The Las Cotorras chasm is surprising not only for its size but also for its great contribution of archaeological materials.
The Las Cotorras chasm is surprising not only for its size but also for its great contribution of archaeological materials.
More than 80 kilometers of canyon, a majestically enigmatic long limestone amphitheater, and a place partially inhabited by beings with specific qualities and incomparably beautiful, are the scene of an investigation that at the same time is an adventure where alpine dangers and discoveries are mixed. archaeological.
What you will read in these pages does not become a diary of the many trips made to the Las Cotorras chasm, but the chronicle of a long exploration that brings to light unpublished testimonies of archaic civilizations, which open several questions in history From chiapas.
Deep in the chasm, its bustling inhabitants eat up the silence: hundreds of parrots that play with spiral flights to ascend to the surface. This huge cavity is an absolutely beautiful place that gives the emotion of an archaeological discovery.
IN SEARCH OF THE DRAWERS OF THE PAST
In the years I spent climbing the walls of the La Venta river canyon, I had the great opportunity to find dozens of cave paintings that raise many questions about both their meaning and their authors.
Why did they work so hard in the design of these paintings made on the high walls, risking their lives? What do they mean? What secrets do the canyon and its caves keep? What messages should we interpret and what ideas from these men of the past should we unravel?
The canyon walls have been explored, so far, only partially, and I have already discovered about 30 paintings whose execution must have been linked to ritual visitation of the caves, many of which remain unexplored.
The paintings, almost all red, present anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and geometric figures: signs, circles, semicircles, squares, lines and many other subjects. It is very likely that they have been made in different periods throughout the pre-Hispanic history of the canyon, and this could be the cause of the stylistic differences that they show: some are apparently abrupt and simple, while others look better elaborated.
Many times, when I climb, I imagine that the man of the past reflected his thought in the drawings and that there resides a message that until now we have not been able to understand. But before interpreting, my task is to catalog, and that is why I take photos of all the paintings that I find.
The number of drawings leads me to think about the number of individuals who worked on this, since painting at this height and with such profusion must have required a considerable number of people, perhaps several generations over many centuries. However, the most important thing to analyze would be the motive that drove people to paint at this point. There must have been a cause of such a nature that it was worth risking one's life in carrying out works with that degree of difficulty.
One of the best examples of the complexity of the paintings and the difficulties involved in their execution is the case of this chasm in Las Cotorras. Of all the chasms found in the municipality of Ocozocoautla, Las Cotorras is the most surprising, not only for its size but also for its great contribution to the archaeological heritage. The chasm, a geological formation due to the intense karst typical of the area, has a diameter of 160 meters and a depth of 140. The walls show cave paintings that must have been made with ancient alpinistic methods, since the descent takes us further and further away from the wall due to the presence of the overhead, so it was necessary to descend and then climb to capture the message there.
Among the paintings of the Las Cotorras chasm there are figures of various types; circular, spiral-shaped drawings and human silhouettes frequently appear. A group of three figures seems extremely interesting to me; On the left is an image of a face in profile, which I have baptized as "The Emperor", with a large headdress or decorative element on the back and behind the head. From the individual's mouth comes a sign that appears to be a word virgula, a sign used to indicate the emission of a sound, and one more from the upper frontal part that seems to have an analogous thought-word function. To his right is "The Dancer", from whose heart-shaped head lines emerge (two on each side) that may represent a feather headdress, very similar to what can be seen in the incised figure on the floor of one of the the terraces of the cave called El Castillo. The group of figures has the simplified image of another man, the "Warrior" or "Hunter", who has a weapon in his right hand and another element in his left, which could be a shield or the object of his hunt. This pictogram of three conjugated elements was surely made at the same moment and by the same hand, since the color is exactly the same in the three figures and it is understood that they express a single message.
Although the interpretation of cave paintings is difficult and complicated, it seems to me that the drawings of the Las Cotorras chasm may be related to astronomical concepts. Although modern man does not observe the sky and is losing his consciousness, surely in the past the same did not happen.
For ancient farming peoples, observing the sky was a daily activity, linked both to work in the fields and to spiritual activities. The plumed figure emitting a sound, for example, is directly related to the position of the sun at the equinoxes.
During my long stays inside the chasm, I realized that from this circular abyss the months can be observed by the displacement of the sun throughout the year, taking as reference the edges of the wall, and possibly the different positions of the sun, were marked with figures that indicated the activities of each season. Other astronomical events could be related to other figures, such as circles, which can be interpreted as representations of the sun. In another painting we clearly see the silhouette of the last quarter moon, next to a bright object with a tail, and to its lower right we find one more moon, apparently eclipsing the sun.
The example of the Las Cotorras chasm is just one of many that show that the La Venta river canyon requires a methodical investigation, where many other disciplines are added to archeology. One of them, although it may seem strange, is mountaineering, a faculty that our ancestors must have known much better than we think.
When I climb high walls up to 350 m in verticality or overhanging walls, I cannot imagine what were the technical scope of the ancestors to reach these caves, paint and deposit, for whatever purpose, objects or corpses.
If the ancients climbed and risked their lives for sacred purposes, we do so for purposes of understanding. The walls of the La Venta river canyon, the great abysses and the caves are a legacy of knowledge; There is a treasure trove of prehistoric and pre-Hispanic secrets there, and all the sites are full of data that continue to raise thousands of questions. We still cannot answer these questions, but what we do know is that our rock art represents a wealth of the past and that the paintings are traces of our history.
Source: Unknown Mexico No. 276 / February 2000
