The Sitting Men of Mezcala
Mezcala! That is not a word that evokes thoughts of an ancient culture in Mexico. Most people have never heard the word much less the place but it was important four thousand years ago because the people there started the art revolution that eventually grew into the religious/ceremonial crafts of the famous Olmec, Mayan and Aztec Empires.
Mezcala is a small town in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. This is a rugged place to live with almost unforgiving terrain and even today is sparsely populated. But about 2,000 BC some ancient people in that remote location decided to take some hard stone and create art. Why these ancients chose stone over pottery that was used so extensively after that time, is not known. Maybe this was a pre-ceramic time in that region. Today we have no information as to just who these people were, what language they spoke or even what they called themselves, so now we just call them Mezcala for the ancient village in Guerrero, Mexico.
The Mezcala people made many stone effigies including standing humans, birds and animals but among the most intriguing are the statues of sitting men. It is now theorized that effigies of seated persons indicated kings or rulers during pre-Hispanic times in Mexico and Central America. These portable stone carvings were made as reasonable portraits of humans and were rarely stylized in the form of man/god/zoomorphic beings, as was done by the later cultures. The stones used by the Mezcala craftsmen included calcite, andesite, diorite, serpentine and meta-quartz diorite. Most of these are very hard minerals and the Mezcala lapidarists would have slowly pecked at a rock with another hard stone until the desired shape was acquired and then polished the art with water or animal fat and fine sand. This would have been a very physical and time consuming task that few today would endure.
Based on the little archaeological research that has been done in the region, it is now believed that these were very religious people who were devoted to multiple gods as well as being major proponents of ancestor worship. They apparently believed the world was replete with many types of spirits and the manufacture of the stone effigies would assist to fend off the evil super naturals and appease the good deities. Many of these stone carvings were deposited as grave furnishings in the tombs of probable family members.
The sitting men effigies were made in sizes that ranged from a few inches to over twenty inches tall. Most show the human in a sitting position with the legs together and the arms down the sides and bent at the elbows against the legs. If feet are carved, they are simple and without toes. The shoulders are normally small and rounded and the head usually has simulated hair that is shoulder length in the back with a pompadour style or bangs at the forehead. The forehead, itself, may be small and simple or large and heavily browed. The nose is usually quite large, the mouth is rudimentary and the chin is strong. The eyes are normally deep and possibly held white cut shell or freshwater mussel pearls in ancient times. The backs of these figures are usually slightly rounded or flat but a few show symbolic backbones. Most of the sitting men effigies have their heads tilted upward, perhaps in prayer to a divine being. It has been estimated that there have been over fifty thousand stone effigies found that were made by this ancient culture. Most of these were found in the 1890’s to the 1950’s by the local inhabitants of the region and sold worldwide. These modern natives have shown a definite reluctance to assist archaeological scientists with research because they do not want to give up choice artifact locations. So we may never have good reliable information about these ancient people of Guerrero. Of the supposed fifty thousand effigies, another guess is that maybe one or two per cent of them are of the type discussed in this paper. If they were made to represent rulers, the supposition would be that they would indeed be few in number. But whether they number 500 or 1,000 or even 5,000, they are still unique and a treat to hold and admire – these rare and beautiful Sitting Men of Mezcala.
REFERENCES:
Gay, Carlo & Frances Pratt
MEZCALA: ANCIENT STONE SCULPTURE
FROM GUERRERO, MEXICO
1992
Griffin, Gillett
“Xochipala: The Earliest Great Art Style in Mexico”,
PROCEEDINGS OF THE
AMERICAN PHILISOPHICAL SOCIETY, Vol. 116, No. 4
1972
Stanton, Tom
“Mezcala”, PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES, Vol. XVII, No. 3
1998