The nature of Mexico and Central America is diverse and capricious. Soviet historian V. M. Polevoy wrote about her: "A jungle full of suffocating vapors, rocky highlands scorched by the sun, where heat scorches during the day, and water freezes at night … Terrible volcanoes, frequent destructive earthquakes, predatory animals and poisonous snakes - this was the environment in which the Indians were forced to live" …
In addition, they had to constantly deal with the consequences of droughts, floods, volcanic eruptions and devastating epidemics. This, of course, is reflected in their myths and traditions. Unfortunately, very few of them have survived to this day.
One of the myths of the mountainous Maya tells that the creators of the world were the goddess Tepev and the gods Kukumats and Huracan. They created land, mountains, valleys, plants and animals. Then they tried to make a man out of clay, but their creation blurred, could not move at all, and the angry gods destroyed him.
After the clay, the gods made people out of wood, but they turned out to be disrespectful and disobedient. Then the angry gods caused a flood, as a result of which almost all of humanity died, and the surviving people turned into little monkeys. Only gradually did they acquire reason and speech.
Mexican myths tell that after the flood only one man survived by the name of Cox-Cox (others call him Teozipaktli), and one woman named Xochiquetzal. They escaped in a canoe and subsequently landed on Mount Colguacai, where they had many children. All the children were dumb from birth, but a dove flew in from a tall tree and endowed them with languages so different that they could not understand each other at all.
The legends of the Indians about floods (earthquakes, etc.) are a kind of historical memory of real natural disasters that befell individual tribes and entire peoples of pre-Columbian America at different times.
In recent decades, archaeological excavations in El Salvador have been carried out in the Rio Paz valley. Here is Chalchuapa - one of the oldest (and largest!) Monuments of the ancient Maya history. In ancient times, Chalchuapa was a large and prosperous settlement of the Mayan hill tribes, their political, ritual and craft-trade center. However, now in this area there are only heaps of household waste, a huge accumulation of swollen hills of earth and clay and fragments of bizarre stone sculptures.
Excavations in the center of Chalchuapa have uncovered the remains of majestic stone temples that stood on the flat tops of stepped pyramids. Rows of steles and altars with relief images and hieroglyphs were found at their feet. A large territory, a fairly significant number of inhabitants, monumental stone architecture of buildings, developed art, writing and calendar - all brought Chalchuap closer to the status of a true city. And it was at the end of the first millennium BC. e., long before the appearance of Mayan cities in other areas.
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The Mayan hill tribes seemed to be about to enter the era of statehood and civilization. But in the southeast of the country, a terrible natural disaster suddenly struck - a volcanic eruption.
Chalchuapa died suddenly. Powerful layers of white volcanic ash, like a shroud, enveloped the houses and sanctuaries. Many pyramids and temples remained unfinished. Residents hastily left their homes, fleeing the raging elements. The consequences of this terrible catastrophe made themselves felt for a very long time, life in Chalchuapa resumed only after several centuries.
Geologists from Germany and the United States have established that the tragedy in Chalchuapu was brought by the Ilopango volcano, located 75 kilometers east of the city. Its eruption proceeded in three stages. At first, rather large particles of pumice fell out of the clouds. They covered the entire space with a thin layer (up to two centimeters) within a radius of fifty kilometers, and at the foot of the volcano itself, the layer height reached forty centimeters.
Then ash began to fall intensively, and powerful streams of hot gases, ash and pumice rolled along the mountain slopes. They burned crops on their way, buried forests and entire villages. Even now, on an area with a radius of up to 77 kilometers, a layer of ash up to twenty centimeters thick is visible.
Completed the devastation of the territory adjacent to the volcano, new emissions of gases and ash. The thickness of white ash deposits on average reached one and a half meters, and near a volcano from nine to fifty meters!
In one day, the land with lush tropical vegetation turned into a white desert. However, the inhabitants of Chalchuapa did not suffer the fate of Pompeii. Many of them were probably saved, but about thirty thousand people lost all their livelihood in an instant. After such a terrible disaster, how could a Mayan farmer cultivate his fields if there was a layer of ash twenty centimeters thick all around? And what kind of tools did he have - stone axes and a stick with a pointed end?
To avoid the inevitable death of starvation, the Mayans were simply forced to leave their homes and seek salvation in the neighboring areas - not injured. Part of the mountainous Maya moved to the north, and it was from these times in the low-lying forest zone (for example, in Guatemala) that surprising changes suddenly occurred. Scientists suggest that it was this migration that accelerated the formation of the classical Mayan civilization.
But gradually life returned to the lands devastated by the Ilopango eruption. The rains eroded and re-deposited the white ash, and the soil fertility was gradually restored. The first timid vegetation made its way through the volcanic ash from the ground - mosses, grasses, bushes and stunted trees.
But people settled here only by the fifth century AD. These were the Maya Chorty groups. They first settled in the Serena, the Zapotitan Valley (western El Salvador), near Chalchuapa, and began to grow in their fields mainly maize and beans. But Serenus just suffered the fate of Pompey.
So far, archaeologists have unearthed only one large multi-room house and a "working platform" located nearby. Both buildings were built of wood and baked clay. The pillars carried a high roof of palm leaves. Many earthenware vessels were found in the house, in one even bean beans survived.
Various stone tools with traces of processing were found on the "working platform". Scientists suggest that this could be a workshop for the manufacture of tools and weapons.
Near the house, researchers discovered a small field cultivated and sown with maize in antiquity. Surprisingly, it is perfectly preserved. The maize was planted in parallel beds 50 centimeters apart. The sprouts have already reached a height of five to ten centimeters.
In the 6th century AD, the volcano Laguna-Caldera erupted. Judging by the size of the maize sprouts, scientists assumed that the earthquake occurred either in May or early June. A relatively small area of several square kilometers was affected. However, the village of Seren was just in the path of the deadly gas and ash stream and was instantly destroyed by it. Most likely not a single inhabitant managed to escape. The disaster took people by surprise. They were, as it were, trapped in their homes by masses of ash and mud and suffocated from the hot gases.
The very forces of nature that destroyed the village have preserved this truly unique (archaeologically) object to this day. In one of the rooms of the excavated house, a pile of human skeletons - men, women and children - lay in disarray. People were living in this large house when a dense wall of volcanic ash overtook them. She covered and "preserved" these mournful remains, the half-burnt structure, and the maize field.
HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS. N. A. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev
