranjo’s war of independence.
A.D. 696
Tomb in Structure A3-1st covered.
A.D. 702
Capture of Ixkun lord noted on Stela 21.
A.D. 800
Capture of 3 prisoners, including Ucanal lord, by Caracol Ruler Hok K’awil or his underlings.
A.D. 859
Last recorded date at Caracol on Stela 10.
A.D. 900-1500
Postclassic Most major sites located away from Classic Period centers, but near water. Sites are generally characterized by low-lying as opposed to monumental architecture.
ca. A.D. 1050
Last use of Caracol Structure A6; Caracol totally abandoned.
A.D. 1500-present
“Historic” Europeans arrive in the New World; most native Maya populations disseminated by disease; others disrupted by warfare and forced population movements. Native populations still comprise over 50% of Guatemala and Yucatan.

*Timeline revised from A. Chase and D. Chase 1996

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Description of Words

Altar : Usually a round, flat stone, these may have pictures or hieroglyphs carved into them.

Archaeology : The study of the past. It often involves digging up the remains of ancient people.
Caana : The tallest set of buildings at Caracol; Caana in Maya means “sky place.” It is made up of palaces and temples.
Caches : Something hidden, usually a pottery container with special things inside, such as jadeite or carved shell.
Caracol : An ancient Maya city; it is located just south of modern Belize, in the Yucatan in Mexico. Over 1,400 years ago (A.D. 650) the city of Caracol was the home of over 100,000 people.
Excavation : Digging to uncover the remains of buildings and artifacts.

Hieroglyphs : Also known as Glyphs; these are the Maya way of writing.
Intensive Farming : Farming that takes more work, but allows farmland to be used every year.
Jadeite : A hard green stone valued by the Maya. It was often made into jewelry.
Katun : 20 Maya years = 7,200 Kins(days)
Kin: A day.
Maya : People native to parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. From archaeology we know that they were in this area by 3000 years ago (1000BC); they are still living today.
Milpa:Also called Swidden farming. A kind of farming in which the land is cleared by burning. Land cannot be used every year with this type of farming.

Palace : A building with many different rooms; these were probably the places where wealthy people and members of the royal family lived
Santa Rita Corozal : Ancient Maya capital city located in northern Belize. It reached it height approximately 500 years ago.
Stela : A tall stone, usually carved with pictures of rulers and hieroglyphs that tell about them.
Temple : A pyramid that usually has a building on top and was used primarily for religious reasons.
Terraces : Stone walls that hold soil for farming.
Tun : A Maya year = 18 Uinals or 360 Kins(days).
Uinal : A Maya month = 20 Kins (or 20 days).

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About Caracol

March 25, 2010

caracol 300x224 About Caracol

Caracol or El Caracol is the name given to a large ancient Maya archaeological site, located in what is now the Cayo District of Belize. It is situated approximately 25 miles south of Xunantunich  and the town of San Ignacio Cayo, at an elevation of 1500 feet (460 m) above sea-level, in the foothills of the Maya Mountains. The site was the most important political centre of Lowland Maya during the Classic Period within Belize.

Discovery

The site was first reported by a native logger named Rosa Mai, who came across its remains in 1937 while searching for mahogany hardwood trees to exploit. Mai later reported the site to the archaeological commission for British Honduras, as the British colony, later to become independent Belize, was known at the time. In 1938 the archaeological commissioner, A.H. Anderson, visited the site along with a colleague H.B. Jex, spending two weeks in preliminary surveys and noting a number of carved monuments, stelae and Maya inscriptions. It was Anderson who gave the site its name —from the Spanish: caracol “snail, shell”, but more generally meaning spiral- or volute-shaped— apparently on account of the winding access road that led to the site.[1]

History

Ancient Caracol as a site was occupied as early as 1200 BCE. Its greatest period of construction was in the Maya Classic period, with over 40 monuments dated between 485CE to 889CE which record the dynastic sequence of the rulers. All are in Classic Choltian, the prestige tongue of the Lowland Maya. Its real name is provisionally translated from its glyph, as of 2003, ox witz ha (hispanicised, “Oxhuitza”) or “place of three hills”; K’antumaak is also possible.[2]

The town grew into one of the largest ancient Maya cities, covering some 65 square miles (168 km²) with an estimated peak population of about 120,000, or possibly as many as 180,000 people.

Caracol was at first a client of Mutal (at the Tikal site) 70 km to the northwest. Mutal’s influence weakened during the mid sixth century; losing control of Naranjo, between the two cities, to rival Calakmul. In 553 CE Mutal’s king Double Bird appointed a new lord over Caracol in attempt to outflank Naranjo. But then Caracol also allied itself with Calakmul. Three years later, Tikal declared an “axe war” against Caracol – “a war with intent to destroy” – and defeated it; but not, it turned out, decisively. In 562, Lord Kan (“Water”) I of Caracol, alongside Calakmul, declared a “star war” against Mutal – a holy war, planned in accordance with astrology – and captured and sacrificed Double Bird. This event is seemingly concurrent with archaeological and epigraphic evidence indicating the beginning of the Tikal Mid-Classic Hiatus, when an apparent decline in the Tikal site’s population, a cessation of monument building, and the destruction of certain monuments in the Great Plaza occurred as Caracol’s population and urban development seemingly skyrocketed.[4] After that, the Tikal site took on cultural characteristics of Caracol.

Lord Kan I passed on his throne to the eldest of two brothers 26 June, 599. His younger brother succeeded him 9 March 618 and took the name Lord Kan II. He performed a ritual of alliance in Calakmul’s territory the following January.

Caracol’s sometime ally Naranjo by this time had meanwhile made feelers toward Mutal. So, in 28 May 626, Lord Kan II pre-emptively attacked Naranjo. He attacked again 4 May 627, and sacrificed its king. This destabilised Naranjo, provoking a third attack 27 December 631. He did it a fourth time 4 March 636. On 24 November 637, he capped it off by celebrating his first katun of reign at Naranjo itself; and, on 6 December 642, he imposed the Hieroglyphic Stairs monument upon it.

In 682, Tok-Chan-K’awil of the Tikal royal family-in-exile at Dos Pilas installed his daughter as queen in Naranjo, removing it again from Caracol’s demesne. In 800 CE, Hok K’awil captured the lord of Ucanal. The last recorded date in Caracol (and Choltian-speaking Belize) is 859 CE, on Stele 10.

Excavations, investigations, and modern development

The site was first noted and documented in archaeological terms in 1937. More extensive explorations and documention of the site was undertaken by Linton Satterthwaite of the University of Pennsylvania in 1951 and 1953. A project of archaeological excavations and restorations of the ancient structures at Caracol started in 1985 and is ongoing. The project is currently directed by Drs. Arlen and Diane Chase of the University of Central Florida in Orlando. The site is maintained by residential wardens from the Belize Institute of Archaeology, a sub-division of the National Institute of Culture and History, a government-run agency.

The site currently accommodates an average of 15-20 tourists per day, with greater numbers during the peak season around Easter. A museum to hold the large monuments found at the site is currently being constructed. A visitor center is already at the site, and recent developments include new directional and informational signs and a house for the residential staff.

The only road Caracol may be accessed by is paved for the last ten miles and leads to the Western Highway between San Ignacio and Belmopan and to Santa Elena.

Caana (“sky-palace”) is the largest building at Caracol. It remains one of the largest man-made structures in Belize.

Other area sites

Other Mayan sites within the Cayo province include Xunantunich, Cahal Pech and Chaa Creek.

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