Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Hunger Moon

January moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

The moon is new! We are entering the lunar phase known as the Hunger Moon in the calendars of many of the indigenous cultures of North America, as well as the early European colonists who settled here. We are also ushering in the Chinese New Year, based on the Chinese lunar calendar. The Year of the Monkey is just beginning. Perhaps it will be an auspicious year for me. I myself am a 'monkey,' as I was born in a Year of the Monkey.

And strangely enough, I had the excitement of seeing wild monkeys in the rainforest just a week ago. Well, actually I heard them. I could see them moving among the tree tops very high up -- see their long arms and long tails swinging them from branch to branch in the canopy. But it was their piercing cries that got our attention. They are called "howler monkeys," and the sound they make breaks through the relative quiet of the jungle like the trumpet section of a band. It sounded more like honking, or even screeching, than what I would call 'howling.' It was a wonderful, dramatic, sound -- a call of the tropical wild, and a pleasure to listen to for a long time while trying to get a clear view of them through binoculars. And what a perfect way to ring in the Lunar New Year.

I spent ten days on vacation this past moon, visiting the Mayan ruin of Palenque in the lowland rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico. This is where I saw and heard the monkeys, feeding on the leaves at the top of the tall trees. It was my third visit to Palenque, but my first as an adult, and it was an absolutely fascinating learning experience. My godmother lives there among a community of archaeologists and guides who are passionate about the site, about the Maya, and about uncovering the history and mystery of these ancient cities.

The ancient Maya built great cities full of temples, pyramids, palaces, ball courts, and residences throughout the Yucatan peninsula, Chiapas, and what is now Guatemala. In the cities were uncovered panels of beautiful glyphs that tell much of the history of the ancient Maya, particularly the religious stories ("mythology"), and the coronations and lineages of the divine kings who rose to ascendency during this time. The glyphs also tell of the wars and power struggles that erupted between these city-states. The glyphs employ an elaborate calendar in which dates are described in multiple calendars, including the solar year, the sacred calendar, the lunar phase, and the lunar month. Interestingly, although most glyphs have been translated, the glyphs that tell the names of the moons are yet undeciphered. I will be intrigued to learn what they are, once they are figured out.

But the big mystery that the glyphs don't explain (or at least not yet), is why these cities were mysteriously abandoned. Centuries before the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, the Maya left Palenque and their other great cities and moved to the highlands to form a multitude of small, relatively autonomous agrarian communities, leaving their stone cities, their temples, and their divine kings to be swallowed up by the ever encroaching jungle.

While I was there, I spent a lot of time wondering about this and, of course, speculating. I also was particularly interested to learn as much as I could about the food system of the ancient Maya, and was fascinated by the various ways they went about feeding the everyday hunger of the great numbers of people who would have inhabited these cities and the surrounding areas. The site of Palenque is blessed with lots of natural water -- springs and streams fed from mountains run through the landscape where the city was built, including beautiful and dramatic waterfalls. The Maya who lived there built aqueducts (I saw one of these ancient aqueducts on a forest walk) and controlled the water flow so as to provide irrigation for fields and pasture, but also in order to limit erosion and to protect the buildings and the paths that linked them. Corn was the staple crop and was central to their food system and their religious belief system as well -- they believed human beings were made from corn, and worshipped a corn god. There is evidence that they made tamales, as well as the corn stew called posol. Archaeologists have yet to find evidence of a comal -- the flat oven used to cook tortillas -- and so we do not know when tortillas became a staple food of the Maya, as they are today.

In addition to growing crops such as corn, beans, cacao (we saw some beautiful cacao cups in the museum), chiles, and many vegetables, the Maya raised turkeys and dogs for food. They hunted deer and other wild animals to eat, and there is some evidence that they were actually able to domesticate deer and raise them for food. They had a sophisticated system of aquaculture, raising fish and shellfish such as clams in the rivers and streams that they controlled so carefully. They mined salt, and also burned a tree called the 'salt palm' for the salt in its ashes. The rainforest offered a wealth of wild fruits, herbs, spices, fibers, and medicines. One tree was tapped for its intense aromatic resin, called copal, which was highly prized as incense that was used extensively in ceremony. I was given a gift of some copal before I left, and I have been burning it here in my home in California, surrounding myself with the smell and memory of Palenque.

As extensive as the agriculture was in the area around Palenque, it may not have been sustainable. The topsoil in that area is poor, and one of the theories as to why the Maya abandoned the city is that they had so depleted the soil that they could no longer farm the land. They also clear-cut extensively in the forest to have enough trees to burn to make the mortar that they used to build their temples, and so another theory is that they had over-harvested their natural resources and had to move on to new forest ecosystems.

This was an important reminder for me, as I have a tendency to associate 'sustainability' with any agrarian and non-industrial food system. This is a great naiveté. While the ancient Maya seemed to have had a concern for how they used their resources, and engaged in what amounted to 'public works' for the common good of their city -- particularly when it came to water -- it may not have been enough to ensure that their city-states could flourish indefinitely.

I had to wonder, wandering through the beautiful pyramids of Palenque, why they had built these cities in the first place. Was it because of their physical hunger? Did they come together in order to build a food system that would provide a steady source of food for a growing population? Was there an economy of scale, an efficiency, involved in urbanization? Or did they come together into cities to feed a spiritual hunger? To manage their resources in such a way that they could build temples to the gods, temples aligned with the sun, moon, and stars in such a way that they showed the magnificent and sacred beauty of nature? One of the archaeologists we heard speak has studied extensively the geometry and astronomy of the ancient Maya, and has found that they used formulas to build their temples that are based on the timeless mathematical proportions of the natural world. He called this 'sacred geometry.' Did they build their cities in order to explore and express their scientific insights? To feed an aesthetic hunger, or a hunger for immortality, a longing to build something beautiful and timeless?

And then, after such an amazing accomplishment of artistry and engineering, did they leave them? Did they run out of healthy soil to grow their crops? Did they run out of trees to burn for building? Did warfare and bloodshed lead to chaos and civil disorganization? Did the Maya think to themselves, "What we're doing here isn't very sustainable. We're cutting down the trees and depleting the soil and building more and more structures, but all we're getting in return is kings who think they're divine and keep making war on one another.

We're tired of struggle and bloodshed and scarcity, we're going to get back to the land and live in small mountain communities in houses made of renewable resources, worshipping without huge temples or kings, eating handmade tortillas and practicing a traditional way of life...."

Of course this is pure fantasy and projection -- hopelessly doctrinaire. But until (or unless) archaeologists figure out why the great Mayan cities were abandoned, why not indulge in a bit of fantasy and projection? And maybe there is some grain of truth in it?

Since the Maya abandoned Palenque, the rainforest has slowly rebuilt itself, with trees growing right out of the rubble of discarded temples. The canopy is being restored and the howler monkeys have taken up their residencies in the uppermost foliage.

But now ranchers are cutting down rainforest again in order to create pastureland for cattle. The Mexican (mestizo) town of Palenque is being built on the wealth generated by cattle ranching. And up in the highlands, many contemporary Maya suffer from the effects of the spraying of pesticides and herbicides over the cornfields where they worked. Hybrid and genetically-engineered varieties of corn threaten the amazing biodiversity of heirloom corn stock passed down through millennia. The so-called 'green revolution' reaches everywhere.

I do believe, deep down, that there is a way for human beings to live and farm that is truly sustainable -- for people, for monkeys, for trees, for fish, for earth, for water and for all creatures. There is land on earth that is suited to pasture, and other land that is excellent for crops. The rainforests are full of medicine, and coffee beans can be grown under their canopies. There are sea animals who thrive in aquaculture, and others that should be left wild but can be harvested if it is done carefully. But I don't think we can go on forcing our will on any land, any species, anywhere, anytime. We have to learn to listen, and to watch, and to learn from our mistakes.

Wishing you a wonderful Hunger Moon and an intelligent Year of the Monkey.

If you'd like to learn more about the ancient Maya, or visit Palenque or other sites, check out www.mayaexploration.org. I met the folks running this fledgeling organization, and they are doing wonderful work. To learn more about the contemporary Maya, check out the books of Martín Prechtel, starting with Secrets of the Talking Jaguar.

Beautiful and moving.