December 14, 2024 Dr. Nicholas Hellmuth, FLAAR: “Crocodiles in Classic Maya Art & Swamps of Guatemala.”
Nicholas Hellmuth and the team of FLAAR (Foundation for Latin American Anthropological Research) Mesoamerica in Guatemala have been hiking deep into remote areas of the rain forests, bajos, savannas, and wetlands of Guatemala during the recent five years of projects requested by various government agencies in Guatemala. They saw (and photographed) crocodiles in swamps and on the shores of rivers that they traversed. This PowerPoint presentation shows you stelae, stucco, ceramic portraits of crocodiles in Maya art as well as photographs and drawings of the actual reptiles.
Two species of crocodiles and one species of caiman exist in Guatemala and surrounding countries of the Maya areas. (There are no alligators in Mesoamerica.) This lecture will focus on crocodiles in Maya art but will also mention crocodiles in Olmec art. Crocodile heads with their multiple giant teeth are shown as headdresses (on a Codex Style plate) and as loincloth aprons (on a Copan stela). Crocodiles are merged with Starry Eyed Deer to form the right end of the Bicephalic Cosmic Monster at Palenque and elsewhere. “Crocodile Trees” are shown in art at Izapa (Chiapas, Mexico) and ceramics from Late Classic Peten. There are at least two species of trees in Guatemala whose common names are “crocodile tree” (palo de lagarto). We show you photos of the actual trees.
Nicholas Hellmuth worked as a student intern for INAH at Bonampak to help carry equipment from landing strip in a Lacandon aldea many kilometers through the rain forest to Bonampak in the summer of 1963. He then helped for a week to set up their camp. In 1965 he worked as an architectural recorder, photographer, and archaeologist for 12 months for the University of Pennsylvania Museum at Tikal. In 1970’s he formed FLAAR to improve the maps of Yaxha, Topoxte Island, and Nakum. Dr. Hellmuth specializes in advanced digital photography: he had the first digital rollout camera (4×5-inch camera, German lenses, and tri-linear scan back). His rollouts can thus be printed up to a dozen yards or meters long and over 42 inches high. His focus in the current decade is iconography based on thousands of kilometers of driving through different ecosystems of Guatemala and hiking deep into remote areas to find and photograph all insects, birds, mammals, and flowers that appear in Classic Maya art. He holds a BA from Harvard, an MA from Brown University and a PhD from Karl-Franzens Universität in Graz, Austria. He has been a Guest Visiting Research Professor in Guatemala, on the island of Malta, at the Museum of Ethnology (MINPAKU, Osaka, Japan), and at Rollins College (Florida), Brevard Community College (Florida) and Bowling Green State University (Ohio). He is currently director of a five-year project to study flora/fauna/ecosystems in the 21,600 square kilometers of the Reserva de la Biosfera Maya, Peten, Guatemala.
The Powerpoint presentation of this talk can be found, when available, at www.maya-archaeology.org.