Museum of Anthropology

My friend Alejandro and I decided to return to Chapultepec Park today and visit the Anthropology Museum.  Although both of us have visited the museum numerous times, it had been ten years since Alejandro had been there.  Besides, it is such a huge museum, that no matter how many times you go, you will always see something that you had not noticed before.

The Anthropology Museum is a world-class museum.  Nowhere in the world will you find a comparable collection of art and artifacts from the indigenous cultures of pre-Hispanic Mexico.  We spent three or four hours there and did not see it all.  We didn't even make it to the second floor which has displays on the life of the native peoples today.

                                       The entrance to the National Museum of Anthropology

 

Outside of the museum is a enormous statue of the rain god Tlaloc

One of the halls of the museum is devoted to the culture of Teotihuacan, a monumental city built by an unknown tribe more than 1500 years ago to the north of Mexico City.

 The hall includes a life size replica of the facade of the Temple of Queztalcoatl.  The carvings represent two of their principal gods:  Tlaloc, the rain god, and Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent.

The centerpiece of the museum is the Mexica (Aztec) Hall.  Here you will find the museum's most famous object, the Sun Stone, erroneously called the Aztec Calendar Stone.  In the center of this huge stone is the image of the Aztec sun god.  The Aztecs believed that he (and the other gods) needed to be constantly nourished with the blood of human sacrifices.

This monumental sculpture portrays the oh-so-lovely Aztec mother goddess.  Notice that her face is made up of serpent heads and that her feet are eagle talons.  She wears a skirt of intertwined serpents and a necklace made of the hands, hearts and skulls of sacrificial victims.

Alejandro poses next to an Olmec head.  The Olmecs lived along the Gulf coast, and were the most ancient of Mexico's civilizations.  They are best known for their colossal stone carvings of heads.  No one knows for sure who or what they represent.  This one weighs 20 tons.

The Mayan civilization flourished in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula 1500 years ago.  Carvings such as this one from the city of Calakmul were created as public monuments to commemorate important events such as the accession of a king or a victory in battle.  The symbols around the central figure are Mayan hieroglyphs.  The Mayas were the only civilization of the Americas to have a fully developed writing system.

  In a jungle-like garden outside of the Mayan Hall, is a replica of a Mayan temple.

This fellow is known as a "chac-mool".  The reclining figure holds a bowl over his belly.  The Mayas would place the hearts of sacrificial victims in the bowl.  They believed that the "chac-mool" would deliver the essence of the offering to the gods.