Posted November 28, 2022
On Wednesday, 30 November, 6:30 pm (Guatemalan time), you can attend an in-person, live presentation by Nicholas Hellmuth on JAGUARS (and Pumas) in Classic Maya art.
The information is on the web site of the Museo Popol Vuh: https://popolvuh.ufm.edu/actividad/master-class-cuanto-conoces-sobre-el-jaguar-en-el-arte-maya/
If the zoo in your city, or a natural history museum in your city, art museum or social club would like this lecture in English, by Zoom, this can be arranged. Hellmuth is a graduate of Harvard, MA at Brown, and was Post Graduate Visiting Research Fellow at Yale for many years (over a decade). So any of these alumni associations would also be a good venue. Dr Hellmuth has lectured around the world for many decades: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, UCLA, Berkeley and universities and museums across USA, Canada, Mexico and Guatemala.
While a student intern at Tikal, in 1965, Nicholas uncovered the Tomb of the Jade Jaguar, the royal crypt of the son or brother of the King who was under Temple I. The burial found by Hellmuth was across the Great Plaza under Structure 5D-73. This was his Harvard undergraduate thesis. Then decades of iconographic study resulted in learning more about the role of jaguars in Classic Maya art. Yes, the ancient Maya actually had jaguars in their palaces (as did the Aztec emperor and most imperial areas around the world had ferocious felines as “palace pets”).
