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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Noh Mul no more

...two days to smash an­cient Maya tem­ple

by

20130519

In just two days this month, a con­struc­tion com­pa­ny de­stroyed a Maya tem­ple, part of the an­cient city of Noh Mul, near the Mex­i­can bor­der in north­ern Be­lize. A Chan­nel Sev­en TV crew from Be­lize City which went to in­ves­ti­gate was chased off by an an­gry man with a cut­lass.

The roads in near­by Dou­glas Vil­lage need­ed paving. The tem­ple was the near­est and hand­i­est source of ag­gre­gate.

Noh Mul is a sprawl­ing com­plex­of per­haps 80 an­cient ru­ins, scat­tered over 30 square kilo­me­tres. The tem­ple was more than two thou­sand years old, and close to 70 feet high � one of the tallest struc­tures in north­ern Be­lize.

It took per­haps a thou­sand years to build. Blocks of lime­stone were cut by hand, us­ing just stone tools. They were car­ried to the site as head loads. Re­al work. Knock­ing them down with bull­doz­er and ex­ca­va­tor was an eas­i­er game.

The road con­trac­tor for Dou­glas Vil­lage was D-Mar Con­struc­tion. It is owned by Den­ny Gri­jal­va, a well-con­nect­ed po­lit­i­cal hope­ful, who plans to win the near­by par­lia­men­tary seat of Or­ange Walk Cen­tral for the gov­ern­ing Unit­ed De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty at the next elec­tion.

He says the vil­lage chair­man re­ject­ed ag­gre­gate from an­oth­er source. He says a lo­cal landown­er gave per­mis­sion to ex­ca­vate. He says ma­te­r­i­al has been tak­en from the tem­ple mound for a decade or more. He talks of the loss of the tem­ple as an "un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent."

The deputy prime min­is­ter Gas­par Ve­ga rep­re­sents Or­ange Walk North, which in­cludes Dou­glas Vil­lage and Noh Mul. He says � now � that he is "out­raged by the wan­ton de­struc­tion." He wants a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and pros­e­cu­tion of the con­trac­tor. As nat­ur­al re­sources min­is­ter, he says his staff did not is­sue a min­ing per­mit.

The Noh Mul tem­ple was cov­ered by for­est, but well-known as an ar­chae­o­log­i­cal site. There have been ex­ca­va­tions near­by by Be­lizean and US ar­chae­ol­o­gists. Lo­cal peo­ple well know that their low, wood­ed hills con­ceal his­toric Mayan ru­ins.

There has been dam­age here be­fore. In 1940, a struc­ture with three bur­ial cham­bers was mined to pro­vide stone for the three-mile road from Dou­glas Vil­lage to San Pablo. An­oth­er site was all but de­stroyed in 1998.

Says Nor­man Ham­mond, Emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of Ar­chae­ol­o­gy at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty "bull­doz­ing Maya mounds is an en­dem­ic prob­lem in Be­lize ... but this sounds like the biggest yet."

Dr Jaime Awe, di­rec­tor of Be­lize's In­sti­tute of Ar­chae­ol­o­gy , says the de­struc­tion "is de­plorable, it is un­for­give­able." The hurt is per­son­al: "the worst set of blows I have felt, philo­soph­i­cal­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly."

Says the In­sti­tute's Dr Al­lan Moore "Thou shalt not touch the mounds that are on your prop­er­ty. It is for the peo­ple and gov­ern­ment of Be­lize."

Dam­ag­ing an­cient mon­u­ments is il­le­gal in Be­lize; but the leg­is­la­tion is it­self an­ti­quat­ed, based on an An­cient Mon­u­ment and An­tiq­ui­ties Or­di­nance draft­ed in the 1950s. Courts can im­pose a fine of TT$32,000 � pock­et change for even a small con­struc­tion project. Be­yond that, there's prison for up to five years, but no­body gets locked up.

Dr Awe can re­call on­ly one suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion; that was in 1978. Four oth­er cas­es were set­tled out of court.

The out­look for the re­main­ing core of the tem­ple is dire. Says Awe: "The on­ly thing left now is to watch the last bit of it crum­ble with the com­ing of the rainy sea­son." But he does not give up eas­i­ly. He was on-site last week, to see what could be pre­served and what could still be learnt.

The best-pre­served and most ac­ces­si­ble Mayan sites pull in tourists and cruise ship pas­sen­gers. No Caribbean is­land has any­thing to match � though the faked-up ru­ins of Nas­sau's At­lantis Re­sort pull more pun­ters than any gen­uine his­toric site.

Mayan her­itage is more than a mon­ey-spin­ner. Mayans make up more than ten per cent of Be­lize's pop­u­la­tion. Mayan lan­guages are wide­ly spo­ken, their tra­di­tions are alive. Greg Ch'oc, a promi­nent Maya ac­tivist, said last week he was "shocked" by the de­struc­tion.

There are thou­sands of Mayan sites. Per­haps ten have been par­tial­ly ex­ca­vat­ed and con­served. At Cara­col, for ex­am­ple, the In­sti­tute has worked in­ten­sive­ly on a dozen build­ings, and mapped more than a thou­sand.

Be­lize does more to pro­tect its ar­chae­o­log­i­cal her­itage than most of its Cari­com neigh­bours. The In­sti­tute of Ar­chae­ol­o­gy has an en­thu­si­as­tic and high­ly pro­fes­sion­al staff. There is as­sis­tance from in­ter­na­tion­al donors. At the San­ta Ri­ta Mayan tem­ple in north­ern Be­lize, ar­chae­ol­o­gists last month opened a bur­ial crypt hid­den since per­haps 600 AD. Live TV footage added to the ex­cite­ment.

Here in Trinidad, an an­cient Amerindi­an mound of sea shells was de­stroyed at Ban­warie Trace in the 1980s, al­so for road fill. Britain prides it­self on his­toric con­ser­va­tion, but ar­chae­ol­o­gists may be giv­en just a few weeks for 'res­cue digs' on con­struc­tion sites.

Last De­cem­ber 21, the gullible and su­per­sti­tious feared de­struc­tion as the "Maya long count" reached its zenith. As it turns out, the mod­ern world is the threat to what is left of the an­cient Maya.


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