Teotihuacan Traders in Tikal's Royal Dynasty

Teotihuacan Traders in Tikal’s Royal Dynasty A proposal for the origin of Tikal’s Emblem Glyph Ruud van Akkeren In this paper I will propose a historical origin for the Emblem Glyph of Tikal, the bended knot of hair. It is based on ideas that emerged while writing my latest book Xib’alb’a y el nacimiento del nuevo sol – una visión posclásica del co- lapso maya1. Some ideas were included as suggestions in the last chapter but my main point, the Tzonmolco thesis, was left out. Here is the place to elaborate it. The hy- pothesis will link Tikal even firmer to Teotihuacan. Tatiana Proskouriakoff was the first one to notice the foreign influences in the Maya Lowlands, in her book Maya History, edited posthumously, she called this chapter “The Arrival of Strangers”2. It was a title which David Stuart paper later borrowed for his inno- vative article on the identity of Teotihuacan presence in Tikal. Clemency Coggins suggested, based on her analysis of Teotihuacan iconography in Tikal, that there was a change of power. She introduced the term New Order, a Central-Mexican power – Teo- tihuacan – entering Tikal, and the intruders brought with them new calendrical rites3. Simon Martin kept using this notion of the New Order while elaborating on the Teotihua- can influences in his later Tikal work4. Stuart started out his article, organizing the different views on the Teotihuacan’s influ- ence on Tikal. He distinguished grosso modo two approaches, divided between what he called the internalist and externalist view. The internalists are sceptical about any invasion or other type of take-over of Tikal by foreign power. They rather prefer to inter- pret the Teotihuacan iconography and personel presence, as the ruling Tikal dynasty simply emulating the discourse and iconography of power, of this western metropolis. In contrast, the externalists believe there was efectively some sort of a military incur- sion and political domination of Teotihuacan in Tikal. Martin is among them: “While the precise nature of Teotihuacan’s intervention in the Maya Lowlands will continue to be debated, recent epigraphic discoveries broadly support long-held ideas for a physical intrusion, even a political takeover in 378”5. Stuart himself puts himself among the externalists. To him the personages mentioned in the various texts in and outside of Tikal were historical people from Teotihuacan and came to dominate the region6. More scholars joined the discussion. To mention a few, Erik Boot took an intermediate position, claiming that Siyah K’ak’ may be a Teotihuacan ambassador but all the others mentioned in the game were local nobles who received from Siyah K’ak’ the Teotihua- can paraphernalia of power. He compared the Tikal case with other historical examples 1 Akkeren 2012. 2 Proskouriakoff 1993. 3 Coggins 1990: 96; 2002: 48, note 41; Fash & Fash 2002: 437-438. 4 Martin 2003. 5 Martin 2003: 17 6 Stuart 2002: 506. 1 Ruud van Akkeren of local lords being invested by a minister of the Feathered Serpent cult, as in later times happened in Chich’en Itza and Cholula7. Nielsen used the information on the New Fire ceremony in the Mixtec and Zapotec area, marshalled by Michel Oudijk and by Maarten Jansen & Gabina Jiménez, to introduce a new term: Coming of the Torch8. To him, what happened in Tikal was a take-over by Teotihuacan, that is, an interference in the continuity of the old dynasty, which was subsequently legitimized by a New Fire ceremony. Tikal’s iconography shows that Yax Nuun Ayin is bringing in the torch. It makes Nielsen an externalist Bill and Barbara Fash and Alexandre Tokovinine have a somewhat similar view. Accord- ing to these scholars, the founder of the dynasty of Copan experienced a first invest- ment as a legitimate lord in the city of Teotihuacan, and later had another accession moment in Copan itself, in a building marked by New Fire iconography, called the Wi Te Naah, interpreted by by Stuart as a Foundation House. This practise is very similar to what we learn from indigenous documents of Guatemala or the aforementioned Mixtec codices in which aspirant lords travel to a place called Tullan to receive the legitimate paraphernalia of lordship9. All these explanations, each in its own way, are describing an historical picture. Yet, they fail to explain why and how people and their ideology would move from Central- Mexico to the Maya area and back. William Ringle, Tomás Gallareta and George Bey have tried to fill this gap with their article “The return of Quetzalcoatl”, in which they paint a Mesoamerican network of shrines connected to each other by the cult of Quet- zalcoatl. This cult went hand in hand with a military ideology. Of course, this was during the Epiclassic, but the subtitle of their essay “Evidence of a Second Spread of a World Religion during the Epiclassic Period” implies there existed an earlier network, created by Teotihuacan where the Quetzalcoatl cult blossomed for the first time10. Clemency Coggins embraced the idea about the spread of the Feathered Serpent cult, while building her theory on Mesoamerican’s ideology which se called ‘Toltec’. To her the ideology was born in the first Tullan, Teotihuacan, from which the Toltec ideology spread through Mesoamerica: “All evidence suggests the Teotihuacanos who traveled abroad were lone warriors and mer chants who married foreign women [..]. Thier heraldry, regalia, and symbolism combined the ancestral Tlaloc religion, which became a lineage cult in Maya territory”11 This thesis of the spread of the Quetzalcoatl cult sounds like a joint effort of religious proselitism and military conquest. But why would a power like Teotihuacan put vast amounts of manpower, money and time in an endeavor that was bound to fail. It would 7 Boot 2004: chapter 3. 8 Jansen & Gabina as well as Oudijk show that the founding of a new dynasty or town included the drilling of New Fire. Oudijk had called that the complex of the Toma de Posesión, Seizing of Power (Janssen & Pérez Jiménez 2000; Oudijk 2002; Nielsen 2006). I myself have written frecuently on this phenomenon after discovering that the Rabinal Achi was created to mark the beginning of a new Calendar Round (Akkeren 2000, 2002, 2006b, 2011; 2012, in press). 9 Fash et al. 2009: 212-216; Akkeren 2000, in press. 10 Ringle et al. 1998. 11 Coggins 2002:54. 2 Ruud van Akkeren be alltogether too difficult for a Central-Mexican polity to keep the distant conquered territory at bay, as many scholars have rightfully explained. There must have been other interests at stake, in such a way that the contact would be attractive for the in- coming as well as the recieving party. History in other parts of the world has proven that cults and ideology move along a very basic infrastructure: trade-routes12. That is what we are witnessing in Tikal, as I will show. I believe that first of all there is the ex- change of goods along a network of interdependent merchant calpultin13, with military convoys to protect the long-distance caravans. In this sense, I agree with Susan Kepecs who writes in a reaction on the article of Ringle et al.: These authors marshal an impressive corpus of data on the iconography of Quetzalcoatl, drawing parallels between devotées of the plumed serpent and medieval Christians and suggesting that military motifs shared by Tula and Chichén were emblems of religious crusades. I suspect they are right, but only partially so; I disagree with their conclusion that an overarching religious system subsumed economic relations ...14. Kepecs advocates the world-system approach, adopted for pre-industrial Mesomerica. She explains how the trade-network functions: The regular transfer of surplus among polities creates systemic interdependence between them [...]. Participating units share not only labor but also structures of accumulation as communica- tions and transportation networks. The state cult of Quetzalcoatl is a case in point. Public build- ings a both Chichén and Tula were emblazoned with symbols promoting warfare, and military motifs are present at virtually all of the Epi/EPC cores15. This would not only account for the ex- change of prestigious goods but for every kind of commodity – her article in Twin Tollans is about the full scale production of salt on the northern coast of Yucatan. When talking about actors, Kepecs still thinks in terms of polities, like Chich’en Itza or Tula, but I would rather lower to the lineage- or calpulli level. Trade was in the hands of lineages-clusters or calpultin which spread all over Mesoamerica. To give an example from my book, in the same field of salt-production, the Kanek’ were the owners of the salt-springs of 12 Pohl 1999; Kepecs 2007. 13 Calpultin, plural of calpulli. 14 Kepecs 2007: 129-130 15 Kepecs 2007: 131-132 3 Ruud van Akkeren Salinas de los Nueve Cerros, the historical Xib’alb’a. From this area they expanded their commerce to the coast of Yucatan, the main salt-producing area of Mesoamerica. That is how Kanek’ got involved in Ek’ B’alam and were co-founders of the city of Chich’en Itza. Later we find the same Kanek’ in Epiclassic Ucanal, sending out colonists to Ceibal to take control of the Pasion corridor16. I have suggested that the Kanek’ are the forefathers of the Kaweq, the authors of the Popol Wuj and thus of the Xib’alb’a myth, perhaps Mesoamerica’s most vivid expres- sion of the merchant ideology. In an article that awaits its publication, I show that other Mesoamerican calpultin express similar conduits, like the Toj-Atonal, the chinamit17 or calpulli which introduced the Tojil cult into the Guatemalan Highlands, and which appear as lords, priests and traders along the Pacific trade-routes from El Salvador all the way to Central-Mexico18.

Load more