A Guided Tour of Chiapas: Part the Third - Izapa

Boy howdy do we love us some Precolumbian ruins. Tony Alfaro delivered us to the Olmec/Mayan ruins of Izapa just a few kilometers outside Tapachula proper (more like in the Tapachula suburbs) and near the Mexico-Guatemala border. It was great.

Andrew Coe, in his book Archaeological Mexico, explains that the Izapa ruins comprise about 80 mounds and a whole bunch of stelae, altars, and whatnot, the earliest of which date to somewhere around 1500-1250 BCE and show Olmec influence. Izapa was somewhat isolated geographically, but was nevertheless an important settlement due to its cultivation of cacao -the seeds of which were used as money - in addition to cacao's ability to be made into a tasty, tasty beverage. Archaeologists believe that in later centuries as the Mayan civilization developed, Mayans in other regions incorporated the motifs shown on Izapa's stelae and other carvings into their own civic and religious practices. Izapa reached its climax from about 300 BCE to 50 BCE. From what we understand, it seems that Izapa's decline from about 50 BCE to about 250 CE was likely due to intertribal conflict in the area, followed by a long period of severe volcanic activity to the south in Guatemala and El Salvador. Speaking of volcanoes, here are two that are very near Izapa and may have even influenced how the mounds and platforms were laid out. On the left we see Tony Alfaro giving us the 411 with Mexico's Volcan Tacana in the background. Over on the right, Tony and GB are deep in thought, with Guatemala's Volcan Tajmulco looking on. 

A 21st-Century tourist will observe that the ruins of Izapa are neatly cut in two by the highway that runs from Tapachula to the Guatemala border. During highway construction back in the 1960s-1970s at least one stela and a number of other artifacts were unearthed, which these days give a developer pause; but back then as is often still the case today, modern vehicular progress prevailed over preservation of one of a country's oldest Mayan sites.

Izapa's oldest ruins are to the southeast of the highway, close to the Rio de Izapa (Izapa River). To get there we left the highway and drove down a modestly-marked dirt road that looked like a private driveway....because it was. The family living at the end of the driveway actually own the land on which the ruins rest, and are the ruins' caretakers. We drove up a low steep hill and then down the other steep side to park in the designated parking lot at the entrance to this section of the ruins. We got out of the car and looked back up the driveway, and realized that we'd actually just driven OVER one of the unexcavated pyramids and had parked the car on what a couple thousand years earlier had been called A PLAZA, people.

Some of Izapa's earliest stone carvings represent toads and serpents, animals associated with water and the underworld. Here we see an ancient carved stone toad at the base of the ceiba tree where it had been unearthed. Ceibas were thought to have roots that grew down to the underworld, with branches that reached to the heavens. Their  large trunks grow buttresses to support themselves (you can see the bottom of one such buttress in my pic over there; and a better image in that ceiba tree link). These buttresses have the effect of creating small alcove-like spaces where a believer can communicate in private with the spirit(s) of their choice.

There were a number of intricately carved stelae displayed in the open plaza areas - one with a flat carved stone altar in front of it that looked like a larger version of the toad up there on the right - but TBH it was difficult getting a decent photo of any of them, what with the harsh jungle sunlight and my suboptimal photographic skills. I will say, though, that the carvings on the stelae were very detailed and sophisticated for having been carved in a time when my own ancestors were living in mud huts, shaking sticks at one another, and painting themselves blue.

We backtracked eastward over the highway to the area of Izapa's most recent ruins, which included a pyramid or two; platform mounds like you see in this here pic that were originally topped with small temples; and an I-shaped ballcourt that is not like all the others. We hear that this is one of only two ballcourts in all of Mexico that were built on an east-west axis instead of the standard north-south orientation. The far end of Izapa's ballcourt has a carved stela that is precisely illuminated by the rising sun on the winter solstice. Tony was there for the winter solstice sunrise of 2012, which commemorated the final day of the Mayan calendar. Tony said the ballcourt and the stela still worked exactly as intended. 2300 years and counting.

m