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<< Text Pages >> Grottos of Juxtlahuaca - Cave or Rock Shelter in Mexico

Submitted by bat400 on Sunday, 02 November 2008  Page Views: 7782

Natural PlacesSite Name: Grottos of Juxtlahuaca Alternative Name: Grutas de Juxtlahuaca
Country: Mexico
NOTE: This site is 41.845 km away from the location you searched for.

Type: Cave or Rock Shelter
 Nearest Village: Colotlipa
Latitude: 17.433000N  Longitude: 99.125W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
3
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Cave with Pictographs in Guerreco, Mexico.
These caves in a National Park are known for beautiful natural formations. But approximately 2500 years ago they were used as a burial location and pictographs of red, gold, and black were created. The figures that can be discerned include a jaguar and a majestic figure draped in a jaguar skin - perhaps preparing to sacrifice a smaller figure.

The iconography has been interpreted as Olmec, although this area lies outside that traditionally considered to be associated with that pre-Maya culture.
The caves can be visited with a guide and a tour takes the better part of a day. Although a satellite map view shows the area full of small mountain villages, few of them are large enough to be labeled on internet maps.

Note: See comment for Article on a folk tradition in Central Mexico and its possible ties to sacrifice in pre-Maya era.
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"Grottos of Juxtlahuaca" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment
  
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Fighting with Jaguars, Bleeding for Rain by bat400 on Sunday, 02 November 2008
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Submitted by coldrum --

Has a 3,000-year-old ritual survived in the highlands of central Mexico?

Alfreda Gasparillo Pineda sees me stagger on the trail that leads up to a sacred well on the side of Mount Pacho. I'm carrying a wicker basket full of tamales that is rubbing my shoulder raw and pulling me off balance. "If you are tired, one of the women can carry it for you," she suggests in Spanish. A coy grin spreads across Alfreda's broad face as she waits to see how much machismo I'm willing to sacrifice to participate in this religious procession. Everything here is about machismo and sacrifice.


Some 60 people from the town of Zitlala are going to the well as part of celebrations that mark Catholic Holy Week and the end of the dry season in the Mexican state of Guerrero.

After 20 minutes under the pounding sun and grinding weight of the tamales, I arrive at the well with the last of the group. Flowers have been placed on a sky-blue painted cross next to the concrete wall that surrounds the well. Sergio and I unload our baskets while children gather next to a staircase that leads down roughly 20 feet to the well's floor, where a trickle of water seeps into a shallow square pit. Alfreda playfully gives Sergio one of the flower wreaths that the children are wearing on their heads and suggests that he join the kids as they walk down the steps, symbolically offering themselves to Tlaloc, the god of rain.

The religious tenets of the community are a mixture of Roman Catholicism and spiritual beliefs that date to the earliest days of the Maya, Aztecs, and Zapotecs. The scene at the well recalls rituals that took place as many as 3,000 years ago, when children had their throats cut and were thrown into water-filled sinkholes as sacrifices to the rain god. Their bones have been found at cenotés across the Yucatán Peninsula, including Chichén Itzá's aptly named Cenoté of Sacrifice. As the children climb out of the well and join their parents for a picnic lunch, the idea of sacrifice seems fairly remote.

Tomorrow, the rain god will receive a different kind of sacrifice five miles away in the community of Acatlan. It is one of three places in the highlands of Guerrero where men dress in jaguar costumes and fight one another. These Tigre combats are part entertainment and part religious ritual. Many in the community believe that a fighter's spilled blood will help bring rain for the coming year's harvest. The fights in Acatlan consist of boxing matches--two days from now there will be fights with clubs made of rope in Zitlala, and later in the month, wrestling matches in Tixtla.

Art historian Heather Orr of Western State College of Colorado is one of a group of scholars who believes these fighting rituals have their roots in ancient gladiatorial combats in which the loser would become a sacrifice to the rain god. "All rain-lightning deities share features throughout Mesoamerica, but they are identified differently depending on the region and the language," says Orr. "It is Chaak to the Maya for instance, Tlaloc in Central Mexico, Cociyo to the Zapotec." In artwork, these deities are typically shown having down-turned mouths with large fangs. Cociyo and Tlaloc also have goggled eyes.

Karl Taube of University of California, Riverside, and Marc Zender of Harvard University believe gladiatorial rituals extended far beyond. They are reinterpreting images on monuments and in artwork from across Mesoamerica that show gladiatorial combat in connection with rain rituals. The Tigre combat might be the last surviving remnant of the ancient custom.

In Acatlan, a 10-year-old boy places a rawhide mask against his face while an old man wearing a brown leather cowboy hat cinches its laces tight. I stand across from him on the edge of a small oval space that has

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