serenpidity

Maybe life has a way of making these little suggestions to you as you wind your way through it. I mean, lots of times my thoughts are completely occupied on Big Issues That Need To Be Resolved and then, seemingly random, some little suggestion seems to come out of nowhere and changes everything. It's true for many things, but also for writing. So, when i was travelling through Mexico, i had invested heavily in the archaeology of Oaxaca (where one of my supervisors is doing work) and the Yucatan (where i really wanted to be). So, one day i went from D.F. (that is Distrito Federal, Mexico City) to see the site of Teotihuacan. I did not really want to be there, but yea it's one you are obliged to see in Mexico. Walking around it gave me a quite strange feeling, so unlike as it was to any archaeological site i had ever encountered.

Not only strange but it seemed a bit desolate, the wind eerily blowing on the long Avenue. You could sense the past there, but it was unsettling, i was just longing for the forests, pyramids and cenotes of the Yucatan. After wandering around for a few hours, i exited the site and saw this sign for a museum. That is strange, because there is a huge museum inside the site, but this was another one. It's called the Museo de la Pintura Teotihuacana, that is the museum of the paintings of Teotihuacan (to go there, exit through gate 2 and walk a little to the right on this path to where you see this large white building, if you have time and feel in the mood to go there, you should, it's amazing!!). Here you, there's really no one else there, can see the murals of the city. They are really beautiful, depicting strange creatures and gods, i was really impressed.

btw, you can read something about them online here:

http://www.jqjacobs.net/mesoamerica/teo_murals.html

So, i went on, returned to the wonderful land of the cenotes, and later back to Europe. But the images somehow lingered in the back of my mind. Then, as you can read in two blogs ago, i got a really big headache from this comparative stuff, trying to compare the 2% with the other 2%. Also, i was taking this iconography class from the Oaxaca professor, and then it occurred to me that maybe i could limit myself to answering a more limited question. Questions started to come up in my head: have all early civilizations kings or can there be alternatives? Can we say something about this from the way these societies portrayed themselves in images? Is this not an important question asked by those studying the images i saw in the Museo de la Pintura Teotihuacana? Is this also not an important question asked by scholars of Minoan Crete?

Yea, i had my writing subject.

It's quite new for me, as i started out from a very different angle, but it is good to do something new. It also shifts the balance very much towards the Americas. Of course, i would have really liked to write something about the Yucatan, but i feel it is good like this, no need to write up everything you encounter in life, otherwise it's very hard to enjoy it ;)