12.4 Santa Ana and White Horse Hill
Santa Ana and White Pony Hill
It being a Sunday and our day off, we decided to take another excursion. We assembled some water and candy bars, in case I was another exhausting day?s walk, and took off.
Our first destination was the little village of Santa Ana Shan Dany. It is in the eastern branch of the valley, not too far from Teotitlan de Valle where all the rugs are made. In fact, Santa Ana is also a weaving town.
We went to see the museum, which was the first one of its type in the area. For a change we had no trouble finding the place. It is near a main road, with signs pointing the way. It was a little puebla and to my surprise there was a hot and heavy basketball game going on at the basketball court. This is the second game we have ever seen, though every town seems to have said court.
It was ten pesos to enter. There was a guard there, and he somewhat nervously followed us about at first. Suzanne wandered, snapping photos, and I slowly worked my way around, reading everything and being quite methodical. When I started asking questions the guy was very friendly. As usual, at the end of the whole thing I asked and learned his name was Delfino.
It is essentially one large room. One end of it is dedicated to artifacts from the area. Some are the usual village-era, being simple fired figurines. More spectacular were the artifacts that were uncovered from a grave and tomb discovered when the court yard was being built. The materials showed the grave to be from the Monte Alban I period, or that is, the period when cities were first being built.
The first item, right inside the door, is a spectacular carvingof two men doing something, probably a ritual. On the top center is a sign which is said to be of the ?religion of the Zapotecs.? It looks like the ubiquitous ?sky mouth,? which is probably the Milky Way
There were also thee of the fairly common Cosijo funerary urns, in really good shape.
The grave had pottery items. The large plate as broken, similar to the way the California Indians (and many other people) ?kill? the gods when they put them into the grave. Most interesting there were a ladle placed inside a bowl. When I looked at it the first thought I had (and Suzanne too) as, ?Wow, just like a linga and yoni!? In fact, the text pointed out that it was a combination of male and female symbols. The museum also had several nice carved rocks too, like this one of Death. There was another rock too, but it was hard to see. Nonetheless, it was also reproduced as this woven tapeta. That is Delfino and I holding it up.
Another great display was of the dance that the village performs every three years. It is a reenactment of Cortez and the Aztecs. People, mostly kids judging from the photo, dress up as Spaniards and Aztecs and do the dance. Delfino pointed proudly to one photo which as of his mother when she was a little girl. I was sad to learn we had missed the dance the past January.
Another part was about the village?s contribution to the Revolution. A battle was fought near the village. They had a diorama of the area showing it.
Another part was about the textile industry of the village. Pictures, displays on how they make the wool and dye it, and so on. I pointed to one picture and commented that it looked like Japanese food. Delfino really laughed hard at that, and later even brought it up again.
Other displays were of the local crafts and miscellaneous things, like the cages used to capture birds, a purse made from an armadillo, etc.
At the end, Delfino told he had been in the U.S. for either five or fifteen years, or five years when he was fifteen. All in all, another really fine little museum.
The White Pony hill is a little plateau that is next to the main road, at the turn off to go to Yagul. It looks to be limestone, and has many caves that are visible from the road. It is said to have been a place where some of the earliest people lived in Oaxaca, even before the village stage. One of the caves is fenced off and has a wall across a cave mouth and is visible from the road.
It has a distinctive pictoglyph. I think that it is a version of the Sky Mouth on the left, and of the Tree of Life on the right. I have not seen any statements of how old the glyph is.
We puled off the main road and bumped along a dirt road to get close. On the way in we saw a set of steps cut into the front of the rock, too, apparently leading up to a large cross at the top. We parked on the narrow trail and between the hill and a large corn field.
But first we got as close as we could to the cave mouth with the wall. The fence in front was nicely built, but the gateway was entirely jury rigged with an old metal sign as a door, held closed by twisted, rusty wire. We went through, and saw stairs chipped into the rock face. They looked new, though. Most of the rock is covered with multicolored lichen, but there was none on the steps.
I went up first, and saw that the half wall across the front was adobe, and apparently pretty new. The inside o the cave was blackened by old fires. In one part was a sort of table, also adobe. In the other corner were holes in the rock, like those where I spoke to La Rana at Yagul. They had had fires in them, being all black. And some modern litter, mostly plastic water bottles.
It looked to me like it had been a place for people to live, and if they had been there a millennia earlier, they had also been here not too long ago. Another cave nearby had about three feet deep of old corn stalks.
I was a little disappointed, but we set off to explore around the area. We ascended, and found some more recent steps. There was a large mouthed gully that we went into, and we saw that it had been terraced with a series of stone walls to catch the water. There were fields, but we could not tell what was planted.
We got all the way to the top and there we saw a horse, a burro and, a bit farther away, an adobe house. We realized we were on someone?s property and so departed the way we had come.
Then we went around to explore the other steps we?d seen. These were much older, with lichen growing on them. They were irregular, using as much natural formation as possible, and even had some handholds in difficult places. We got to the top, and there were fields of maguey, several different ages. Also, the same kind of successive walls to catch water.
And pottery shards. Lots, and lots, and lots of pottery shards of all colors and sizes. It must have been the midden with plenty of years of trash thrown there. Red, gray, white and inscribed ware. Suzanne even found a snail shell of the type used to make necklaces, though old or new, we couldn?t tell. There was so much broken pottery that I got bored and wandered around.
There was one wall which had a couple of turret-like structures. These too were old, judging from the lichen. It grew on the outsides, where the rock had gotten wet, but on the inside there was not any. I can?t imagine what they had been.
We wound our way down from the top, passing by the cross which we had been above. Near to it was what looked like a rock shaped, and then with other stones cemented on to make a large rectangular shape. ?Like an alter,? I said. It faced the cross.
Then, down the stairs, to the car, and back to Oaxaca. It was late afternoon so we went to where we can get some tasty barbecued chicken on Sunday. The woman was happy to see us again and we were happy to order a whole chicken and eat most of it.
All in all, a fine and easy day of adventuring. And we were never lost!