Palenque

On Tuesday we visited the archaeological site at Palenque – this was a Maya city state that flourished in the seventh century CE. It was built on a series of artificial terraces surrounded by jungle – imagining people clearing jungle, flattening land, diverting rivers and building these enormous structures all by hand and yet mathematically aligned to astronomical calendars without even beasts of burden was almost impossible. After its decline it was absorbed into the jungle, but a small part of it has now been excavated. If it was left untended we were told that the jungle would totally reclaim it within twenty years. For most of the time we were there it was pouring with rain (and we mean pouring – the site has about 3,200mm of rain per year) and Gregg was feeling quite unwell as he was the latest member of our group to feel the revenge of Moctezuma.
By Maya city standards Palenque is a medium-sized site, but it contains some of the finest architecture, sculpture, roof comb and bas-relief carvings the Maya produced. Much of the history of Palenque has been reconstructed from reading the hieroglyphic inscription on the many monuments, and historians now have a long sequence of the ruling dynasty of Palenque in the seventh century and extensive knowledge of the city states rivalry with other Mayan city states such. The most famous ruler of Palenque was Lord Pacal the Great whose tomb has been found and excavated in the temple of the inscriptions one of the rare Maya pyramids to have a burial chamber incorporated into it at the time of construction. It contained a wealth of gold and jade objects – most of them in the anthropological museum In Mexico City.