The Best of Both Worlds

After last weeks long weekend in Queretaro (for which I will soon write a recap), this weekend I took it easy in the city, and saved a few pesos.  It had been about a month since my last visit to the Anthropology museum, so I decided to go and pay a visit to the room devoted to the history of the gulf coast.  The museum is so big, and every section so fascinating, that a series of two hour visits every other week spread out over a year is the perfect way to enjoyable get accustomed to the flow of history for two centuries in North America.  It has become to me in Mexico, what the Prado was to me in Spain: a touchstone, a place of inspiration where I can go whenever I need to feel some justification for my random wanderings in this country.  And just like what I got out of the Prado, what I am learning through my visits to the museum– along with travel to specific sites and extensive reading on the side– is what will stick with me after I leave Mexico. 

Up to this point I have extensively covered the rooms devoted to Teotihuacan, the Maya and a bit of the Tula and Aztec sections.  Not coincidentally, these first two are the cultures whose sites I have already made visits to.  Seeing Teotihuacan first makes sense as its the mother culture of central Mexico during the classic period (from about 200-700 a.d.), and has a tie in with classic Mayan culture which developed at nearly the same time frame.  The next culture to come chronologically would be Tula.  But what exactly the kingdom of Tula represented is not too well known, and so a number of other independent states that developed after the fall of Teotihuacan have been grouped together under the name of Tula in the museum.  These kingdoms, most notably Xochicalco in Morelos and the very same Tula in Hidalgo, might be better categorized as simply those groups that thrived after the fall of Teotihuacan.  I have yet to see either Xochicalco or Tula, but plan on doing so soon, and also on seeing another post-Teotihuacan site called Tajin, in Veracruz.  These are among the eight premier archaeological sites in Mexico (the others being Monte Alban, Uxmal, Palenque, and Chichen Ixta).  I dont think I will be able to get to Chichen or Uxmal, but I will see the others before I leave. 

But today I stopped into the room devoted to the culture of the gulf coast.  This is a pretty broad term, not only geographically, but more imporantly, chronologically.  The first civilization in Mexico, the Olmecs, began in the rainy swamps along the Gulf in present day Tabasco.  It was with this civiliaztion that I have, of recently, started to get interested in…   CONTINUED TOMORROW