San Bartolo is a small

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

Maya Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a popu ...

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

located in the Department of Petén in northern Guatemala, northeast of

Tikal Tikal () (''Tik’al'' in modern Mayan orthography) is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. It is one of the largest archeological sites and urban centers of the pre-Co ...

and roughly fifty miles from the nearest settlement.Harvard Gazette: Oldest Mayan mural found by Peabody researcher
/ref> San Bartolo's fame derives from its splendid Late-Preclassic mural paintings still heavily influenced by

Olmec The Olmecs () were the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization. Following a progressive development in Soconusco, they occupied the tropical lowlands of the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. It has been speculated that ...

tradition and from examples of early and as yet undecipherable

Maya script Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs, is historically the native writing system of the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica and is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered. The earliest inscriptions found which ...

Site

The Maya site includes an 85-foot

pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrila ...

named "Las Ventanas" (The Windows); the

Temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called church (building), churches), Hindui ...

of "Las Pinturas" (The Paintings); an early royal

tomb A tomb ( grc-gre, τύμβος ''tumbos'') is a repository for the remains of the dead. It is generally any structurally enclosed interment space or burial chamber, of varying sizes. Placing a corpse into a tomb can be called ''immuremen ...

in the "Tigrillo Complex" (Ocelot Complex); and (in the "Jabalí" ild Boargroup some 500 mt. to the east from the central Plaza) a triadic complex similar to the H group in Uaxactún and

's North Acropolis. The pyramid was constructed from ca 300 BC (base rooms) and was completed ca 50 AD. San Bartolo is often studied alongside the closely related site of

Xultún Xultún is a large Maya civilization, Maya archaeological site located 40 km northeast of Tikal and 8 km south of the smaller Preclassic site of San Bartolo (Maya site), San Bartolo in northern Guatemala. Site The site, which once support ...

Murals

Discovery and reconstruction

In 2001, in the base of a pyramid, a team led by William Saturno (a researcher for the

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, wit ...

) discovered a room with murals that were carbon-dated as from 100 BC, making them the oldest ones to date. Excavation started in March 2003. The murals were stabilized and a special technique was used for photographically recording the paintings. Fallen fragments were pieced together and also photographed. Detailed reconstruction drawings were made by Heather Hurst. The iconography of the mural scenes was subsequently analyzed and interpreted by project iconographer Karl Taube. Besides the murals, the oldest known Maya royal tomb was discovered in San Bartolo, by archaeologist Monica Pellecer Alecio.

Twin myth (Popol Vuh) and maize myth

As Saturno, Stuart and Taube have argued, the murals on the northern and western walls of the chamber in the base of the temple pyramid ('Pinturas Sub-1') depict elements of Maya creation mythology reminiscent of the

Popol Vuh ''Popol Vuh'' (also ''Popol Wuj'' or ''Popul Vuh'' or ''Pop Vuj'') is a text recounting the mythology and history of the Kʼicheʼ people, one of the Maya peoples, who inhabit Guatemala and the Mexican states of Chiapas, Campeche, Yucatan a ...

as well as of Yucatec cosmological traditions. The north wall mural consists of two scenes. One scene is situated in front of a mountain cave (belonging to the Flower Mountain); several persons are walking and kneeling on a large serpent. The

Maya maize god Like other Mesoamerican peoples, the traditional Maya recognize in their staple crop, maize, a vital force with which they strongly identify. This is clearly shown by their mythological traditions. According to the 16th-century Popol Vuh, the Hero ...

is shown in the midst of a group of men and women, while receiving (or perhaps bequeathing) a vine calabash. The other scene shows four babies, with their umbilical cords still attached, surrounding a calabash, which has now split up and from which a fifth, and fully clothed male emerges. A large deity figure watches the scene. The west wall mural has a far greater number of scenes. One part of the mural has four successive images of trees with birds, kings with the markings of the Maya Hero Twin Hunahpu, and sacrifices (consisting of fish, deer, turkey, and fragrant blossoms), to which a fifth tree has been added. The five trees are comparable to the directional trees of the

Codex Borgia The Codex Borgia ( The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Borg.mess.1), also known as ''Codex Borgianus'', ''Manuscrit de Veletri'' and ''Codex Yohualli Ehecatl'', is a pre-Columbian Middle American pictorial manuscript from Central Mexico featuring calendrica ...

and to those mentioned in the Book of

Chilam Balam The Books of Chilam Balam () are handwritten, chiefly 17th and 18th-centuries Maya miscellanies, named after the small Yucatec towns where they were originally kept, and preserving important traditional knowledge in which indigenous Maya and early ...

of Chumayel; the associated birds represent the Principal Bird Deity. The sacrifices are comparable to those in the Year Bearer section of the

Dresden Codex The ''Dresden Codex'' is a Maya book, which was believed to be the oldest surviving book written in the Americas, dating to the 11th or 12th century. However, in September 2018 it was proven that the Maya Codex of Mexico, previously known as t ...

. The first four kings are shown piercing their penises (see picture), spilling sacrificial blood, then offering a sacrifice. The fifth figure, associated with a fifth tree belonging to the centre – the tree of life itself – is the Maya maize god. The directional representation as a whole might refer to the initial arrangement of the world. Another part of the western mural depicts three scenes from the life of the maize god and the coronation of a king, showing divine right to rule coming from the gods, and providing evidence that the Maya had full-fledged monarchies centuries earlier than previously thought. The three maize god scenes show (1) a maize baby held by a man kneeling in the waters; (2) the maize god inside a turtle cave, dancing before two enthroned, aquatic deities; and (3) the maize god flying in the sky, or perhaps falling from the sky down into the water. Scene 3 has been suggested to represent the death of the maize deity. Alternatively, it may refer to the maize god's role as a rain bringer.

Other mythological parallels

For an explanation of many of the mural scenes, the Popol Vuh hardly offers clues, and scholars have started to look in other directions. The three maize god scenes of the western mural, for example, have been suggested to refer to present-day Gulf Coast myths about a maize god subduing the gods of thunder and lightning and creating the conditions for agriculture. The calabash scene of the northern mural, on the other hand, may constitute (as Van Akkeren has suggested) an illustration of a Pipil myth concerning a group of young boys (rain deities) born, together with their 'youngest brother' ( Nanahuatzin), from a gourd tree. In this myth, Nanahuatzin is the one who opens the Maize Mountain and introduces agriculture. At the same time, the author interprets the calabash - now taken as a vine gourd (Maya ''tsu ') - together with its four surrounding babies as a symbol for a place of origins often mentioned in Highland Maya sources, ''Suywa'' or ''Tsuywa'', to be situated somewhere in the Gulf Coast region.

Earliest Maya inscriptions

The earliest inscriptions which are identifiably Maya have been found at San Bartolo; they date to the 3rd century BC. In particular, an important stone block text has been found dating to around 300 BC. It has been argued that this text celebrates an upcoming time period ending celebration. This time period may have been projected to end sometime between 7.3.0.0.0 and 7.5.0.0.0 — 295 and 256 BCE, respectively. Besides this being the earliest Maya hieroglyphic text so far uncovered, it would arguably be the earliest existing glyphic evidence of a

Mesoamerican Long Count calendar The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is a non-repeating, vigesimal (base 20) and octodecimal (base 18) calendar used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya. For this reason, it is often known as the May ...

notation in Mesoamerica. In 2022, scholars working on the San Bartolo-Xultun Regional Archaeological Project presented evidence for the earliest known calendar notation in the Maya region, the 260-day ritual calendar date of "7 Deer," from the mural fragments at San Bartolo. These fragments date between 300 and 200 BCE.

Notes

References

:*Akkeren, Ruud van, 'Tzuywa : Place of the Gourd'. ''Ancient America'', 9 (2006). :*Braakhuis, H.E.M., 'Challenging the Lightnings: San Bartolo's West Wall Mural and the Maize Hero Myth'. ''Wayeb Notes'' No. 46 (2014). http://www.wayeb.org/notes/wayeb_notes0046.pdf :*Saturno, William (2003), 'Sistine Chapel of the Early Maya', ''National Geographic'' 204 (6): 72-76. :*Saturno, William; David Stuart and Karl Taube (2004), 'Identification of the West Wall Figures At Pinturas Sub-1, San Bartolo, Petén', in Juan Pedro de la Porte, Bárbara Arroyo and Héctor E. Mejía eds.: ''XVIII Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala''. Guatemala: Museo Nacional de Arqueología e Etnología. http://www.famsi.org/reports/03101/60saturno_stuart_taube/60saturno_stuart_taube.pdf :*Saturno, William A., Karl A. Taube, and David Stuart, 'The Murals of San Bartolo, El Petén, Guatemala Part 1: The North Wall'. ''Ancient America'', 7 (February 2005). :*Taube, Karl; David Stuart, William Saturno and Heather Hurst, 'The Murals of San Bartolo, El Petén, Guatemala, Part 2: The West Wall'. ''Ancient America'', 10 (2010).

External links

:
Peabody Museum, Harvard The Early Maya murals at San Bartolo, Guatemala
:* The dawn of Maya gods and kings, National Geographic, January 2006 :
"Oldest known Maya mural, tomb tells story of ancient king" ''National Geographic News'' December 12, 2005
:
San Bartolo murals (photographs set)

San Bartolos's official website
als

San Bartolo-Xultun Regional Archaeological Project (PRASBX)
{{DEFAULTSORT:San Bartolo (Maya Site) Maya sites in Petén Department Murals Maya Preclassic Period Maya architecture Maya mythology and religion Archaeological sites in Guatemala Former populated places in Guatemala ca:San Bartolo