Izapa
In the Late Preclassic period (300 BC - AD 250) Mesoamerica saw the flourishing of a unique artistic style known as the Izapan style. This style was found throughout a broad and ethnically diverse geographic region of Mesoamerica. Specific images, symbols, narratives, and stylistic traits are seen consistently in a sculptural collection that gives a unique glimpse into the types of cultural elements that were spreading throughout the birth of Ancient Maya civilization during this time period.
The term “Izapan style” takes its name from the site of Izapa in the hills above the Pacific coastal plain known as the Soconusco region in modern day Chiapas, Mexico. Izapa contains the earliest images of very important Maya symbols of kingship, nature, and most famously the Maya story of creation. Izapa was founded in the heart of Soconusco, along the Izapa River, in a fertile valley with a view of two major volcanoes. To the Northwest is Tacana and to the northeast lies Tajumoloco, the tallest volcano in central America. It is not a coincidence that Tajumulco marks the horizon spot for summer solstice sunrise, it is theorized that perhaps this is the reason for not only its importance but also why the founders chose this location. The city was oriented to the beginning of the summer solstice.
Most of Izapa appears to have been built starting as early as 600 B.C. The site is covered in elaborately carved andesite monuments. There are 90 stelae, 61 altars, and 70 other miscellaneous pieces. Strangely, however, there are no hieroglyphs. Instead, we see astonishing scenes of the Maya cosmovision. A cosmovision that was based on the movements and cycles of the stars during the night, morning, evening and daytime sky. The sun being the largest “star” and the central focus for ancient astronomers.
Ancient astronomers located the Izapa temple center at 15 degrees north latitude off the western bank of Suchiate, on the Guatemalan border. There the sun’s zenith passage magically measures the sacred 260-day calendar count from August 13 (the creation base date of the Maya Long Count calendar in 3114 BC) to winter solstice and back to zenith again on April 30. This 260-day count (9 months) celebrates the birth of a human child in Maya tradition today and on Izapa monuments . This is celebrated on Stela 10 and on Stela 5 dedicated to the 12th lunar month that begins on April 30. This 260 count relates to the highland Maya today and as we will see more parts of Maya culture can be traced back to Izapa. This is why like the other sites we have discussed, Izapa is a place of origin. Maya culture as we know was birthed and developed in these cities from the Pre-Classic Period. Each one influences each other. Influences of political ideologies, complex cosmological themes, and artistic expression spreading throughout extensive trade networks.
Izapa was a critically important crossroad of communication during the Late Preclassic. Between Mayan speakers to the east and Mixe-Zoquean-speaking peoples to the west. These sites also occupied advantageous locations along communication and trade routes between the Pacific Coast and the interior.
Izapa was founded as a ceremonial center as far back as the early Preclassic (1800 - 900BC), and it appears to have already been an important late Preclassic political center within the Soconusco region. This region is known for its rich volcanic soils and cacao production.
Izapa reached its height of growth during this Late Preclassic period, which was marked by massive construction and sculptural activity.
Like their Maya neighbors to the east (currently known as KaminalJuyu, Takalik Abaj), the elite at Izapa — who may have spoken a Mixe-Zoquean language participated in similar ritualized acts of that included, most notably, the construction of Ceremonial buildings and elaborate plazas lined with ornately carved stelae and altars.
The monuments at Izapa are perhaps best known for their dense, figural compositions carved in low-relief that bear stylistic and iconographic continuities with earlier Olmec art. They were a two-dimensional art style which emphasizes historical and mythic scenography with great attention to plumage and other costume details. Importantly, many of the symbols and themes carved upon the monuments were not unique to Izapa, but were shared by other sites such as Takalik Abaj approximately fifty kilometers to the east. The difference in Izapa is that writing and the day count are absent, but as we travel along the Pacific slopes east into Guatemala, we find sites with inscriptions and dates.
A common theme in the art of Izapa is a Long-lipped, part human and part fish (most likely shark), who is an early form of Chahk, better known in the classic period as the Lord of lightning and rain. One other common theme found at Izapa is a figure with one leg ending in a serpent’s body and head. This is the earliest known representation of K’awiil, which in the Classic period is seen as the presiding symbol of Maya ruling lineages. He represents a Maya ruler’s ability to contact the supernatural world and commune with deceased ancestors.
But by far the leading figure seen in Izapan monumental art is of Wuqub Kaquix or Seven Macaw, often referred as the “principal bird deity”. We have dedicated a whole lesson to Wuqub Kaquix. He is a prominent name that appears in the Popol Wuh, which is written in the Colonial period (1500AD - 1800AD)
In one monument Wuqub Kaquix is seen descending from the sky to eat nantze fruit, and two human figures can be seen on either side of the tree. In another stelae Wuqub Kaquix perches on his tree, while one human figure who has blood coursing from the stump of his severed arm gazes at him from below. This is clearly the same exact story that is being told 1800 years after in the Popol Wuh. It's important to point out why the scarlet macaw imagery born in this period is seen constantly throughout Maya history. It is theorized that the importance of the macaw may come from the lucrative trade of Macaw feathers, which reached not only Meso-america, but also as far as the southwest of the modern United States. This trade would grow and morph to other important cultural elements. Julia Guernsey, an Associate Professor in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, writes in her book “ Izapa, Ritual and Power in Stone.”
“Ritual behavior and trade are inseparable components within the greater matrix of communication and exchange. For ancient Mesoamericans and their counterparts in the American Southwest, the macaw functioned as a symbol that not only stood at the intersection of myth, ritual, and economics but also endured with some consistency for a great length of time. For Late Preclassic Mixe-Zoquean and Mayan-speaking peoples, the macaw symbolized supernatural contact through its mythic persona as the Principal Bird Deity and may also have served as a symbol of elite, economic exchange. Even in the Popol Vuh, transcribed over a thousand years later, the macaw appears to have carried associations on both a mythic and an economic level. These associations are also echoed in the seventeenth-century account by Burgoa, in which a macaw functioned as a medium through which supernatural communication could be channeled. Even the Postclassic Aztecs believed a macaw to be the personification of Seven Flower-Xochipilli, a deity associated with the sun, maize, royalty, crafts making, cacao, and hallucinogenic plants.
“Such striking continuities in the symbolic associations of macaws also characterize the K’iche’ Rab’inal Achi dance drama. In the drama the Warrior of K’iche’, about to be killed by means of an arrow sacrifice, identifies himself with the bird that is shot out of the World Tree, and phrases his sacrifice as an act of “feather growing” (Akkeren 1999: 293). As Akkeren noted, this association is found also in the Chi Ismachi, in which the victim of sacrifice is referred to as a “red-feathered macaw” or “mother of birds.” The warrior/victim as bird, then, becomes the “game,” while those who sacrifice are the “hunters.” In this sense, as Akkeren demonstrated, the killing of the macaw/victim is a metaphor for acquisition, or hunting, which was invoked by rulers in Late Postclassic Rab’inal during rituals of political transition or the commemoration of important historical events and ancestral ties.”
“Perhaps it was during the Preclassic period that a specific pattern of rituals involving avian transformation were first forged and applied to a network of mythological beliefs, ideologies, and economic interactions that functioned as part of an elite system of exchange throughout the Izapan style sphere. Although the rituals have long since subsided, the stone monuments that record them and the sacred centers in which they were performed still attest to their importance during this dynamic period in Mesoamerican history. The monuments, through a strikingly consistent symbolic vocabulary and shared stylistic sensibility, continue to declare that avian transformations were an effective means through which Late Preclassic rulers could demonstrate their control of economic, political, and supernatural spheres.” -- suggesting that this emphasis on avian transformation was linked to an intricate web of economic and political factors. Building on these clues, this chapter explores the possible economic ramifications of these rituals that figured so prominently in the monumental record of the period.”
Throughout the Maya area, during this time period, archaeological records show that great economic power was being exercised by those who controlled these economic centers. This show of power ranged from special burial treatment with high-status grave goods to caches of precious objects such as jade and greenstone.
On a grander scale, they include the long causeways, or sacbeob (white roads), that linked site cores to their surroundings and most likely accommodated ritual processions They also include the monumental stone sculpture and magnificently adorned stucco architectural facades that required the expertise of highly skilled artisans. All this carried social, political, and cosmological messages that structured the space and worldview of the inhabitants of these Late Preclassic Maya sites.
It's important to remember that it was during the late-pre classic period that the olmec fell and left a vacuum of power. These late pre-classic period Maya cities grow in power, wealth, and size because of it.
As mentioned in previous post, Takalik Abaj is the best evidence of this transition, there we can see that in its middle pre-classic period (900BC-300BC) it had a significant array of Olmec-style sculpture then appears to switch to more Maya by the Late Preclassic period. Like Izapa It would then rise to a position of regional prominence during the Late Preclassic, during which time extensive construction of plazas, terraces, and monumental structures took place. Like Izapa, the public spaces of the site were filled with monuments, commissioned by the elite, which featured rulers and mythic scenes that bear intriguing affinities to specific sculptures at Izapa. Takalik Abaj’s location in the sloping piedmont, on a natural communication corridor between the adjacent Guatemalan Highlands and the coastal plain, undoubtedly contributed to its importance within the Late Preclassic political landscape. The formal and iconographic relationships between its corpus of Late Preclassic monuments and those at Izapa also confirm that a specific and recurring repertoire of symbols and narratives successfully transcended political boundaries.
Also participating in this dynamic interaction sphere were the elites of Kaminal Juyu, as we mention in our Kaminal Juyu post, this site dominated the Guatemalan Highlands region. Recent epigraphic investigations indicate that the inhabitants of Kaminaljuyu spoke a Mayan language. Importantly, certain monuments from that site display the same symbolic vocabulary found at Izapa and Takalik Abaj, which strongly indicates that it, too, was an active participant in this southeastern Mesoamerican communication sphere.
Paths of this communication throughout Late Preclassic Mesoamerica also extended into the region traditionally referred to as the “southeastern periphery,” which included southeastern Guatemala, western Honduras, and El Salvador. Critical to these systems of communication during the Late Preclassic period was the development of hieroglyphic texts and calendrical records sometime between the years 1100 to 600 BC
It is during the early years of the Late Preclassic period that hieroglyphic writing began to appear regularly in southeastern Mesoamerica and the Isthmus region. This type of communication would help to further develop Maya culture into a classic period.
Beginning with the fall of the Olmec, the early Maya started rising to regional power through the trade of important items like Cacao, Macaw feathers, Obsidian and Jade. This trade spreads, moving people and products, building larger trade centers, bringing different languages and cultures throughout Mesoamérica to develop what will later be known as the Classic Maya Period.