A few months ago I got to visit the jungles of Western
Honduras and see the ancient Mayan city of Copan With un-excavated pyramids,
statues and wild macaws flying over our heads the whole time this has to be the
most underrated historical site. I've ever seen and I'll try to sum up some .
After about five (six) trips to the Honduras consulate, I
did finally get my visa. So from Antigua, we took a six-hour uncomfortable
shuttle ride through some winding roads, crossed the border and immediately
came to the city of Copan Ruinas in the floodplains of the Copan river.
The first ruler appears to be this guy named Kʼinich Yax
Kʼukʼ Moʼ. Isotopic analysis of his teeth found in his tomb suggests that he
might have actually come from Tikal in Guatemala if you've seen my post on
that. My favorite part of the story is that a lot of artifacts from Copan suggest
that the city was very heavily influenced by Teotihuacan, which is 1200
kilometres away in Mexico city, and if you know anything about me that's one of
my favorite places on earth.
One of the things that makes Copan really unique to me at
least was it's 80+ stelae. These complex and sophisticated structures were used
as stone canvases back in the day for religious expression. The kings of Copán erected
numerous stelae which still dominate the main plaza of the site.These became
part of festivals and religious reenactments and they were intended to
immortalize the rulers and to protect the city forever.
So the best part about coming here at 8 a.m. is that you'll have
the facilities pretty much all to yourself.
Right now we're in the main square of Copan ruinas and we really
don't see anyone else except for parrots and the other animals here.Along with
stelae, I'd say the other thing that makes this Mayan site really distinct are
the hordes of exotic birds . If you go there early in the morning you can see
the Macaws being fed even that's pretty cool.
We also saw some turkey(?)
and whatever the hell this animal was .Now back to the site.
After 850 AD the royal residence was deliberately burned and Copan gradually
became depopulated. it wasn't really thoroughly explored (again) until the 19th
century. One place that very interestingly did not get destroyed was the former
principal religious sanctuary of the city called the Rosalila temple. It was
carefully and ceremoniously buried along with many artifacts from the time.
A full-size replica of this very well-preserved temple can
be found at the Site Museum at the entrance and you can walk through. it to get
a glimpse of Mayan times. Of course no Mayan city is complete without a Mayan
ball court game but if you want more information on that just watch my post on
it from Uxmal. What's really interesting about this site is the hieroglyphic
stairway which is full of Mayan hieroglyphics and describes the history of
Copan and all its rulers.
It's a pyramid like structure with more than 2,000 glyphs on
it's 63 steps And it's the longest known Mayan inscription that exists Hey people.
First off I want to give a shout out to Roberto Espinosa from the Honduras
consulate (in Los angeles). That was a very busy place and everyone had their
hands full dealing with all kinds of issues that Honduran citizens were dealing
with but Roberto stayed in touch with me every day and made sure that I got the
visa I needed to go visit Copan.
So thank you for that, I think this is the last back- packing
or Central America backpacking post for the year at least, but I just moved to
Hawaii so I should be bringing you some more content but I'm quarantined in my
hotel room right now but more on that next…
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