Actun Tunichil Muknal

The ATM Cave trip was so amazing! I can't even describe it. AND I brilliantly tried to charge my camera during a power outage the night before so I don't even have any pictures to use instead! Yet--I'm hoping to steal someone else's. In the meantime, I turned to the marvelous powers of google image search, as should you if you'd like to see more images.

Anyways! Ten of us girls from the field school took the tour together, and it was fantastic. First, we drove about a half an hour off the road into the countryside. From there, it's about a 45 minute hike through the jungle (in which we walked through a river three times, fun!). We ate lunch at a permanent camp set up there from back when they were actually excavating in the cave. Try to imagine how awesome it would have been to be at THAT field school!
The entrance to the cave. You swim in!

So this cave is amazing for a lot of reasons. here are a few:

1)It was completely untouched between the last Mayan use in about 900 CE and the Cave's rediscovery in the 1970s. That's INCREDIBLE, especially when you consider the fact that there are no plants to disturb things in a cave. Also, since Belize is so full of archaeological features it's also full of looters, and the fact that they didn't get this cave (0r at least this deep into it) is really rare.

2) The Maya thought of caves as portals into Xibalba (shi-ball-ba), or the underworld where the gods of rain, death, and a lot of other stuff, lived. Thus, they used them as INCREDIBLY sacred sites. In fact, only elites were even allowed inside caves.

3) This particular cave was used during the collapse, which means that the use of this cave was getting more and more intense and desperate. See, we know that there was a very bad drought in the early 900s (during the Maya collapse) that would have caused huge problems. Thus, the use of the cave, to appeal the gods of rain and death, was intense.

4) ATM is HUGE. For most of our walk, the ceiling was easily 100 feet above me. Also, it goes 3.5 miles into the mountain. The tour only took us 1/4 of a mile in, and that was still a ton of stuff.

5) The archaeologists who excavated the cave decided to actually not remove any of the artifacts--everything is in it's original location. As you can probably guess, most of the artifacts have been covered in calcification overtime, but they are still very visible. So basically, ATM is the most amazing, natural museum on earth.

One of many human sacrifice remains in the cave. This particular one is a young woman. There are also young men and boys, as well as some infants. The age range of these sacrifices indicates the desperation of the Maya at this time. These sacrifices also speak to the incredible terrifying sacredness of this site to the ancient Maya.

6) Water flows through the entire thing. You have to swim to get into it, and walk through water that's usually at least up to your knees almost the entire way. SOOOO cool.

We ended up spending about six hours in the cave (longer than we were supposed to--our guide was super cool) and by the time we got out, around 8:30 pm, it was night-time. So then, on top of our awesome cave tour, we got to hike through the jungle and ford rivers at night! Thank goodness it's always so hot here because we were all in swimsuits and soaking wet. It was AMAZING. I cannot even express.

I'll try to get some pictures of our actual group later, but that's it for now.
Love you!
Elise