Posted June 1, 2023
Over the past years the aquatic reptiles in Classic Maya art have sometimes been called caiman or called alligator. Fortunately, other archaeologists and iconographers correctly call the Maya reptiles a crocodile. The biology and iconography team at FLAAR Mesoamerica are preparing a PowerPoint presentation to show that it is usually crocodiles that are pictured in the pre-Columbian art of the Maya, Olmec, and Aztec. Any area near the Pacific Coast, such as Oaxaca, would have also had caiman available (in Mexico and in Guatemala). But the Classic Maya of the Maya Lowlands knew Crocodylus moreletii and those near the Caribbean would have also known Crocodylus acutus.
The purpose of the lecture is to assist epigraphers, iconographers, zooarchaeologists and archaeologists to see where each genus and each species was available to the Olmec, Maya, and other civilizations of Mesoamerica thousands of years ago. It is understandable that we professors who grew up in the USA think primarily about alligators; and as students we learned about the Nile crocodile and other crocodiles of Africa. So the in-person presentation on July 27, 2023 is to show the actual crocodiles of the Maya lowlands, and the caiman inland from the Pacific Ocean coast.
