Joya de Ceren "Mayan City" El Salvador

How much does it cost for a foreigner? $3 Okay, we're right here in one of the areas of Joya Seren. This is why this is so important. This is the only place in all Mesoamerica where we can see how the regular people used to live back in the day. So, this is a Mayan village just for regular people. What we're looking right now, right here, it's one of the structures for storage. And in the storage facility, they just keep the grains out of the side of the animals. Or they keep them dry from the rainy season. And that's what we're looking right now. And we're going to continue to see more. Okay, we're here in area number three. What we're looking right now, it's one of the most important houses or structures in the village. How can we notice that? It's because the walls are thicker than the other structures. We can see two beds. The beds are one after the other one, but in the main part of the house, in the entrance. Which is right here and there. Exactly. And you can see that the beds are very, very small. The average of a Maya person was 1.4 meters. So, I would be the tallest Maya ever in history. So, then we have a space that is just like our living rooms right now. Where all the people from the village, the ancient people from the village get together. We're looking at the front of the structure. And why do you think all those colors? You don't know? It's because of the temperature of the ashes. So, the darker the color, the higher the temperature of the ashes. The lighter the color, the lighter the temperature of the ashes. And that's why we have all those lines. Remember, this was preserved by a volcanic eruption. We're now in area number two. We're going to look at three different structures. Very important. This is an area very impressive because of one particular structure. And one that we have at the very bottom, at the end of the area, is a temazcal. The temazcal means steam bed. So, the steam bed was used for ritual purposes. You need to clean up your body and your spirit. Then we're going to have another structure in the middle. That's the structure for storage. And then on this area, we have the last part of the home. We have one structure that is the structure for the bathroom. We can see one small bed. And then underneath that bed, we're going to see a hole. In that hole, they found some kind of food. And can you guess what kind of food was it? Corn. Yes, of course. It was corn and beans. That's why they believe that the eruption of the Caldera volcano happened during dinner time. So, every civilization always built their town or their city next to water. And what's the name of this river? This is the Dirty River, but it's not dirty, actually. It's because of the color of the minerals inside the river that we see it as kind of the grayish, brownish, darker color. And if you wonder where the bathroom of the Maya is, check it out. Exactly, that is the bathroom. Here we are at area number one. We're looking at the Chaman house or the Chaman office to put it in some sort of way. And also, the Chaman were called the time counters for the Maya because they were very concerned about stars. They were very concerned when was the time to make this cultivation or to harvest the land. They were concerned about everything. One detail that I haven't told you, David, is that the Chamanes in this area and in this particular village probably was a lady, mostly women instead of men. So, in the area, they believe that around 40 to 50 percent of the Chamanes or the time counters were women instead of men. So, that's a very interesting thing about the Maya culture. Also, what we can see here, this is another structure. This is a kitchen, but that was a communitary kitchen. So, when there was a special event in the villa or something that happens that is very big, they use this particular kitchen to make the food. So, what we're looking at here is the first picture taken of the first structure here at Hoya SNN. This is the reason of everything. There was supposed to be a silo complex here to keep grains. That was part of an office from the government to keep the grains that we need. They were starting to flatten the land here. There were some bulldozers and tractors and everything here. So, there was a very clever person, a very wise person, that when they found, they hit the rock of the structure number one. They said, something is different here. Something is going on. It's not the same as the ashes layers. So, they stopped all the works. They called the very small archeological office that was handled by the government. And when the archeologists came here, they discovered Hoya SNN. That was the year 1976. And the first excavations started in 1978. Okay, this is the picture. Very important because they found some kind of pottery with food. And can you guess what? Yes, it was corn and beans. Our diet haven't changed since the Mayan times. So, underneath the bed, there was a hole. And probably that's why they believe that the earthquakes prior to the eruption, they happened during dinner time. So, the eruption happened during probably six in the afternoon or seven, something around that. And that's why the people in the villa had time to run away. And that's why they haven't found any human bodies so far. So far.