November 26, 2003
San Bartolo Murals - A canoe?

The latest issue of National Geographic Magazine has an article on the San Bartolo murals, with much more revealed since last year. There is a brief note about the murals online: December Resources @ National Geographic Magazine - Field Dispatch

Heather Hurst is pictured in the story, and her amazing drawing of the astounding painting is spread across two pages of the magazine.

Ron Canter sent in his reaction to the drawing:

I just opened the December NG and there was the expanded San Bartolo mural. The maize god and his honeys, plus other characters to the right , are standing "atop a plumed serpent". The serpent's body extends from a cave on the left and ends in an upturned serpent head belching smoke at the far right. Seven meters of it are visible. The body has no plumes, few markings, and is rigid and straight, quite unlike most snakes. Most of the serpent is to the right of the maize god.

It looks just like a canoe tricked out with a serpent's head prow.

The scene looked familiar, so I went through the canoe pix. The Late Classic rollout image that we dragged out in Philly when discussing paddle shapes shows the same ceremony, with the god again being dressed by two nude women. To the right, floating on a Venus glyph, is a canoe, ready to take the maize god "to the center of the sky, where he oversaw the setting of the thee great stones in Orion" (Freidel 1993). The figures ride on top of, not in, the canoe, as do the figures in the mural ride on top. The little black double boxes in the yellow band along the side of the serpent look a little like the double loop glyphs for wood on the sides of the Tikal canoe illustrations.

A lesser know illustration from one of the Tikal bones shows a long canoe, with straight gunwales and an elaborately carved prow. Part of the prow projects forward and part sweeps up just like in the mural at San Bartolo. The figures in the Tikal illustration are very indistinct, but Hammond, 1981, suggested that one is a woman.

I can't help but wonder if the San Bartolo mural is showing a canoe used as a stage prop in enacting the maize god ritual. There are at least eight places in Belize where you can actually paddle out from inside a cave. The nearest such cave to San Bartolo that I know of is 70 km away at Barton Creek Cave (Tunichil Muknal), but there might be others in Peten nearer to San Bartolo.

Posted by Dave at November 26, 2003 06:18 PM