The Lago Guija Flood

Lago Güija on the border of Guatemala and El Salvador is one of the primary centers of the Maya prior to the pre-Classic period, centered at Igualtepec and before that Teotipa. There are many bits of evidence that a great flood occurred at Lago Güija covering up the advanced village of Teotipa:

• the meaning of the name Igualtepeque, a Mayan site on the Salvadoran lake shore
• the oral history of people living along the lake shore today
• the historic lake levels of Lago Güija
• the flood story of the Popol Vuh
• the form of the river out of the lake
• the mysterious rock ramp at Teotipa
• the carved stones (hieroglyphs?) at Igualtepec
• the Popol Vuh name for Igualtepec

Igualtepec, right, is a peninsula, sometimes island, on the southeast shore of Lago Güija. It is known for the ancient carved stones on its western shore. It is also an ancient Mayan archeological site. Its name preserves a hint of its formation by powerful forces. It is a Ch'orti' name, glossed over by Nahua:

i- : (locative prefix)
wa'ar : stood up, perpendicular
te' : tree(s)
pek : knob (hill)

Or "place of the knob with stood up trees". The 'r' and 'l' in wa'ar would have been interchangeable. These are not ordinary trees, they were made to stand up or be perpendicular - standing up like matchsticks out of the knob.

The current day residents around Lago Güija say that there is a hidden city below the lake, according to University of El Salvador professor Vicente Ginovez. As I learned many times in El Salvador, there is a reason for every bit of oral history. Another bit of oral history that I was told in August 2012 is that the lake was formed a long time ago by a volcanic eruption. These are important clues to what happened at the lake.

The next clue is the historic lake levels at Güija which are about 3 meters higher than the level when I visited in August 2012. This is evident from the carved stones at Igualtepec where the historic lake level is clear. The rocks that were carved are those 3 to 5 meters vertically above the 2012 lake level even though there are similar (uncarved) stones at or just above the 2012 lake level. This indicates that what occurred at the lake was not just a flood but a structural change to the lake that left lake levels higher.

Some of the carved stones at the lowest level at Igualtepec show historic water levels. These may be among the earliest of all the images. The one at right appears more primitive than many of the others, with a face of a person.

Before making a guess about what happened during the flood event, I turn to the Popol Vuh account of the flood, which appears near the beginning of the Popol Vuh.

Again there comes a humiliation, destruction, and demolition. The manikins, woodcarvings were killed when the Heart of Sky devised a flood for them. A great flood was made; it came down on the heads of the manikins, woodcarvings. The man's body was carved from the wood of the coral tree by the Maker, Modeler. And as for the woman, the Maker, Modeler needed the hearts of bulrushes for the woman's body. (Popol Vuh, Tedlock translation, 1996, pp 71-72)

and,

There came Crunching Jaguar: he ate their flesh. There came Tearing Jaguar: he tore them open.

and,

There came a rain of resin from the sky. ... The earth was blackened because of this; the black rainstorm began, rain all day and rain all night.

and,

Everything spoke: their water jars, their tortilla griddles, their plates, their cooking pots, their dogs, their grinding stones, each and every thing crushed their faces. Their dogs and turkeys told them: "You caused us pain, you ate us, but now it is you whom we shall eat."

and,

Now they run for it, helter-skelter. They want to climb up on the houses, but they fall as the houses collapse. They want to climb the trees; they're thrown off by the trees.

The reference to manikins and woodcarvings is clearly a reference to the Xibalbhan people at Corinto cave who are referred to elsewhere with the same descriptors. I have mentioned previously that manikin means "Manik sticks" and that Manik is the name of the exceptionally tall hunter people of the north who settled at Corinto cave and captured the Mayan ancestors in about 8700 BCE. But the Manik people were clearly not at Lago Guija and were not destroyed by the flood. I think this confused reference occurred because the Maya destroyed the Manik people nearly immediately following the flood, thus associating the two events.

The reference to Heart of Sky is not a deity but more of a karmic reality. This name is Uk'ux kaj and when translated in Ch'orti' is:

Uk' : sadness, mourning, weeping
Kux : sprouting, coming to life, birth
Kah : start, beginning

So it means "sad coming to life of the start" or "sad start of the coming to life".

The resin from the sky would seem to be a combination of heavy rain the ash from a volcanic explosion. The volcano nearest the lake is Cerro San Diego, to the left in the photo, taken from Teotipa. Igualtepec is on the right of the photo at lake level. Based on all of the above evidence, I am proposing that there was a major rainstorm, followed by an eruption of Cerro San Diego. The flow of lava over the rain-soaked soil on the skirts of the volcano led to massive landslides. The landslides formed the Igualtepec hill, the neighboring island of Tule, and blocked the exit river of the lake. To the north a separate landslide may have separated the Laguna de Metapán from the lake.

The landslides into the lake would have caused a tsunami. This tsunami would have overtaken the low-lying Teotipa in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. Tsunami is most likely a Mayan word, shared with the Japanese, which likely had its origin in this flood event at Güija more than 9,000 years ago:

tzuh : a pressing down
nami : to vanish, to hide, to put out of sight

The churning of a tsunami wave explains why it felt to a survivor that every object in the house - the tortilla griddle, the grinding stone, the dog, the turkey - was coming at them and gnashing their mouth and face.

They tried to run, to grab onto the house roofs. Those that survived likely swam to the surface after the wave passed, grabbed onto the thatch of the roofs, and swam/paddled to a shore after many hours or days. The Popul Vuh suggests that the man(men) grabbed on to coral wood to make it, while the woman(women) grabbed bulrushes or thatch to make it across the lake. While Tedlock assigns a deity here - "Maker, Modeler" - the most likely Ch'orti' translation for tz'aqol b'itol is "bundled and transported to the crest."

Bodies began to arrive on shore, bloated like ghouls, some stripped to the skeleton by fish. I believe that the eruption and tsunami occurred on November 1 - 41 days after the fall (rainy season) equinox and that is why the Day of the Dead is celebrated at this time. In addition, the six month anniversary is celebrated in early May, which is why there are processions with palm thatch - palm thatch being what helped the survivors - in El Salvador in early May, like the somber one at left from Planes de Rendero.

The timing of November 1 (equinox plus 41 days) would not have been lost on the ancient Maya as that was the exact date of the anniversary of the Third Sun on November 1, 8207 BCE, most likely celebrated as New Year by the Maya. The Maya would have seen this disaster as punishment for not following the ways of the Third Sun sufficiently - the seven bows to the east, the fasting, and the burning of three incenses. Certainly it changed the calendar and may have led to a different new year date at some point.  

They had many domestic animals at Teotipa - the parrots, jaguars, and mountain lions that they had domesticated starting on Isla Tigre - and turkeys and perhaps dogs. If they had dogs it could mean that they brought them on the original journey across the Pacific Ocean but they may have re-domesticated wolves or coyotes in the Americas. Turkeys are plentiful in the region and it is easy to imagine that they were domesticated. Later we'll find that some of these animals also likely survived the flood.

The survivors most likely made it to Teopan, 42 kilometers to the south. Perhaps one or two generations lived at Teopan and then Lago Güija - Igualtepec - was repopulated with families from each of the four lineages - the Olmecs/Lencas at Lago Olomega, the Zapotecs at Tehuacan, San Vicente, the Quiches at Teopan, Coatepeque, and the surviving Ch'orti' lineage from Teotipa. The Popol Vuh says that 24 people - "24 lords" - repopulated Igualtepec:

It was a long time ago when they all came up onto their citadel, building a score and four palaces there in the citadel of Q'umaraq aj.

... They achieved glory there. ... One by one they took their places:

• The nine lords of the Cauecs.
• The nine lords of the Greathouses.
• The four lords of the Lord Quiches.
• The two lords of the Zaquics. (Tedlock, pg 184)

While the 24 lords could refer to 24 heads of household, each with a house (palace), I am inclined to believe that it is 24 people total. The Cauecs would refer to the Quiche and indicated that 9 people (lords) moved from Teopan to Igualtepec. The Greathouses refer to the Ak'bar (Ch'orti') lineage originally at Teotipa, so there were 9 people from a later generation of the surviving Ch'orti' lineage who moved back from Teopan to Igualtepec for the repopulation. The Lord Quiches is a generic reference, equivalent to "Mayan lords" and, by process of elimination, would refer to the Olmec/Lenca lineage, so that four people from Lago Olomega moved to Igualtepec. Finally the Zaquics refer to the Ik' lineage, the Zapotec ancestors at Tehuacan, at the mouth of the Lempa. Two people from this lineage made the move.

After some amount of years, the landslide-formed crest of land that was Igualtepec, with its perpendicular trees, was prepared for settlement. With these 24 seed people Igualtepec became a great Mayan center. One of the first tasks to prepare Igualtepec for settlement may have been to clear a channel for the water to leave the lake. The exit river out of the lake appears to be hand dug like a canal.

Here's another view of the exit river just as it is leaving the lake. This would need to be explored more.

The new settlers at Igualtepec appear to have begun a tradition at the time of a death. The dead person's body was placed on a boat and taken across the lake and in the water just above the site of Teotipa their body was laid to rest, joining the ancestors who died there in the November 1 tsunami.
In fact they built a boat ramp of specially selected smooth stones next to Teotipa which would allow a boat to dock at various depths of the lake, depending on the rain. (The modern monument at the top of the photo seems out of place next to the thousands of years old stone ramp in the foreground.) The dead were taken across the lake by the boatman not so much to the underworld as to their ancestors who lived and died at the ancient village of Teotipa buried under several feet of water. This is where the ritual started and the source of the image of the boatman ferrying the dead across the lake.

Igualtepec is famous for its carved stones. More will be shown in my next blog entry. The stones have been catalogued and analyzed. There are many animals, like the monkey and the parrot on this stone. It seems clear that the stones are a memorial for the ancestors lost, the victims of the tsunami disaster at Teotipa. And a memorial for the pets, including monkeys and parrots, that died in the tsunami as well. The stones are on the west-northwest point of the Igualtepec peninsula, directly facing Teotipa as one looks out toward the lake. In the photo the trees of the taller part of the Teotipa island can be seen on the right and the village site of Teotipa is just left of center. Ironically, the carved stones of Igualtepec were the leading edge of the mudslide that created Igualtepec and created the tsunami that wiped out Teotipa.

Finally, there is the name for Igualtepec in the Popol Vuh: Q'umaraq aj. It is translated as Rotten Cane by Tedlock. It is the place that the Maya went to following Chi ismachi (Teotipa). In Ch'orti' the translation is:

K'um : rinsing, cleaning, washing
Arak : domesticated animal, cultivated, tame
Ak' : covering, load, object resting on another

So it means "washed domesticated animal(s) resting on an object". Washed here referring to a long swim from Teotipa to Igualtepec. Apparently one or more domesticated animals survived the tsunami and made it to shore at Igualtepec by resting on wood or thatch.

The commemoration of this event as the Day of the Dead helps to provide a date for the flood. The word for Day of the Dead in Ch'orti' is sik'in, which literally means "series of days". But more importantly sik'in is a near equivalent of the Ch'orti' day sign Tzi'k'in, which means "day count". They choose the name sik'in for Day of the Dead because it sounds like Tzi'k'in, or 2 Tz'ik'in the period in the Mars retrograde calendar that corresponds from 7849 BCE to 7834 BCE. A related clue is provided by the phrase kotz'b'alam, translated as Crunching Jaguar by Tedlock. Koht is a numerical classifier and in front of b'alam could easily refer to the Mars long-count date of 1 B'ahram, which immediately follows 2 Tz'ik'in. This would indicate that the flood happened just before 7834 BCE. What Tedlock translates as Tearing Jaguar, tukumb'alam, translates in Ch'orti' as Spittle Washing Jaguar, a slightly different image.

When I was at Igualtepec in August 2012 I was told that up until 25 years ago the lake level was much higher, until a damn was built in Guatemala on one of the feeder rivers. So Teotipa has been buried by water for most, if not all, of the last 9,000 years. Now, at least most years, it is revealed so that the world can know of its glory and its suffering.