Pyramid Tomb Found: Sign of a Civilization's Birth?

National Geographic News ^ | Tuesday, May 18, 2010 | John Roach

[SunkenCiv]

Apparently caught between two cultures, the 2,700-year-old pyramid in Chiapa de Corzo (map), Mexico, may help settle a debate as to when and how the mysterious Zoque civilization arose, according to excavation leader Bruce Bachand.

At the time of the pyramid tomb's dedication, hundreds of artisans, vendors, and farmers would have known Chiapa de Corzo as a muggy town, redolent with wood smoke and incense.

Above them towered the three-story-tall pyramid, a "visually permanent and physically imposing reminder" of their past rulers and emerging cultural identity, said Bachand, an archaeologist at Brigham Young University.

The two rulers found with the pyramid-top tomb had been coated head-to-toe in sacred red pigment. At the center of the tomb, Bachand's team found a male in a pearl-beaded loincloth. To his side lay a companion, likely a female.

On their waists were jade beads shaped like howler monkeys, crocodiles, and gourds. Seashells inlaid with obsidian formed tiny masks for their mouths, which in turn held jade and pyrite ornaments.

Arrayed around the royal corpses were offerings to the gods: ceramic pots, ritual axes perhaps associated with fertility, iron-pyrite mirrors, and a red-painted stucco mask.

[SunkenCiv]

Photograph courtesy Bruce R. Bachand

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
·Dogpile · Archaeologica · LiveScience · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[Domangart]

And the HOA sold it for nonpayment of dues.

[Fred Nerks]

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/08/maya-rise-fall/map-interactive

link to interactive map...with the most brillaint selection of images...

[basil]

I just finished the book Serpent by Clive Cussler tonight. I think you would LOVE this book if you haven’t already read it. It’s amazing how much it ties in with what is happening today........and this post of yours’ is a tie-in, too.

[Ladycalif]

thanks

[STD]

"We have been looking everywhere in the Western Hemisphere for those Mormon tablets and the civilization that Joseph Smith claims existed here in the New World" said Bachand, an archaeologist at Brigham Young University.

I find these expeditions by the Mormons extremely exciting even if their motivation is directed to locating evidence to support the Book of Mormon. Along with Ancestory.com the Mormons have done a great deal of good tracking down the family trees of a majority of American citizens.

I'd like to hear the latest explaination that's behind the confusing rhetoric in the BOM. Please don't send two guys dressed in white shirts and ties!

[lexington minuteman 1775]

Actually it was a bunker. They thought the world was going to end on 2012 BC!

[norton]

I love the deep thought that goes into anthropology:

"These people were at the top of society, there is no doubt about it," (snip) "Slightly lower on society's ladder were two apparent human sacrifices, an adult and child, who looked as if they'd been tossed into the tomb."

"Tossed into the tomb" sounds pretty well down the social ladder to me.

[colorado tanker]

The new findings, he said, suggest that the E group—so strongly associated with the Maya and other Mesoamerican cultures—could actually be a Zoque invention

This site in an E Ticket to the E Group.

[SunkenCiv]

It could force a rethink of all that was thought to be known about the E group — now wouldn’t that just zoque? ;’)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks. I don’t read fiction very often, last time was, hmm, three or four years ago (”Inherit the Stars” by James Hogan, recommended by a FReeper); for his book titled (something like) “Atlantis”, Cussler seems to have, uh, borrowed a short tale I first read in a “stranger than fiction” book by the late Frank Edwards, moving it from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. ;’)