response to pokatok

i've actually been to the ruins of one of the pokatok courts - on our honeymoon, my wife and i went to the ruins of Coba, home of the tallest Mayan pyramid still in existence. (chichen itza is the one most people think of when they think myans) but anyways, i wanted to post a few pics and a video, and couldn't really do that in the comments box.


the real response i have to crystal's post is another thing we learned on the same tour - we also visited Tulum, a Mayan port city, and there was a building there, with small dark corridors near ground level leading back to little rooms, big enough for one person. these were the Myan equivalent of the maternity ward. our tour guide told us that the mayans viewed childbirth as a battle that the mother had to fight between life and death. he said that they also believed that this battle had to be fought alone if the mother and child were to be truly victorious - so, armed with nothing but advice from her mother and a rope to wrap around her stomach to provide a little extra push, a pregnant mother would enter one of these rooms when her water broke, and either emerge alive with a newborn baby, or lose the battle. i thought this might be an interesting tidbit of folk knowledge, since Dr.Petersen mentioned midwifery, but to my knowledge no one has done a post on that.

NOTE: so after writing this, i looked up the Wikipedia article on Mayan midwifery, which seems to explain an experience much different than described by my tour guide. the difference may be that the guide was talking about pre-conquistador traditions, whereas the Wikipedia article seems to focus on post-conquistador and modern traditions