Xochicalco (Day 16 of 27)

September 16, 2018

Xochicalco (Day 16 of 27)

This is what I rose up early for. It was worth it.
Esto es porque (razón) me levanté temprano. Es vale la pena.

Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent -
consists of a big lower temple (restored and standing today)
and a small upper temple (existed in the past, stone remains not found).
It is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

September 16. Today is also Independence Day in Mexico. I visited the Archaeological Monuments Zone of Xochicalco, southwest of Cuernavaca. This was a central city of a Mesoamerican civilization, reigning from about 650AD to 900AD.

Everything about the place was impressive - the hilltop location, the museum, and the excellent state of preservation and restoration of the ancient city of plazas, temples, ball courts, residences, and a system of pipes for capturing rain water into cisterns and conducting clean water and draining waste water.

Most splendent was the carved stone reliefs at the Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent or Serpiente Emplumada, the Quetzalcóatl of Teotihuacan.

Image of the Serpent head and body
(middle body and tail not shown)

The serpent extends its tongue that splits into two feathers. More feathers extend from the nose, on the head, and along the body.

Image of a Priest, framed by the middle section of the serpent body. Not shown are human images of rulers and astronomers, on other facades of the temple.

Edgar, my guide.

In North America, I have visited many times Southwest pueblo sites and cliff dwellings of indigenous civilizations before first European contact - Mesa Verdi, Gila and Bandalier National Monuments, are a few among several sites. Those archaeological are also impressive.

Function of Plumed Serpent Temple
Here is a close-up of a carved relief, to the left of the pyramid steps. There are several temples in the city, each serving a different god. In the case of the Plumed Serpent, the temple served a scientific purpose - Maintaining the calendar system for agricultural cycles.

As explained to me by my guide (guía), their calendar needed to be adjusted (ajustar) to keep it correlated with the actual timing of the seasons. Astronomers (and perhaps priests) of Xochicalco and neighboring cities would gather at the temple regularly to calculate whether to add or subtract from the calendar of that year and the coming year.

Relief close-up. Boxed in red are representations of a calendar. Circled in black is a rope. Outlined in green are two hands - the hand on the right is pulling a rope to add time, and the hand on the left is dropping an item to deduct time.

The necessity is similar to the modern calendar system where we add a 29th day to the month of February every 4 years or so to keep it aligned to the sun's cycle.