On my recent trip around southwest Guatemala (April, 2008) I took a day and went to the Maya ruins at Tak’alik Ab’aj, near the Guatemalan city of Retalhulue. I speak Spanish fairly well but still can’t pronounce Retalhulue, even after going to the city. The locals abbreviate it to Rea but even that, with only three tiny letters, is not pronounced like it is spelled and you have to do something funny with your throat that made me hoarse for the rest of the day.
What a beautiful site! It is an active archeological dig and the staff were in the process of extracting and cleaning a 4 foot stone with hieroglyphs all over it. The archeologists were not allowing any photos of the stone until it is fully extracted, cleaned, and interpreted.
Tak’alik Ab’aj, I was told, means “Standing Stones” and there are plenty to be found. Numbers and heiroglyphs abound on the stones as you can see from this photo. Numbers are the straight lines and dots in the middle. I didn’t ask but would bet it is a date.
The site is considered Pre-Classic. One of the interesting points is the site is considered to be the only place, on a large scale, where The Maya and The Olmec lived together. The Olmec were an ancient civilization living in Mexico and were in decline during the Pre-Classic Maya Period. Economic reasons, resulting from the city’s proximity to Mexico, were most likely behind the cultural integration. This is an Olmec influenced carving from the site.
On a scale of 1-10 I give Tak’alik Ab’aj a 7.5 - the wonderful temples at Tikal being a 10.
