Archeologists Discover a Palatial Complex at Palenque New Historian Archaeologists working in Mexico's Oaxaca Valley have uncovered a palatial complex at Palenque, a Maya city state that prospered in the seventh ...

Archeologists Discover a Palatial Complex at Palenque New Historian Archaeologists working in Mexico's Oaxaca Valley have uncovered a palatial complex at Palenque, a Maya city state that prospered in the seventh ...

Archeologists Discover a Palatial Complex at Palenque

Posted By: Ginger PeralesPosted date: March 30, 2017in: Breaking News

Archaeologists working in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley have uncovered a palatial complex at Palenque, a Maya city state that prospered in the seventh century. Excavations at the site have been ongoing since 1993. During the most recent project, the archeologists focused on excavations at the north end of the site, which is where they believed the ruler of the ancient empire had a home and business.

The recently completed work revealed the remains of the palace, which has been dated using associated radiocarbon samples as well as ceramics to the Late Formative period (300–100 BCE), the time period when archaic states began emerging in the region.

Dated to a time before the Aztecs, around 2,100 to 2,300 years ago, most researchers believe the civilization that lived in Oaxaca was among the earliest Mesoamerican states to exist. Elsa Redmond and Charles Spencer, archeologists from the American Museum of Natural History, discovered the site and suggest their findings support that theory.

Well preserved, the palace covered around 2,790 square meters and in addition to living space for the ruler and his family, business offices, a dining area, a staircase and an area where sacrifices were performed have been identified. Personal details, such as the cistern used for rainwater collection and a drain cut into the stone are still evident. The construction methods indicate that the building was designed in advance and then constructed all at once, which would have taken a tremendous amount of organization. Also, its sheer size demonstrates that the ruler had a large amount of manpower available.

A medium-sized site, Palenque is a lot smaller than large sites such as Chichen Itza, Tikal or Copán, however, it contains some of the Maya’s finest sculpture, architecture, and bas-relief carvings. Much of Palenque’s history has been reconstructed from the hieroglyphic inscriptions found on the numerous monuments, which has given historians a long, detailed record of Palenque’s ruling dynasty in the fifth century, as well as extensive information regarding the city-state’s rivalries with other states, including Tonina and Calakmul.

K’inich Janaab Pakal, also known as Pacal the Great, was Palenque’s most famous ruler. Pakal’s tomb was discovered and excavated in 1952 in the Temple of the Inscriptions. Measuring 60 meters wide, 27.2 meters tall and 42.5 meters deep, construction of the Temple of Inscriptions may have begun as early as 675, as a funerary monument. The temple’s main structure is home to the second longest glyphic text from the Maya world ever documented. The pyramid records around 180 years of city history, between the 4th and 12th K’atun. The largest stones, located at the top of the pyramid, weigh between 12 and 15 tons.

The El Palenque palace contains certain features, both architectural and organizational, that are similar to the royal palaces built by much later Mesoamerican states. The El Palenque palace complex is the oldest multi-use palace excavated in the Valley of Oaxaca to date.

This research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Oaxaca, Mexico – vivid art, joyous festivals – and ant eggs fried in garlic The Guardian Oaxaca has some of the richest and strongest traditions in Mexico. If you go in July for the Guelaguetza festival, the whole city explodes. People from ...

Oaxaca, Mexico – vivid art, joyous festivals – and ant eggs fried in garlic The Guardian Oaxaca has some of the richest and strongest traditions in Mexico. If you go in July for the Guelaguetza festival, the whole city explodes. People from ...

Oaxaca has some of the richest and strongest traditions in Mexico. If you go in July for the Guelaguetza festival, the whole city explodes. People from the surrounding villages come in their traditional costumes and perform dances at the Cerro del Fortín, a huge amphitheatre on a hill overlooking the city. Guelaguetza means “offering” and refers to the tradition – still alive and strong in rural communities – where if there is an event, everyone contributes, so they have these amazing parties.

Oaxacans are very creative. The area is famous for textiles. The boutique Los Baules de Juana Cata works directly with local artisans and sells beautiful huipiles (embroidered tunics). They can cost up to $1,000 but they take six months to make. There are more crafts on display at the Museo Textil de Oaxaca. I also love the Centro Cultural San Pablo (san-pablo.mx), a beautiful conversion of a 16th-century convent that preserves indigenous traditions. One of Mexico’s most famous artists, Francisco Toledo, is a Oaxacan, who has lent his support to several cultural projects. He designed a stained-glass panel for the San Pablo centre.

Oaxaca’s famed creativity extends to the food scene. The state has the most diverse and the rarest varieties of corn in the entire country and a lot of restaurants focus on traditional recipes. At Itanoní, everything is made from corn. It does amazing tortillas rolled with a whole hoja santa leaf and filled with salsa and bean purée. I love La Teca, too, which is in the chef’s own home. She specialises in local dishes – the mole is delicious.

If you really want to eat like a local you have to try insects. Grasshoppers, agave worms and ants are all popular and sold everywhere, from street stalls to expensive restaurants. Chapulines (grasshoppers) have a very distinctive flavour. I love the small ones in guacamole; and the grasshopper quesadillas at La Popular restaurant are really tasty. Escamoles, or ants’ eggs, are a local speciality too – fried in garlic and butter.

Have a tejate for breakfast and you won’t be hungry for seven hours. It’s the drink of the ancients, made from corn, cacao, cinnamon and mamey fruit and served in a bowl. You’ll find it in any of the markets. The biggest and best-known market in town is 20 de Noviembre. There’s a long row of barbecue stands where you order meat by the kilo and they grill it for you. Then women come along and sell you tortillas or guacamole to go with it.

I live in Mexico City but travel to Oaxaca 12-13 times a year to visit mezcal producers. Unlike in the capital, everything in Oaxaca city is in walking distance. One of my favourite places is the Jardín Etnobotánico. All the plants are from Oaxaca and there are cactus and agave plants saved from development sites. Outside the city, the ancient Zapotec site of Mitla is a very special place that’s not well-known. It’s made up of rectangular buildings, not pyramids, and is famed for its intricate mosaics and stone carvings.

Mezcal is everything tequila is not. Tequila is industrialised. Jose Cuervo can produce up to 3 million litres a month. We sometimes have problems producing 1,500 litres a month because everything is done manually. The agave is still ground by millstones operated by horses. Tequila is made from one type of agave but mezcal uses 23 varieties, so there are many different flavours. Because it’s organic and the fermentation is natural, you can drink more of it without being intoxicated. One of the best places to try it is Los Amantes, the oldest mezcalaría in Oaxaca city. The owner is a famous artist who used to run one of the best clubs in Oaxaca. Spend a few hours there and test the theory that mezcal gets you high, not drunk.

• Santiago is the founder and ceo of artisan mezcal company Mezcal Amores

Bonito Atardecer en Zipolite Laúd Pacific Laúd Pacific

Bonito Atardecer en Zipolite

 

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Back To The Future Mix Part 3 by DJ-POWERMASTERMIX 2017

Back To The Future Mix Part 3

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Back To The Future Mix Part 4 by DJ-POWERMASTERMIX 2017

Back To The Future Mix Part 4

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Mexico leads world in tarantula species Jalisco spider expect says tarantula's worst enemy is ignorance

Mexico leads world in tarantula species

Jalisco spider expect says tarantula's worst enemy is ignorance

Mexico News Daily | Saturday, April 1, 2017

Mexico can now lay claim to the title for having the largest number of tarantula species in the world.

That’s what Rodrigo Orozco Torres says, and he should know: Orozco Torres is the founder and operator of the Tarántulas de México Wildlife Management Unit (UMA) in Guadalajara, Jalisco.

Despite scientific literature still recognizing Brazil as home to the world’s greatest diversity of tarantulas, Orozco Torres says Mexico now has the greatest number of different species in the world “and we haven’t even scratched the surface.”

“Three years ago we were in second place but now we are easily beating Brazil.”

Orozco Torres’ website, Tarántulas de México, lists 66 species in Mexico.

The primary function of the tarantulas UMA, established in 2002, is to breed and raise the arthropods.  It also educates and raises awareness about the hairy creatures, which Orozco Torres describes as timid animals that are harmless to humans.

“The tarantula’s worst enemy is ignorance,” he says. “The objective of the UMA is to reproduce Mexican tarantulas in captivity and also demystify everything that is erroneously believed about them.”

The spider specialist explained that by breeding Mexican tarantulas in captivity the demand for them as pets can be met and the ecological imbalance caused by their removal from their ecosystems can be avoided.

“I started breeding tarantulas with the aim of having 10,000-12,000 per year and I achieved that after five or six years,” Orozco Torres said.

Species raised in the center include several of the Brachypelma genus, which is native to Mexico. Tarantulas commonly known as the Mexican redknee, Mexican redleg and Mexican pink are all bred at the unit. The latter is native to Jalisco and is the country’s largest. All are popular in the pet trade.

There is also international demand for Mexican tarantulas. Swiss customs officials intercepted a man trying to smuggle 261 Mexican redknee tarantulas into the country at the Zurich airport in 2011.

In captivity a tarantula can live for up to 30 years. Sexual maturity is reached on average at eight years and a female can have up to 1,000 young per breeding cycle.

“However, only one of these will reach the adult stage,” Orozco Torres says. “A female that lives 30 years will have approximately eight or nine babies that grow into adults.”

He also noted that tarantulas have a very important role in the ecosystem as they eliminate insect plagues.  “Arthropods are the most important animals on earth because they are everywhere. We depend on them 100%.”

The first reintroduction of tarantulas to their natural habitat is planned for 2018.

The Guadalajara UMA forms part of the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources’ strategy for conservation of Mexico’s wildlife.

death-trap Pulmonia Keeping the vehicle on the road becomes life's work - See more at: http://mexiconewsdaily.com/opinion/more-adventures-with-death-trap-pulmonia/#sthash.EP7jI5Cs.dpuf

More adventures with death-trap Pulmonia

Keeping the vehicle on the road becomes life's work

By Bodie Kellogg

Mexico News Daily | Saturday, April 1, 2017

This is the third installment of My Mexican Death Trap Blues. My previous two columns describing the process of acquiring and painting a Pulmonia can be found in the archives of this fine publication.

My Captured Tourist Woman purchased her Pulmonia four years ago and delights in driving it between the times when multitudinous repairs are required to keep her death trap on the road.

Over the years I have heard the phrase “held together by nothing more than the smell of an oily rag.” However, it was four years ago when the full implication of that phrase descended on my troubled soul.

Had I not been a serious shade tree mechanic in my previous life, by now the Captured Tourist Woman would have abandoned the damn thing along the malecón with the keys and title sitting on the seat. But we do have a roomy cochera and I have plenty of tools, so I have made the constant resuscitation of her Pulmonia my life’s work.

Needless to say, she was gratified by my unselfish sacrifice to give up lawn bowling, tennis and badminton along with curling and snowboarding just so I could devote my remaining days to keeping her bucket of bolts rolling under its own power.

The mechanical trouble started on the second day of ownership, when my Captured Tourist Woman and I headed off on an evening drive. About 100 meters into our cruse she said, “This gear shifter doesn’t feel right.”

Being almost an expert on old Volkswagens, I reached over and gripped the shifter and stirred it around like a butter churner before it completely detached itself from the vehicle. With the complete shifting mechanism dangling from my hand, it dawned on me: this was the first chapter of a continuing saga which will suck up my free time like a black hole.

Fortunately, a new shifter mechanism was an easy bolt-on fix, and so far the easiest fix in the last four years.

One of my first attempts at bringing order to chaos was to make sense of the rat’s nest of electrical wires bound with miles of vinyl tape. One headlight was dim and the other flickered whenever I wiggled the light switch, and the total lack of fuses made me dreadfully nervous.

Then one day while trying to track a wire, it happened; it was like one of those scenes in Star Trek when the Klingons attack the Enterprise. I had sparks, smoke and noise like a pan of bacon frying.

Fortunately I was able to pull the battery cable before the fiberglass body ignited. After the smoke cleared and my heart rate descended to normal, I grabbed my cutters and removed what was left of every wire, bumper to bumper.

After a week of frenzied work, 40 meters of multicolored wire and a fuse block, she was back on the road again. I also took this opportunity to install an electronic horn with 12 animal sounds, 10 sirens and a loudspeaker the size of a microwave.

After running through all the sound options, the 150-decibel crowing rooster was by far the most impressive sonance of all, and it quickly became her signature refrain.

About two years after the questionable acquisition, I could no longer ignore the atrocious noise coming from the engine compartment; the exhaust system was rusted out and falling apart. The old system was cobbled together with ugly welds, heavy-gauge bailing wire and a few tubes that looked suspiciously like plumbing parts.

Since the tailpipe of a stock VW muffler would not clear the rear bumper, I needed to talk with a Pulmonia guru to find a proper solution. So I headed out to the fabled Mazatlán Pulmonia factory, a loose conglomeration of mechanics, welders and fiberglass fabricators spread over an acre of ground east of town.

As I pulled into an open area shared by the many stalls in this makeshift cooperative, I spotted a small group of Pulmonia drivers sharing a few Pacificos while standing around the carcass of a very dead Pulmonia. As I approached the group the conversation stopped as all heads turned; no one ever expects to see a gringo in this part of Mazatlán.

I elucidated to the group, in my clumsy Spanish, that I needed a muffler with a tailpipe that would clear the low bumper on a Pulmonia. I further explained it was my wife’s Pulmonia which needed the new exhaust system.

At the mention of a woman driving a Pulmonia, several laughed out loud, while the rest wore an incredulous smirk. Then an older man started into an elaborate dissertation with hand gestures and sound effects.

I listened as he described a beautiful blond woman piloting a golden chariot and when he suddenly mimicked a crowing rooster, I knew he was describing my woman’s flashy ride.

So now, wherever she goes, Pulmonia drivers will either honk or crow just to hear the return call of a 1,000-pound rooster echo through the streets of Mazatlán.

Bodie Kellogg describes himself as a very middle-aged man who lives full-time in Mazatlán with a captured tourist woman and the ghost of a half wild dog. If you wish to give him cold beer, large sacks of money or a piece of your mind, he can be reached at buscardero@yahoo.com.

The first of his Pulmonia stories can be read here and the second here.

The iconic Pulmonia even has its own monument in Mazatlán. -

Heven Zipolite Pinterest Heven Zipolite is just that. Complete bliss that leaves you definitely feeling like you are in heaven!

Heven Zipolite Pinterest Heven Zipolite is just that. Complete bliss that leaves you definitely feeling like you are in heaven!