Night of the Living Radishes

Five days since my last post, eh? I guess we've been too busy to get much internet time.

We've been very busy ticking off ruins. We went back to Yagul for a hike with some folks from the lending library, and also to Zaachila and Mitla. All three of those cities reached their peak in the post-classic period, i.e. the few hundred years before the Spanish conquest. And of course, we also visited Monte Alban, the first great city in the Americas.

Monte Alban is amazing and deserves its own blog entry. Suffice to say, the builders of Teotihuacan probably learned astronomy from the people of Monte Alban. Monte Alban was abandoned around 800 AD for unknown reasons. The same thing seems to have happened to nearly every city in mesoamerica at about the same time; no one knows why.

Zaachila is quite near to Monte Alban and its kings claimed to be the inheritors of Monte Alban, though their city was on a much smaller scale. The current town of Zaachila is built over top of many of the ruins. The church sits atop an old ceremonial site, but nothing was built on a few of the pyramids nearby. They are now covered with grass and somewhat eroded. There is an old tomb that was excavated in the 60s which has some cool paintings and fretwork, a bit like Mitla.

Mitla was the dominant city in the valley of Oaxaca at the time of the Spanish conquest, so it has a number of fairly well preserved ruins. However, some of the pyramids were built of adobe instead of stone, which suggests that the city was not as wealthy as the cities of the classic period. Mitla is famous for the geometric patterns in its fretwork. Those patterns are reproduced in a lot of modern day Zapotec art, especially in carpets but also in designs on people's clothing.

The modern town of Mitla is also built atop the old city. Some buildings have foundations that were probably the foundations of old palaces or ceremonial complexes. Someone had built a shack and tethered a goat in an old ceremonial square. Part of the ruin was refurbished in conquest times to provide a home for the parish priest. You can see bits of old pottery that were incorporated into the wall of the priest's house. Stones from the old city were also used to construct the church.

I'm blathering and this is probably getting dull for some, so here are a few photos from Zaachila and Mitla. I've also included a shot of an ex-monastery we stopped at on the way to Zaachila. Apparently the monastery builders went way over budget and were ordered to stop contruction by the king. What they managed to complete is pretty impressive: something you would expect to see near a major city rather than in the middle of nowhere.

Now, about those radishes. Every year on December 23rd, the main square of the city of Oaxaca is devoted to displays by local artisans. There are fabulous scenes contructed of dried flowers, flowers and figures made from corn husks, but the main event is the scenes constructed of carved radishes. People line up for blocks to parade around the square and look at all the art on display. Some of the radishes had wilted a bit in the heat by the time we got there, but it was still pretty impressive. I'll post some pics later; right now I unfortunately don't have the cable with me to download them from the camera.