Fossils found at the ancient city of Palenque, Chiapas shows Maya people conceived their beliefs of the underworld from them, associating the beliefs with water. To the Palenque, these fossils were convincing proof that the land was covered by the sea a long time ago, and from this they created their ideas on the origin of the world.
A three-year study by archaeologist Martha Cuevas and geologist Jesus Alvarado, was aimed at connecting the symbolism made by ancient Mayans to remains from Prehistoric times.
The interdisciplinary investigation, by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), concentrates on 31 specimens found at the Palenque Archaeological Zone which they believe are vital to the study of Maya cosmogony.
The 31 fossils discovered so far are from different periods, with the oldest from the Paleocene Era, nearly 63 million years ago. The fossils, from different marine animals and shark teeth and stingray spines, were used in ritual context during the Late Classic Period (600-850AD). Most often they are discovered in a funerary context: as part of funerary offerings, used by the Mayans as tombstones or offered to deities.
Was it through contact with marine fossils that an association of the underworld with water entered the Maya world view? The researchers believe that, from chance discoveries of these fossils, Palenque’s inhabitants formed creation myths we know now from iconographic representations and hieroglyphic texts, material culture and oral tradition.
Video: Popol Vuh, The Creation Myth
The first three chapters of the ‘Popol Vuh’ contain the creation myth: This is the first account, the first narrative. There was neither man, nor animal, birds, fishes, crabs, trees, stones, caves, ravines, grasses, nor forests; there was only the sky. The surface of the earth had not appeared. There was only the calm sea and the great expanse of the sky. … There was nothing standing; only the calm water, the placid sea, alone and tranquil. Nothing existed. … Let the water recede and make a void, let the earth appear and become solid; let it be done. … First the earth was formed, the mountains and the valleys; the currents of water were divided, the rivulets were running freely between the hills, and the water was separated when the high mountains appeared. Thus was the earth created, … when the sky was in suspense, and the earth was submerged in the water… (full version)
“According to information from colonial myths, for Palenque people these fossils were testimonies of land being covered by the sea in ancient times,” says Cuevas.
“When gods ordered water to retire, their city emerged and the actual era began. Mayans from Palenque had the notion that the Earth was different a thousand years ago, and that the world was mutable, subject to transformation.”
Marine fossils were therefore important to the Mayans, because they referred to the origins of humanity as well as death: their beliefs held that when people died, they returned to their place of origin.
“The fact they used fossils in funerary contexts is related with the conception they had about the underworld, as the aquatic destiny they reached after dying,” claims Cuevas.
The researchers have also found representations of fish species, shark teeth and stingray spines similar to the fossils painted on vessels – while an example of iconographic and textual reference to the aquatic underworld can be found in the 14th Tableau. It represents a scene of ruler Kan Balam II’s mythic trip to a remote epoch 932,000 years back in time.
“According to legend, when Kan Balam II died in 702 AD his brother and successor K’an Joy Chitam II ordered the creation of this remarkable relief,” says Cuevas. “The relic shows a dancing Kan Balam II and his dead mother Ts’ak Ahaw.”
“The bottom of the relief shows three levels marked with glyphs that indicate the place where the characters are found,” adds Cuevas. “The expressions ‘nab’, ‘body of water’, and ‘hets’an Kak nab’, ‘calmed sea’, refer to the aspect of the world during that mythic age, when everything was water and gods had not ordered land to emerge.”
