Ruins and other old stuff
For me, there’s something awesome about ruins. I grew up in Chicago where “old” meant having survived the Chicago Fire (1871) – e.g., the old Water Tower on Michigan Avenue. Even back east in Massachusetts during my college years, I never grasped the “oldness” of Revolutionary buildings. (There were a lot of things I never quite grasped during those years. Draw your own conclusions.)
For the last 35 years or so I’ve lived in California where old means the Gold Rush and the Missions. For a while we even lived two or three blocks away from the Mission Dolores. But history in San Francisco sort of dribbles into the present at best. It never blows one away. Or, at least, it never blew me away.
But I was blown away when I went to France and felt history pour into the present. I saw not only thousand-year-old Renaissance churches and medieval paintings, but also two thousand year old Roman arenas and aqueducts, and 2500-year-old Greek statues and vases. I had been a Classics major in college, and was aware of others’ enthusiasm for Greek art. All I had seen, however, had been photos, and it was hard to get very enthusiastic about photos. Seeing multiple examples of the real thing, it was clear how incredible they really are.
My only experience of age and history as a presence in this country has been in New Mexico where what amazed me was not just the existence of “old,” but of the continued existence of all the historic layers – there were, in order, the disappeared Anasazi, the still present Hopi, Zuni, and Pueblo peoples, the Navaho (relative latecomers), the remnants of the original Spanish settlers (We saw the courthouse that Reies-Tijerina took over in 1967.), and the rest of us.
In Belize (and Guatemala) we saw lots of ruins. Near San Ignacio we saw Xunantunich, Cahal Pech, El Pilar, and Caracol; we went to Tikal in Guatemala (twice); and we went north in Belize to ride up the New River to Lamanai. In all of these places, some structures, at least, had been dug out of the jungle and restored. So we climbed to the tops of temples (which, if you’ve ever done it, you know is the easy part. The hard part is coming down) and were boggled by the view from the top and at the thought of all of the work and hours it must have taken to move the materials that were used to build them.
More striking though was the mix of the seen and the unseen. At each site there were not only the temples that had been dug out and restored, but mounds of earth that were clearly other structures that had not (or not yet) been dug out and restored. In some places, we could walk from the front of an incredible restored temple around to the back of the same structure, and find it still buried under jungle and earth.
Dozens of buildings have been restored at Tikal, while just a few have at Caracol or El Pilar, even though Caracol was, they say, as big a city as Tikal and El Pilar was nearly as big. The temples are spectacular, but the uncovered mounds are spectacular, too, in a very different way.
When we went back to Tikal with Ben and Rachel (Molly and I spent three days there and then went back for two more days with Ben and Rachel.) I had a chance to revisit places while Ben and Rachel explored and Molly drew. Instead of moving quickly from place to place in order to see everything, I got to hang out at some smaller, unrestored sites, and just quietly look.
The mounds were covered with brush and trees, and not little trees either, huge trees. I was struck by the thought that the trees, even the biggest and oldest, weren’t the first to grow on those mounds. Most of the Maya cities were abandoned by 1000 AD – a thousand years ago – so even if the trees I was looking at were 100 or 200 years old, they were the third, fourth, fifth, or maybe even tenth generation of trees to have grown on those mounds. Others must have grown and fallen and decayed – all of which happens pretty fast in a tropical rain forest – to produce the soil that covered the mound and that supported the jungle that grew there now.
I don’t know. Maybe that doesn’t impress anyone else. Maybe the rest of you are quicker to grasp thousand-year gaps in time. It takes me a while, but, when it hit, it sure impressed me.
(The photo is of a partially excavated mound at Cahal Pech, not Tikal, but you can see what I mean about the mix of the restored and the still buried.)
(One of my favorite photos from the trip – a tree in the process of taking over some steps.)
For the last 35 years or so I’ve lived in California where old means the Gold Rush and the Missions. For a while we even lived two or three blocks away from the Mission Dolores. But history in San Francisco sort of dribbles into the present at best. It never blows one away. Or, at least, it never blew me away.
But I was blown away when I went to France and felt history pour into the present. I saw not only thousand-year-old Renaissance churches and medieval paintings, but also two thousand year old Roman arenas and aqueducts, and 2500-year-old Greek statues and vases. I had been a Classics major in college, and was aware of others’ enthusiasm for Greek art. All I had seen, however, had been photos, and it was hard to get very enthusiastic about photos. Seeing multiple examples of the real thing, it was clear how incredible they really are.
My only experience of age and history as a presence in this country has been in New Mexico where what amazed me was not just the existence of “old,” but of the continued existence of all the historic layers – there were, in order, the disappeared Anasazi, the still present Hopi, Zuni, and Pueblo peoples, the Navaho (relative latecomers), the remnants of the original Spanish settlers (We saw the courthouse that Reies-Tijerina took over in 1967.), and the rest of us.
In Belize (and Guatemala) we saw lots of ruins. Near San Ignacio we saw Xunantunich, Cahal Pech, El Pilar, and Caracol; we went to Tikal in Guatemala (twice); and we went north in Belize to ride up the New River to Lamanai. In all of these places, some structures, at least, had been dug out of the jungle and restored. So we climbed to the tops of temples (which, if you’ve ever done it, you know is the easy part. The hard part is coming down) and were boggled by the view from the top and at the thought of all of the work and hours it must have taken to move the materials that were used to build them.
More striking though was the mix of the seen and the unseen. At each site there were not only the temples that had been dug out and restored, but mounds of earth that were clearly other structures that had not (or not yet) been dug out and restored. In some places, we could walk from the front of an incredible restored temple around to the back of the same structure, and find it still buried under jungle and earth.
Dozens of buildings have been restored at Tikal, while just a few have at Caracol or El Pilar, even though Caracol was, they say, as big a city as Tikal and El Pilar was nearly as big. The temples are spectacular, but the uncovered mounds are spectacular, too, in a very different way.
When we went back to Tikal with Ben and Rachel (Molly and I spent three days there and then went back for two more days with Ben and Rachel.) I had a chance to revisit places while Ben and Rachel explored and Molly drew. Instead of moving quickly from place to place in order to see everything, I got to hang out at some smaller, unrestored sites, and just quietly look.
The mounds were covered with brush and trees, and not little trees either, huge trees. I was struck by the thought that the trees, even the biggest and oldest, weren’t the first to grow on those mounds. Most of the Maya cities were abandoned by 1000 AD – a thousand years ago – so even if the trees I was looking at were 100 or 200 years old, they were the third, fourth, fifth, or maybe even tenth generation of trees to have grown on those mounds. Others must have grown and fallen and decayed – all of which happens pretty fast in a tropical rain forest – to produce the soil that covered the mound and that supported the jungle that grew there now.
I don’t know. Maybe that doesn’t impress anyone else. Maybe the rest of you are quicker to grasp thousand-year gaps in time. It takes me a while, but, when it hit, it sure impressed me.
posted by Jim at 12:19 PM
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