Exclusive Pictures: Maya Murals Found in Family Kitchen

Portal to Maya Overworld

Photograph courtesy Robert Slabonski

Accompanied by a flutist (far left), a Spanish-garbed drummer plays for a figure in a Maya headdress in the Ramírez's main living area, used as a kitchen and living-dining area.

Painted on the house's oldest plaster layer, the images were created after the 16th-century Spanish conquest of Guatemala, said Źrałka, of Poland's  Jagiellonian University. The home is at least 300 years old, he added, and the style recalls 17th- to 18th-century illustrated texts from the region.

The ancient Maya were a loosely aligned civilization in what’s now Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Advanced cities in southern Guatemala mysteriously collapsed around A.D. 900, but more northerly, isolated settlements, such as what's now Chajul, soldiered on—though its isolation could save it from the conquistadores for only so long.

(Read about the rise and fall of the Maya in National Geographic magazine.)

As for the enduring Maya remnants on the Ramírezes' walls, Boston University's Saturno said the best way to uncover more about them is to search the history of the house itself.

"There's 500 years of history in this town," he said. "See whose [house] it was. It's unlikely to be just Joe Schmo's house—it's probably an important person's house."

(Video: New Sun God Temple Reveals Maya Beliefs.)

Published September 7, 2012

Maya Holdout

Photograph courtesy Robert Slabonski

Peopled by modern-day Maya, Chajul is often shrouded by mist, Źrałka said.

Most of its population lives in poverty and many are suspicious of outsiders—as he and his colleagues discovered when they attempted, unsuccessfully, to visit other homes said to hold Maya murals. "I think they were afraid of us," he said.

(Related: "Unprecedented Maya Mural Found, Contradicts 2012 'Doomsday' Myth.")

Published September 7, 2012

Multipurpose Room

Photograph by Robert Slabonski

Just to the left of the Ramírez family's wood stove, a mural of ancient incense-burning vessels warms the wall, Źrałka said.

As a whole, the murals "probably represent the so-called conquest dance," Boston University's Saturno said. Performed even today by some Maya, the ritual reenacts the Spanish invasion and Maya conversion to Christianity.

In this context, Saturno said, the mixed-up garb isn't that surprising—they may have been costumes to mark the occasion.

(Also see "End of World in 2012? Maya 'Doomsday' Calendar Explained.")

Published September 7, 2012

Heart in Hand?

Photograph courtesy Robert Slabonski

"From the waist up" these figures are "typical Maya," with long capes, Źrałka said. "But they also have Spanish clothes"—pants and European-style shoes, for example.

The figure on the left may be holding a human heart, aorta protruding, Źrałka said.

Saturno isn't so sure. "It looks to me like the dancers hold masks in their hands, a common practice in highland dances."

(Also see "'Dramatic' New Maya Temple Found, Covered With Giant Faces.")

Published September 7, 2012

Smoke-Filled Room

Photograph courtesy Robert Slabonski

Life proceeds much as it has for hundreds of years in Chajul, where villagers dress traditionally and prefer their indigenous tongue to Spanish. In one of the Ramírezes' neighbors' kitchens, women at an engagement party prepare tamales, beans, and eggs—good-luck symbols for the young couple.

(See National Geographic pictures of Maya ruins and artifacts.)

Published September 7, 2012

For Posterity

Photograph courtesy Robert Slabonski

Źrałka's colleague Katarzyna Radnicka documents the murals at the home of Lucas Asicona Ramírez.

Ramírez hopes to convert the room into a small museum but lacks funds, Źrałka said. Meanwhile, "people live and cook in the same room where the murals are," and it shows. In 2008 the now yellowed background was completely white, he said.

It would've been best if Ramírez had stopped scraping as soon as he noticed the Maya murals, Saturno said. Given the situation, though, he argued for a balance of preservation and respect for property rights.

"It'd be great if they weren't covering it with smoke, but at the same time, this is probably not the first time there has been smoke in this room," Saturno said. "You can't go crazy in terms of, 'This needs to be hermetically sealed, and these people need to be out of here.'"

Published September 7, 2012

More Maya Pictures: Unprecedented Mural Found

Photograph by Tyrone Turner, National Geographic

Published September 7, 2012