Ancient

Caves of Mitla & Yagul

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This blurry gray photo I took of a raggedy corn husk in the bottom of a dark cave is why I came to the Prehistoric Caves of Yagul and Mitla in the Central Valley of Oaxaca UNESCO world heritage site. It is fossilized and may be 10,000 years old. A similar one was found in a nearby cave and dated back that far, with other evidence proving that this is the oldest known agricultural settlement in the Americas. Many people visit Oaxaca’s colorful markets, delicious restaurants, gorgeous cathedral, and take much better photos, but I think they’re missing an important site here, an easy day tour southeast of Oaxaca.

Here in these caves, humans gathered, drew images on the walls, told stories about hunting, animals and mystical beliefs understood only from ancient oral traditions. They built terraces to grow corn and other crops nearby. They learned many secrets of nature and passed them on, so we can enjoy many of the foods cultivated in the Americas first, before going global, including avocados, many beans, corn, chilies, chocolate, peanuts and vanilla. We all owe a debt to these ancient people, and yet we still know little about them.

My guides know the area well and told many stories of the caves, showed me exceptional pictographs and described the various species that still live here. We heard bats, saw strange black minerals that appear wet but are dry, and we talked about the most basic and universal human feelings to try to interpret the ancient images so long preserved here. Like many native religions in the US, the caves are believed to contain the secrets of the first humans and passages to the underworld. Mitla means underworld in the local language, and the Spanish intentionally built churches on sacred sites here, as they imposed their foreign religion.

Some folks today bizarrely believe that since several painted figures carry an odd shaped device that they must have been ‘downloading data from aliens’. At the excellent anthropology museum in Xalapa, I saw several identically shaped devices identified as hachas or ceremonial axes that represent maize and are at least 3000 years old, which would seem to be a more likely explanation. I think we need to make a new effort to understand our human origins, our relationship with nature, and our oldest beliefs in order to find more respectful, more insightful and more meaningful ways to live.

Teotihuacán

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Feathered and fire serpents adorn the steps of the Quetzalcóatl Pyramid. Some weathering has occurred in the past 17 centuries, but once the eye sockets held black obsidian volcanic glass, the flames were painted bright red and feathers adorned with green jade. The museum (show your gate ticket for admission) near the Sun Pyramid shows murals, artifacts and has a large model of the site, which helps add details to the huge structures outside. None of the three pyramids can be climbed now, but I still walked a couple miles round trip, including the Moon Pyramid near where I started. I arrived early at 9 am, just as the hot air balloons were descending after their dawn tours. It’s an awesome place, but it can get hot and crowded by midday. I recommend staying nearby the night before.

At its peak, Teotihuacán was the largest city in the Americas, 6th largest in the world. Roughly, the city began sometime around 200 BC and fell around 550 CE. Much of their wealth came from obsidian tools, weapons and art, mined from local volcanoes and expertly knapped. The pyramids and related buildings show an elaborate religious class, but few signs of military or monarchs. The pyramids are designed to make observations for the Mesoamerican calendar, so the priests likely derived their power by determining the seasons. Best guess is that their civilization’s collapse was internal, with signs of drought and starvation, before simultaneous fires burned out the elites. The priests essentially had one job—to monitor the climate—, and they failed. Human success, growth, unsustainable use of natural resources, crop failure, and collapse, is a common pattern in ancient civilizations, and we are likely on a similar path due to carbon pollution.

Muir Woods National Monument

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The redwoods here are coastal, Sequoia Sempervirens, and are not the shorter, but more massive giant sequoias up in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Both types of redwoods, and a relative, the dawn redwood found in China, once lived all around the northern hemisphere, but now their numbers are drastically reduced. The coastal redwoods are the tallest living beings on earth, each one living for centuries. Dinosaurs walked through these coastal redwood groves.

This old growth forest was donated in 1908, made a national monument by Teddy Roosevelt, named for his friend the naturalist John Muir, and was the site of a UN founding meeting held in 1945 in memory of FDR. Despite the many visitors (parking or shuttle reservations required), it is still possible to find a quiet moment among these silent sentinels and connect to the ancient world.

Here’s the link to my visits to all parks in California.