El Salvador - Gimme some skin!

September 13

Hello everyone!

I’m quite lucky that my job allows me to visit and appreciate some pretty interesting places. A school trip this week gave me a better insight into life for people in El Salvador before the time of the Spanish conquest.

Being the model professional on a school trip...

That art piece actually has some quite graphic elements in the top row

We were taking our students to MUNA - the Museo Nacional de Antropología - as part of our dive into ancient civilisations. The museum, also called the Dr David J. Guzman Museum, is a small two-story building in the middle of the city which packs in a lot of artefacts and information within its walls.

Mayan art pieces found in El Salvador

Volcanoes have long been an
important part of the region's history

Traffic means that the 6 kilometre trip can take quite a long time (it took us 35 minutes to get back as a road had been closed). That would be one excuse I could offer for not coming to this museum since arriving. The other would be that some of the exhibitions are only in Spanish.

Other museums include ones based around art, the military...and railways...

Animals are often depicted on retrieved artefacts

Going with students who are trying to improve their English meant that I had many little translators on hand to help me learn about life before the Spanish dominance, which started  in the 1520s. The region was home to tribes such as the Olmecs (from around 2000 BCE), the Mayans (from around 1500 BCE), the Toltec (from around 900 CE) and the Pipiles (from around 1100 CE).

One The museum had four people explaining in different
areas. Completely in Spanish, so I tuned out.

One of the locations is Cihuatan, which I visited in April

Many artefacts have been found to help us learn about life in these eras. A lot of this actually revolved around death. For Mesoamericans, the idea seems to have been that death was the continuation of other existential phases for a person. The example below shows a large urn, into which people were ‘deposited’ with some offerings to the gods.

Priests were deeply respected

An alternative coffin?

The celebration of death looks like it included people wearing masks (which are a little reminiscent of those used in V for Vendetta) and jade being buried with members of the elite.

Just imagine it being white...

Green jade was associated with Mayan rulers, whereas
other civilisations seemed to prefer blue jade

Sacrifice was common. The pictures below show the process, which included priests wearing the skin of those who were being killed. I was also told that warriors might wear the skin of those they had killed. Seems to be a common trait, and one which I’m glad hasn’t continued into the twenty-first century.

Step-by-step murder

The little dots on this man's shirt? Flakes of skin, of course.
This is only one of four of these statues discovered globally.

The museum does showcase other aspects of life on this land mass not explicitly about death and murder, including up to the present day. It details aspects of culture such as food, clothing and trade. It was interesting to learn that currencies in pre-Hispanic times included cocoa seeds and sea shells. And skins, of course. All about skin, remember.

The different export products of the 14
departments which constitute the country 

Maize - can't escape it here!

Lots of life in previous eras coalesced around the market, which was called the tianguis. Some of the markets in downtown San Salvador still seem like the chaos depicted below.

An art depiction of a market, complete with upside-down bird

How to kick off your Saturday morning

A relatively whistle-stop tour of El Salvador’s main anthropological museum has shown me different aspects of life here thousands of years ago. I’d like to return at some point to spend a bit less time directing kids to the toilet and more time allowing my mind to wander about living in the time of the Mayans and more. Not that I’d sacrifice my skin for it…

Amazing to think what has happened in our world since this was created

The modern colours, for Independence Day on Friday

Love you all,

Matt