Avocados and the Ancient Maya

Avocados on the tree. From Pixabay uploader sandid.

Scientifically known as Persea americana, you may also know the avocado as the avocado pear or the more surprising-sounding alligator pear. Avocados (which grow on trees also called avocados) were in part domesticated by the ancient Maya, who used it in their diet -- and more.

Avocado in the Maya Calendar
The 14th month of the Haab', or solar calendar, was connected to avocados. The main part of the glyph was the glyph for avocado, which currently is thought to have been pronounced as "un." (On a related note, possible names for this month glyph are Uniw and Uniiw -- though you may have heard it called K'ank'in.) Below are drawings of K'ank'in as seen in a work by Sylvanus Griswold Morley called An Introduction to the Study of Maya Hieroglyphs.

In Religion
There was a belief among the ancient Maya that people who had died could come back as fruit trees -- and one such tree was the avocado. However, for this to happen, you had to have been important.

One place you can see the avocado tree in connection to a reborn ancestor is the sarcophagus of Pakal the Great (known by other names including Pacal.) Images of certain relatives of his were put on the sarcophagus, each one drawn near a fruit tree. Ix or Lady Yohl Ik'nal's (known by other names such as Lady K'anal-Ik'al and Lady Olnal) image is associated with an avocado tree.

The ancient Maya also had sacred groves, and they saw avocado trees as a worthy species to have in them.

Consideration: As a Place Name
In what is now Belize, a city-state seems to have been connected very strongly with the avocado. The name for this city-state -- or perhaps Pusilhá, one of its capitals -- included the glyph for avocado as its main part. In English, you may see Pusilhá called the Kingdom of the Avocado.

References:
Google Books: "The Maya and their Central American Neighbors: Settlement Patterns, Architecture, Hieroglyphic Texts, and Ceramics"; Geoffrey E. Braswell (editor); 2014

Google Books: "Historical Dictionary of Mesoamerica"; Walter R.T. Witschey, Clifford T. Brown; 2012

ResearchGate: "Phyton" volume 29: "West Indian Avocado: Where Did It Originate?"; María Elena Galindo, Amaury martín Arzate; December 2010

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln: "Nebraska Anthropologist": "Domestication and Significance of Persea americana,the Avocado, in Mesoamerica"; Amanda J. Landon; 2009

University of California, San Diego: “Archaeological Settlement Patterns in the Kingdom of the Avocado”; Beniamino P. Volta; 2007

The Free Dictionary: Avocado

Mesoweb: Palenque Resources: Rulers: Genealogy of Rulers at Palenque

Mesoweb: Palenque Resources: Rulers: "The Rulers of Palenque" fifth edition; Joel Skidmore; 2010

Image Credits:
Pixabay: Hass Avocado, Avocados, Fruit, Food

Project Gutenberg: "An Introduction to the Study of Maya Hieroglyphs"; Sylvanus Griswold Morley; 1915

Lady Yohl Ik'nal -- A Woman that Ruled Palenque

Her name means "Lady Heart of the Wind Place." Like Naranjo's Lady Six Sky, she was a ruler -- but there is a difference. Known by other names such as Kan Ik, Lady or Ix Yohk Ik'nal was a queen regnant. This means she was the official ruler of the polity/city-state of Baak/Baakal. (Palenque was a city inside it.) We know this because she had the title "Divine Lord of Palenque."

Royal Descent
Once there was a man named K'uk' Balam. In 431 AD he became Palenque's ruler, and because of this became the founder of a line of rulers -- though he only reigned until 435 AD. The last male ruler in this line was Kan Balam I. was either Yohl Ik'nal's father or brother. It seems that when this ruler died, there wasn't another male that could follow him. So Yohl Ik'nal became ruler.

Ascension Date
Yohl Ik'nal officially became Palenque's ruler on December 21st, 583 AD. (Mesoweb's Encyclopedia gives the day as December 23rd.) As far as archaeologists have found, her ascension makes her the first woman to rule Palenque.

Reign
There aren't a lot of things known about Lady Yohl Ik'nal's reign. Two events currently known were attacks. In 603 AD, on May 16, Bonampak attacked Palenque. Four years before that, there may have or actually was an attack by the Kaan or Snake polity/city-state, on April 21 -- though The Historical Dictionary of Mesoamerica gives April 23. (Kaan might not sound like a familiar city-state, until you find out that at it's center city at one point in its history became Calakmul -- however, in the reign of Lady Yohl Ik'nal, it might not have been yet.)

But archaeologists do know something about Lady Yohl Ik'nal's reign that may not have been about war.Lady Yohl Ik'nal "supervised" an accession of some kind for a "K'an Tok lord," but no one knows when. (There is no agreement about what a K'an Tok lord was.) The "when" of this is pretty fuzzy though. The closest that archaeologists have gotten is that the event happened basically almost anywhere in her reign, between 587 AD and 604 AD.

Lady Yohl Ik'nal may have been married. There is a man in the records that we know as Janaab Pakal who was either her son or her husband. The ruler who came after her, Ajen Yohl Mat, may have been their son. (If Janaab Pakal was actually a son of Lady Yohl Ik'nal, it seems that Ajen Yohl Mat would have been his older brother.)

Death
After a reign just shy of twenty-one years, Lady Yohl Ik'nal died in 604 AD, on November 4th. Ajen Yohl Mat became the next ruler in 605 AD, on New Year's Day. As to where this queen of Palenque was buried, there's an idea that a building at Palenque called Temple XX is her tomb. (This idea came from an archaeologist named Merle Greene Robertson.)

It seems that Yohl Ik'nal's family found her memorable. On her well-known descendant Pakal's sarcophagus, artists drew members of his family and fruit trees -- and some members are put on twice. One of the family members put on twice is Yohl Ik'nal. On the sargophagus's west side, she's drawn standing by a sapodilla, a tree that the ancient Maya used various parts of -- including harvesting its sap for different uses. On the east side, she's coming out of an avocado tree.

Another Consideration: A Theory on a Headdress

An old artistic rendering of the Oval
Palace Tablet. Some artistic license
has been used. From the NYPL
Digital Collections.

There is a certain headdress that archaeologists call the "drum major headdress." A theory in Parallel Worlds on this headdress wonders if the Maya in Palenque thought that whenever there was a war, this headdress would keep them safe somehow. This theory also wonders if the drum major headdress belonged to Janaab Pakal -- the possible younger son or husband of Lady Yohl Ik'nal -- and that perhaps have been created five years into Lady Yohl Ik'nal's reign, in 598 AD.

An artifact that shows this headdress is the Oval Palace Tablet. On this tablet, the famous Pakal is being given the headdress by his mother, Lady Sak K'uk'.




References:
Google Books: "Encyclopedia of the Ancient Maya"; Walter R.T. Witschey (editor); 2016

Google Books: "Parallel Worlds: Genre, Discourse, and Poetics in Contemporary, Colonial and Classic Maya Literature"; Kerry M. Hull, Michael D. Carrasco; 2012

"Historical Dictionary of Mesomerica"; Walter R.T. Witschey, Clifford T. Brown; 2012

Maya Decipherment: Ideas on Ancient Maya Writing and Iconography: "The Temple XX Tomb"; September 20, 2012; David Stuart

Mesoweb: "The Rulers of Palenque"; Joel Skidmore; 2010

Google Books: "Daily Life in Maya Civilization" second edition; Robert J. Sharer; 2009

The University of Texas at Austin University of Texas Libraries: "Framing the Portrait: Towards an Understanding of Elite Late Classic Maya Representation at Palenque Mexico"; Kaleyy Rae Spencer; May 2007

Mesoweb Encyclopedia: Lady Yohl Ik'nal

Mesoweb Encyclopedia: Ajen Yohl Mat

Mesoweb: Palenque: The Oval Palace Tablet

Image Credits:
Pixabay: Mexico, Palenque, Ruins, Archaeology, Palace, City

NYPL Digital Collections: Two seated figures and two-headed dog within a circle, over bench decorated with figures and abstract elements.

Ceiba: A Sacred Tree

From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department
of Commerce. Taken by Maxfield Weiss, NOAA NMFS IA.

Two kinds of ceiba live where the Maya lived and live: Ceiba aesculifolia and Ceiba pentandra. Of the two, the species scientifically known as Ceiba pentandra is the one that it seems archaeologists think the ancient Maya held as a sacred tree. Let's look at the tree itself and what the ancient Maya may have believed about it.

Names
This tree has a lot of names. For example, it has two other scientific names: Bombax pentandrum, Ceiba pentandra, and Eriodendron anfractuosum. And as for common names, it is also known as the white silk-cotton tree, bonga, ceibo, kapoctree, kapok tree, bongo and silk cotton tree.

Then there's the ancient Mayan name for the ceiba. It may be yáaxche' or ya'axche -- the first means "first tree," while the second one is "green/blue-green/blue tree." The common opinion, from the sources thus far found, seems to prefer the second name. (You may also see sources give the name/spelling of yaxche' or yaxte' as the ancient Mayan name for this tree.)

One way to draw what's thought to be the
ancient Maya name for ceiba. 

Botany
Ceibas rise around 65.6 and 131 feet to 164 feet tall -- some are even 200 feet tall! The tree has gray bark and has buttresses -- wedges around its base that help the tree keep from falling over. Its leaves are made up of stalks off of which smaller leaves grow -- the tree looses these leaves every year, starting in January and going until March.

Though not every year, when its loosing its leaves, the ceiba grows night-blooming flowers that are pollinated by creatures including bats and -- in the morning -- birds like hummingbirds. The flowers' color range includes beige, an extremely pale pink and white.

Another notable feature is inside the seed pods. There is a type of soft fiber in them -- which is called kapok silk -- in which are seeds. Kapok silk is like cotton, though not easy to spin, because it doesn't naturally stick to itself as well as cotton. For ceiba trees, the point of the silk is to have something that floats the seeds away from itself, so that ceibas may grow in other places. But for people -- possibly including the ancient Maya -- the silk is useful in other ways, such as for batting in cushions. (A little more on this substance in the next section.)

These trees also have a surprising feature -- spines shaped like cones can grow right out of their trunks. It's believed that these spines keep away animals that eat plants. More often, you'll find it easier to see these spines for yourself by looking for ceibas that aren't very old.

Possible Ancient Maya Uses
There are different ideas that talk about possible uses the ancient Maya may have had for  the ceiba. One idea is that the ancient Maya may have used ceiba wood to make canoes.

Other ideas, focus on kapok silk. One idea wonders if the Maya used the fiber to stuff cushions for thrones. Another wonders if they spun it along with cotton to help compensate its inability to stick to itself like other fibers used to make cloth.

Ancient Maya Cultural Connection
The ancient Maya thought this tree was the World Tree. They believed that there was a ceiba that touched all three of the worlds that they thought existed: the upper world, the world of humans and the underworld, where the tree's roots were. The ancient Maya also thought the ceiba kept these worlds as the separate levels. (However, it must be noted that there are images of the World Tree as a different being, such as a crocodile.)

Ceiba Trees in Art/Writing
Some examples of ancient Maya representations of the ceiba tree can be found at the site of Palenque, where they liked to draw it kind of like a cross. (Why a cross? An explanation is that when ceiba trees aren't very old, that's what they kind of look like.) You may have seen one of these already: it's part of the coffin of the famous ruler, Pakal. Very noticeable among the coffin top's carvings is an image thought to be a ceiba.

If you look through the Maya codices, you can find pictures and sentences involving the ceiba. Using the search engine in the site The Maya Hieroglyphic Codices, it looks like drawings of as well as references to ceibas can be found in the Dresden Codex and the Madrid Codex. (The Paris Codex has, at least now, only references to ceibas, and the Grolier Codex didn't show up in the results.)

And there are even more artifacts. Some ancient Maya incense burners or incensarios as well as funerary urns may also be connected to the ceiba. Why? Because the artists who made them used spikes as part of the design, which may have been meant to look like ceiba spines.

References:
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service: Plants Databas: Plants Profile: Ceiba pentandra (kapoctree)

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute: Bocas del Toro: Species Database: Ceiba pentandra

University of California, Santa Barbara: Institute of Social, Behavioral and Economic Research (ISBER): MesoAmerican Research Center: Trails of El Pilar: Plants of El Pilar: Ceiba

Integrated Taxonomic Information System: ITIS Report Page: Ceiba pentandra

USDA Forest Products Labratory: Center for Wood Anatomy Research: Technology Transfer Fact Sheet: Ceiba pentandra

"Maya Sacred Geography and the Creator Deities"; Karen Bassie-Sweet; 2008

"Animals & Plants of the Ancient Maya: A Guide"; Victoria Schlesinger; 2001

"Space and Sculpture in the Classic Maya City"; Alexander Parmington; 2011

Google Books: "The Origins of Maya States"; Loa P. Traxler, Robert J. Sharer (editors); 2016

The Maya Hieroglyphic Codices: Search Results  (for ceiba)

"Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies"; Rosemary A. Joyce, Susan D. Gillespie (editors); 2000

"Ancient Maya Commerce: Multidisciplinary Research at Chunchucmil"; Scott R. Hutson (editor); 2017

Florida State University: DigiNole: "Highland Maya Effigy Funerary Urns: A Study of Genre, Iconography, and Function"; Kathleen Garrett McCampbell; 2010

University ofAlbany SUNY: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Occasional Publication No. 17"Postclassic Pottery Censers in the Lowlands: A Study of Form, Function and Symbolism"; Bradley W. Russell; 2017

Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing No. 54: "The Idol-Makers in the Madrid Codex"; Mary A. Ciaramella; 2004

FAMSI: Maya Codices: The Dresden Codex (pages 60 to 74)