Date: Fri 03-Jul-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: SUZANN

Quick Words:

Dan-Cruson-Mexico

Full Text:

A Local Historian Turns His Eye To Mexico

(with cuts)

BY SUZANNA NYBERG

Today, Mexico's Aztec and Mayan civilizations are better known, less

enigmatic, thanks to both modern archeaological methods and the zeal of

historians such as Newtown's Dan Cruson.

A teacher at Joel Barlow High School in Easton, he has taken a group of

students to tour archaeological excavations and museums of restored ruins in

both central Mexico and its highlands. Mr Cruson recently presented his work

to interested listeners at the Cyrenius Booth Library as part of the libraries

travel lecture series.

Many years ago, when National Geographic ran a picture of a plump maiden,

blindfolded and hands tied, on its cover, Mr Cruson became intrigued with the

practice of human sacrifice in ancient Mexican culture. It was disappointing

for him to discover that the renowned magazine had erred. "Most of those

sacrificed by the bloodthirsty Aztecs and Mayas were middle-aged men," he

said.

Mr Cruson and his young friends ascended the ancient Mexican pyramids,

sometimes pulling themselves up with chains, to view the solemn grandeur of

the landscape and the sacred spaces where Aztec and Mayan priests performed

their rituals. Although superficially similar to the Egyptian pyramids,

Mexican monuments were topped with temples and only occasionally contained

tombs. "The Great Pyramid of Khufu has a broad base like the Pyramid of the

Sun," Mr Cruson said. "But they are entirely different. The pyramids at Giza

rise to a point while Mexican ones are truncated."

Aztec gods most liked blood and beating hearts. To satisfy them, their priests

would ceremoniously bend the victim back over a sacrificial stone, exposing

the sternum. The victim did not shriek, Mr Cruson explained, he could utter no

despairing cries for the knife plunged in the exposed diaphragm effectively

silenced him. "Hence, the phrase silent sacrifice," Mr Cruson said. As the

victim lay in mute agony, the priest plucked out the palpitating heart, and

offered it, still throbbing, to the gods. Then, he chucked the body down the

temple walls.

This passion for blood was so avaricious that, shortly before Cortez and his

Spanish army arrived in 1520, 10,000 people writhed at the Temple of the God

of War, approximately one every four minutes, for four days, under this most

ingenious of tortures. "This was the Grand Sacrifice," Mr Cruson said. "The

temples were saturated, caked with blood; body parts were everywhere." The

bloodshed sickened even the Spaniards, who were notorious for their own

barbaric practices.

Sacrifice threatened every surrounding Indian tribe, and these tribes welcomed

the Spaniards as saviors; were it not, Mr Cruson suggests, for the tribes'

collaboration with Cortez, Montezuma, the last Aztec king, and his people may

have survived.

Today, Mexico of old and Mexico of new lie side by side. As the Spanish

destroyed, they also created, Mr Cruson observed, and one layer of culture

settled over another. Today's Mexico City lies in the region which attracted

the attention of the Aztecs when they were looking for a home. An imposing

cathedral stands to the right of the remains of Montezuma's palace in what was

Tenochtitlan while diagonal to both structures the capital building looms

tall. "Cortez leveled the Aztec city and built a new one," Mr Cruson said.

"Now archaeological crews wait at building sites to uncover the original."

Spain conquered the Aztecs, and then it was the Mayas' turn, as Cortez and his

army gradually pushed their way across the Yucatan peninsula to capture the

temple cities which Mr Cruson and his group toured. "Cortez penetrated the

land only briefly," Mr Cruson said. "It took 100 years to conquer the Maya."

But the Maya have not disappeared. Today Mayan heritage, an ethos of courage

and refusal to submit to the yoke of oppression, is carried on with the

Zappatistas, direct descendants of the Maya, who beleaguer the Mexican

government with open rebellion.

"In Northern Yucatan there is constant fighting of the government, which has

not been kind to Indians," Mr Cruson said.

Yet Mayan tradition, Mr Cruson noted, wasn't all fighting and sacrifice. Mayan

gods, too, had a lust for blood, and Mayan priests indulged in sacrifice, but

this was a culture with a rich intellectual life. "The Nunnery Quadrangle in

the Mayan city Uxmal may have been a primitive university," Mr Cruson said.

The Mayans made complicated calendrical calculations, and they created some of

the most beautiful art in the world. It is impossible to overlook the

decoration of the temples, the intricately carved glyphs and the limestone

blocks sculptured with images of ancient gods. Underground frescoed chambers

in the Street of the Dead at Teotihuacan in Central Mexico cover the walls

with dazzling colors and layers of symbolism as deep as any cathedral ceiling.

Art production was so copious that to this day, village women, in defiance of

the nation's antiquities laws, routinely dig up figurines and hawk them on the

roadside.

Most important, Mr Cruson reports, is that we are now in the realm of a

recorded history, not legend. The Mayans have supplied us with more than

pyramids, murals and shards of pottery. They have left records of events,

births and deaths of kings, the rise and fall of empires, in a glyph language.

They crafted obsidian, volcanic glass, into mirrors and razors, and their

trade was as advanced as any route in Europe, extending as far as the

southwestern United States and perhaps even crossing the seas and extending

into China.

"But this notion is controversial," Mr Cruson said. These were not small,

straggling tribes, he stressed, but mighty nations, with complex

administrative centers. Raised roads, sacbeobs, connected city to city.

The other side to their life included ball games, ones played on immense ball

courts where rubbery balls were kept in motion with the thighs and hips, never

the hands and feet. Still, even a game could become a blood sport. Often teams

that could not prove their superiority paid the ultimate price: Silent

Sacrifice.

Mexico is a land whose civilizations have never been neglected by scholars.

John Lloyd Stephens, the American attorney, and his British companion, the

illustrator, Frederick Catherwood, wrote about and drew Mayan culture

respectively in the 1840s. And Mr Cruson and his young students hope to return

next year.