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The Macanxoc Group
More excerpts from the journal: "Taking the other trail at that ‘intersection’ brings you (after a kilometer or two) to the Macanxoc Group. This was one of the most remote, most unique places we visited all week. Its a little hard to describe... The group is a series of stelae placed in apparently random spacing through what is now jungle. You can tell that there once must have been courtyards, walls, streets and temples but there has been very little restoration done in this area and its as if you walk through the jungle (bikes are left down the path) and stumble across these little hollows with these upright carved columns covered with thatched roofs that make them look even more like shrines. The fact that we were there at dusk, alone in the gathering gloom made it seem all the more mystical. I felt like we had stumbled on a piece of Middle Earth here in this corner of the jungle. I took some pictures but was skeptical that they would capture the spirit of the place. |
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| All of the stelae are elaborately carved but some are in better condition than others. A couple are especially interesting - the first one you come upon in the grove is a large scale carving of a Mayan queen - carved on both sides of the stela; the other has the ‘Long Form’ date in row upon row of hieroglyphic symbols." | |
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| One of the stela is carved on both sides with the image of a
queen who is believed to have been in power in the last half of the 7th century. Another
is inscribed with the 'long count' Mayan date which has enabled the correlation of other
date inscriptions to the modern calendar. As a side note, based on these calculations, the current Mayan era will end on December 23, 2012 and according to tradition the world will start over.
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