Tlaxcala State: Magnificent Mural Paintings at Cacaxtla

Cacaxtli means "place of the merchant's backpack" in Nahuatl; here, the backpack is the rectangular shape with various items neatly lashed to it.  Left Click to Enlarge (Recommended).  Photo: Reed

Like many centers throughout Mexico, Cacaxtla was a trading hub, which is the theme of this mural painting. But Cacaxtla was more than that. One anthropologist describes the acropolis at Cacaxtla. Acropolis in Mexico? As it turns out, an acropolis is also "a raised area holding a building or cluster of buildings, especially in a pre-Columbian city."

Cacaxtla is located about 50 miles west of Mexico City in the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley. Developed around 600 CE, Cacaxtla was occupied until 900 CE, which means that it had been abandoned for about 600 years when the Spanish arrived in 1519. Constructed on a slope less than a mile west of the earlier ceremonial site established at Xochitécatl, Cacaxtla—like Xochicalco in Morelos State—was well-fortified with moats and a wall.

Before a trip, we read about the archaeological site we intend to visit. But nothing prepares us for the actual experience, which inevitably raises more questions. At Cacaxtla, for example, the last kilometer is approached on foot via a stone pedestrian walkway along a volcanic ridge. I believe we may have been following a path trod by the Olmeca-Xicalanca peoples for millenia. As we walked, the acropolis slowly came into view above us to our left.

Cacaxtla under its protective roof as we first saw it from the pathway walking in;
the older pyramid at Xochitécatl is visible at the horizon to the left.

Seen from slightly below, the Gran Basamento (Great Platform) is impressive even though it is not as large a site as other centers built at roughly the same time. These centers on the periphery of the Valley of Mexico rose to fill the power vacuum created by the fall of Teotihuacan. As we walk, my thoughts drift to those other archaeological sites. We've visited most of them.

Tula and Cholula were probably dominant in filling that vacuum, but Xochicalco (Morelos State), El Tajín (Veracruz State) and Cacaxtla also reached their highest developments during this same time period.

As we continued walking, we passed a small temple-pyramid. Investigators say that altars and temples are common on the hillsides around Cacaxtla. Arriving at the base of the acropolis, we looked up the five or six flights of stairs that visitors climb to enter. Taking deep breaths, we began to climb.

The climb is an intrinsic part of the experience. The higher we ascended, the more we were able to see of the surrounding countryside, dominated by fields.

Photo: Cacaxtla (Tlaxcala State) Web Site

The climb is affecting. Step by step, we left the modern world behind and entered a space created by the Mesoamerican cosmovision.

The graphic below gives an idea of what Cacaxtla looks like without its roof. The single graphic presents two distinctly different views:

(1) Acropolis at Cacaxtla without its roof; and
(2) Topographic map that locates Cacaxtla (red) in the Tlaxcala-Cholula Valley. 

This graphic represents: (1) Acropolis at Cacaxtla; and (2) Topographical map locates Cacaxtla (red print) in the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley. 

Topographic Map

Cacaxtla is located almost in the center of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley between La Malinche volcano to the East and the Popocatéptl and Iztaccíhuatl volcanoes to the West. On a clear day, the Great Pyramid at Cholula is visible to the South (red dot). Mexico City is West of Popocatéptl and Iztaccíhuatl.

Along with Xochitécatl, Cacaxtla is on a direct line such that on September 29, the sun appears to rise directly from the crater of the La Malinche volcano. The three volcanoes are identifiable by their white, snow-capped peaks.

Acropolis

The acropolis at Cacaxtla consists of several open plazas surrounded by multi-room structures that served elite residential and ritual functions. Its population may have been as large as 10,000.

We entered on the side shown in the middle, then walked straight and turned left, following a visitors' walkway that 'floats' above the ancient structure. 

Murals

Once again, we are struck by the symbolic richness of the Mesoamerican religious imagination. It is fair to say that nothing in these murals was arbitrary: everything has meaning. As novices, we struggle to understand, but I must say that our efforts are always richly rewarded. It seems that no matter how well we think we've prepared for a visit, our post-visit research never fails to peel back more layers of meaning.

The description that follows draws on several sources—see Still Curious? For starters, anthropologist Susan Toby Evans describes Cacaxtla as typifying

"the Late Classic dynamic—a rich exchange of goods and ideas, thrust forward by aggressive claims of right to rule...." 

Red Temple: God of Merchants

This concept of "a rich exchange of goods and ideas" is a useful introduction to the first mural, located at the bottom of a staircase. Designated the Red Temple for the red that surrounds the entrance, the mural painting depicts Cacaxtla's sources of wealth: water, fertile land, and trade.

Cacaxtla means "place of the merchant's backpack"; the mural depicts the Maya God of Merchants as an old man leaning forward on his cane. 

Behind a staircase (bottom left) is this mural of the God of Merchants.
Photo: Reed

The Merchant God stands on a feathered serpent border. I recall that the 'feathered serpent' is Quetzalcóatl, the god who moves easily between the three planes of existence: underworld below, heavens above, and the natural world.

Photo: Wikipedia

In front of the Merchant God rises a cacao tree, which is meaningful because the Maya entered central Mexico precisely in order to trade cacao fruit. In fact, all Cacaxtla's mural paintings are in the Maya style. To the left is a cornstalk whose fruit is not corn cobs but little human heads.

Detail: Instead of corn cobs, small, elongated human heads on cornstalks.
Photo: Internet Images

Here's Anthropologist Susan Toby Evans's comment on this detail:

For Mesoamericans, the integration of the environment, spiritual values, and human culture was not an intellectual exercise but their own deeply ingrained way of life. Here, a maize plant sprouts human heads instead of corn cobs. Maize is the food that humans eat, thus it is what humans are made of. Maize is also a gift of the gods, and, in grateful reciprocity, humans should offer themselves as sacrificial victims—maize for the gods. 

Note that in this mural from Cacaxtla, the human heads are elongated. This is not just artistic license in order to emphasize the analogy between the ears of maize and heads of humans, but also a realistic depiction of the results of cranial remodeling, a practice widespread in Mesoamerica that involved constraining an infant's head between boards until the soft bones had assumed a cone-like or wedge-like shape. This caused no damage to the brain and was regarded as a mark of beauty and refinement. [Evans, p. 53]

Commanding attention is the large blue toad resting on what appears to be running water containing more animal and Venus star symbols (described later).

Detail: Blue Toad  Photo: Internet

The toad, whose glands at the back of his head produces the powerful hallucinogen bufotenine, is a religious symbol that goes all the way back to Olmec culture—widely recognized as the "mother" Mesoamerican culture. Shaman-priests believed that this hallucinogen protected them as they moved between the world of 'spirit' (underworld and heavens) and the natural world.

Temple of Venus: Anthropomorphic 'Dancing' Blue Figures

The walkway passes in front of the so-called Temple of Venus, where visitors look down to see two rectangular columns decorated with murals. From their dress, researchers believe the broken-off figure on the left (south) side is a female, while the one on the right (north) is male.

Venus or Star Temple  Photo: State of Tlaxcala  

The painting below is the male figure found on the North (right) column. Masked and possessing a large scorpion tail (associated with rain) that extends behind him, with wings on his arms, and jaguar paws, this figure holds in his left hand the half-star that represents the planet ("star") Venus. Other half-stars, known as the Venus symbol, are found on the border at the bottom half of the mural.

Detail: Figure on North (Right) Column. Eerie, blue, anthropomorphic, probably male figure standing or dancing atop a wavy water motive with representations of water-related animals. Left click to enlarge. Photo: Reed

Although European culture associates Venus with love and beauty, throughout Mesoamerica, the "star"  we know as the planet Venus was a male god of danger and war. The timing of warfare and of long-distance merchant travel for the Maya and other early peoples were governed by the cycles of the planet Venus, which is symbolized by the figure's five-part "skirt". The figure wears a jaguar pelt as armor (loin cloth), representing strength and protection.

Now the walkway turns north toward Building B, the long structure distinguished by its row of white columns. We're headed for the spectacular Battle Murals on the low platform wall below the columns.

White columns at palace entry. Photo: Reed

Building B: Battle Murals

Cacaxtla's spectacular murals are rendered in Maya style, but depict military scenes. Although the style is Maya, the mural paintings lack the long hieroglyphic texts found in nearly every piece of Classic Maya monumental art. Some researchers believe the Cacaxtlans painted purely pictorial scenes because they were trying to reach a central Mexican audience that could not read Maya writing.

Victorious warrior with spear standing over fallen, defeated warrior
Note: Venus symbols on warrior standing at the right.
Photo: Reed

The Battle Mural depicts the bloody conflict of the Jaguar and Eagle Warriors at the moment the battle turned the Eagle Warriors' way, and they began to butcher their opponents. Art historian Mary Miller believes the scene depicts an actual battle between a Maya group—the Jaguar Warriors with their Maya noses and flattened foreheads—and the more 'mexicanized' Eagle Warriors of the Central Highlands.

The "Venus" warrior is now at the left. Shields are circles with feathers hanging down.
Note: Quincunx (five points arranged in square or rectangle: one at each corner;
one in middle) on shield held by warrior at the right.

Victors and Defeated. Warriors were not always killed in battle;
prisoners were taken to participate in Ball Games and for sacrifice.
Photo: Reed

At the far end of the murals, we climb another stairway to Building A, which is at one side of the palace (Building B).

Building A: Jaguar Warrior and Bird Warrior

At the top of the stairway, we turn right. In front of us are two columns flanking a doorway. The columns are decorated with intensely colored, highly complex murals. They depict a Bird Warrior (right) and a Jaguar Warrior (left) holding bastóns, ceremonial bars symbolizing power, in their arms.

Bird Warrior standing on serpent and holding bastón (cane, symbol of power).
Note: Warrior's black-painted human face emerging from Bird Mask.
Photo: Reed

The Bird Warrior's skin is painted black, and he stands on a feathered serpent whose body also becomes the mural's border; his ceremonial bar has a stylized monster face on the end. A quetzal bird with his long tail feathers flies at the right border; at the left is a three-sided rectangular frame with three Venus half-star symbols and hands reaching on the base.

Detail: Bird Warrior  Note: Bird Claw Feet  Photo: Reed

Jaguar Warrior also holding bastón made of bundles lances dripping
raindrops, the sign of fertility.
Photo: Reed

The outside borders of both murals contain the same water animals found in the Temple of Venus and Red Temple murals. The bird and the jaguar may have represented Cacaxtla's main warrior castes. Offered in battle or in sacrifice, their blood fertilized the soil and allowed the crops to grow.

In the opinion of art and myth scholars Roberta and Peter Markman, the murals at Cacaxtla are a striking mixture of the styles of Xochicalco, Teotihuacán, Veracruz, and the Maya. The Markmans draw attention to the head of a human figure emerging from the open mouth of the mask of jaguar or bird god.

Detail: Human head emerging from open mouth of mask of Bird God.

The Markmans write:

"...the most dramatic portrayal of the liminal position of man in relationship to the world of the spirit ... shows the head or even the entire upper body of a human being emerging from the jaws of the mask of the god...."

This group of murals is hence a magnificent visual expression of the mystery of the liminal experience that can only occur in a place 'betwixt and between'; that is, in a 'time out of mind'.

The murals on the door jambs aren't very visible to visitors from the walkway, but post-visit poking around on the Internet led me to this remarkable photo of another Jaguar figure on the door jamb of Building A's north column, around the corner from the Bird Warrior.

Mural painting on north door jamb, Building A. Left click to enlarge.
Photo: Dr. Brian Hayden

The man depicted in this mural is either wearing a jaguar costume or is emerging from the open mouth of a jaguar; the ambiguity arises from the fact that the figure's hands and feet are the paws of a jaguar rather than the human hands and feet usually depicted in Mesoamerican art that shows human beings. Strikingly, the figure holds a stylized serpent (Quetzalcóatl?) in his left hand and clutches a Tlaloc effigy urn from which water flows under his right arm. The Markmans argue that this effigy urn connects the mural to Teotihuacán.

Let me end this post with this description by Canadian Ethno-archaeologist Brian D. Hayden:

Beginning with the Olmec, the mother culture of Mesoamerica, and throughout Mesoamerican history, certain animals have been illustrated and commemorated in art. People valued animals and sanctified many as symbols of their deities and ideas of afterlife; the Eagle was associated with the spirit world above, the Crocodile with the world below, and the mighty Jaguar with the terrestrial world. The Serpent [especially the feathered serpent, Quetzalcóatl] was a transitory figure that could go between all three worlds. 

The Serpent is often depicted in carvings and sculptures with an open mouth, which symbolized a gateway through which priests and shamans could enter the spirit world. There is a close symbolic relationship between the Jaguar, warfare and the wielding of spiritual and political power by shamans and chiefs. A shaman would transform into the Jaguar and thus embody its strength, leadership, knowledge and protection. With the power of the Jaguar, the shaman could thwart off unfriendly powers that threatened his people.

Taking Our Leave....

We made our way back down the five flights of stairs and slowly retraced our steps back to the entrance...back to the 'modern' world, or so we thought. On our way we came upon two young men sitting on a boulder by the side of the road.

Conch shell announces arrival of procession
Photo: Reed

Just after we passed, one young man rose and lifted a conch shell to his lips, then began to blow the extended, haunting call that has echoed off these hills for millenia. Seconds later, a procession came into view. Where were they headed? To the top of the ancient acropolis....

Still Curious?

This is the third of three posts describing our visit to Tlaxcala State:

• Xochitécatl: "Kingdom of the Flowers"
• Cacaxtla Presents Cultural Puzzle

Reed's Photo Album: Xochitécatl and Cacaxtla.

Reed's Photo Essay, Olmecs of Tabasco, is a beautiful, informative introduction to the Olmec peoples.

Jenny's Post Travel Journal: Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco (Part IV) describes our visits to the Comalcalco archaeological site and to the park in Villahermosa where the Olmec sculptures were relocated when the ancient site was developed as the La Venta oil field.

Jenny's Posts describing Teotihuacán:

• Teotihuacán I: 'City Where the Gods are Made'
• Teotihuacán II: The Shape of Space and Time
• Teotihuacán III: Seat of Political-Religious Power
• Teotihuacán IV: Temple of Quetzalcóatl (The Plumed Serpent)
• Teotihuacán V: Residential Palaces and Mural Art (murals here rival those at Cacaxtla).

Jenny's Posts describing Xochicalco (Morelos State):

• Quetzalcóatl at Xochicalco and other symbolism
• Xochicalco's Engineers and Scientists

Jenny's Posts describing El Tajín (Veracruz State):

• El Tajín I: Beauty and Mystery
• El Tajín II: On Ants, Gods and the Hill of Plenty
• Travel Journal: A Most Mexican Day in Veracruz

For the Fanatics:

Wikipedia Cacaxtla has photos of the complete Battle Murals in situ—located to the left and right of the central staircase leading to the palace. For details, see incredible photos presented at the Third Conference (below).

Gustavo Thomas's Flickr Photo Album: Cacaxtla Murals (Red Room: Details of 'Merchant' Mural)

Scholarly papers presented at Third and Fourth Palenque Round Tables: Scroll down below list of speakers and their topics to a series of photographs of the columns and door jambs (Building A). I found this gold mine after I'd already published this post. George Kubler and Don Robertson are both highly respected art historians who specialized in Mesoamerican art. Hyperbole aside, these photos—taken in original light in 1980 before the protective roof was installed— are absolutely spectacular: Portico (Jaguar Warrior; Bird Warrior; North and South Door Jambs).

YouTube Videos produced by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). They're in Spanish, but the video images speak for themselves.

• YouTube: Cacaxtla I
• YouTube: Preserving Cacaxtla II

Coe, Andrew, Archaeological Mexico: A Traveler's Guide to Ancient Cities and Sacred Sites (2001): Son of renowned anthropologist Michael Coe, Andrew has written a highly readable, usable and useful guide to Mexico's archaeological treasures. Published in 2001, I just came across it. Highly recommended.

Evans, Susan Toby, Ancient Mexico and Central America: Archaeology and Culture History (2008): This textbook is encyclopedic in scope. Not an easy read, nonetheless, it provides reliable access to the archaeological record, including the impact on culture. As such, it is indispensable.

Markman, Roberta H. and Peter T., Masks of the Spirit: Image and Metaphor in Mesoamerica, Introduction by Joseph Campbell: The Markmans tell a story of spirit—nothing less than a tale of the Life-Force itself, and they invite us to accompany them as they discover layers of meaning in the masks of Mesoamerica. Most Highly Recommended.

Miller, Mary and Taube, Karl, An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: If you're interested in learning more about Mesoamerican culture and its symbols, this reference work is very useful. Well-illustrated, this dictionary will answer most of your questions that begin, "But what does it mean that ____?"