And today, Dr. Jaime Awe showed us two objects from the Post Classic Period that were recently found at Lamanai. A team from the Institute of Archaeology has been excavating the church at that site and unearthed two objects that show how the Mayan culture clashed with western religion.
Dr. Jaime Awe,
"Its what we call a composite figurine. It is the representation of a centipede, you see all the little legs down below, and what we think might be a catfish. If you look, most catfish have big mouths, the eye and the little whiskers of the catfish. What is also interesting is that inside of the mouth of this fish, we can see the image of a human coming out of the fish. This really ties in with this Maya ideology of human coming out of the underworld. So it times in nicely with that. But what is also equally interesting is that in the back of it there is a whole and inside of this we found some very interesting little implements. And these include two little projectile points like this and a couple fragments of stingray spines and three shark teeth.
All these implements were used for blood letting rituals and it is just really that they are found right inside of this. Now the other part of the story that you don't see here is that we found this right next to the church, one of the churches at Lamanai and it shows the Maya still during their revolts against Christianity were still practicing secretly a lot of their old and ancient traditions and eventually they revolted against the Spanish, burnt the two churches, and the Spanish left Belize.
The individuals coming out of these animals are thought to be this old individual or God or deity known as 'God-N' and he is an ancestor of some of the Gods of the underworld. This one, again it is crocodile. Look at the eyes of the crocodile. These are little things sticking up above by the ear, the nostrils, the teeth. You can see some of the scoots, which are these little round objects, little leg, and look what's inside the mouth of the crocodile - another human. Now again the art form is really interesting because if you look at the tail, what do you think that tail looks like. It is the mouth of a shark. Obviously these animals, these very strong ferocious animals, are an important part of Mayan ideology of this time period.
You can see despite the fact that these people are now starting to be converted to Christianity, they are holding on to their beliefs; they are trying, it is what we call syncretism where they are combining a lot of old, Ancient Maya ideology with modern Christianity and in the end their ideology wins out."
Both objects are estimated to be about 5 to 600 years old.
