MERRY MAYAN CHRISTMAS!!!

Here's a little story that will either warm the cockles of your heart, or make you laugh, or both. It involves approximately 20 bored archaeologists and historians (but mostly the archaeologists are to blame on this one), a gingerbread structure, and some mayhem. Really, it's best told in photo-essay form, so a tip of the Santa Hat goes to Troy for inspiring me and my cohorts to document these inspiring events in this way.

It all started a few weeks before Christmas, with the miraculous appearance of a beautiful Mayan Pyramid, made of gingerbread and candy, on our front office tables....

Here's an aerial-view to give you the full awe-inspiring effect, obviously taken by a brave Peeps in his Peeps-o-Copter....


We admired the structure with all the hushed reverence of 2nd-grade children, for a full 2 days. Besides, there were Gummi Bear guards clearly posted at the main entrance, and we seriously didn't want to mess with them.


Alas, after 2 days of hushed reverence, the gawking public and voracious looters could be held back no more, and some of the inner chambers were cracked open... to reveal... treasure!

Here you can see what must have been a Sacred chamber of Peanut M&Ms, and chocolate kisses... Not surprising, considering the Mayans worshiped the cacao bean as a god, and practically invented chocolate as we know it.

Above is the Chamber of Skittles, "mistakenly" opened by one amateur archaeologist when he fell into a trap door. Fortunately, his body was impaled on 1,000 spikes and then consumed by albino alligators that have been living in the underground river for the past 1200 years. Thus taking his greedy insolence out of the gene pool forever. Yaay!
Unfortunately, his comrades managed to destroy (probably by eating) the top of the pyramid, exposing the greatest treasure inside- a mural of The Sacred Mayan Hippo God! Named um, uh... Hippocatepetl. Yeah.


This apparently loosed the spirit of the great Hippo God(dess) and not in a good way. Protector spirits soon showed up, chased away the looters and gawkers, re-set the ancient curses protecting the pyramid so that anyone who touched it would find their flesh falling off of them in a matter of minutes, and erected licorice barriers to protect the site.

This is the main guy. Pretty fierce, que no?
He stayed on top of the pyramid to guard the Hippocatepetl mural, and deployed his troops all around as needed.

Nevertheless, looters snuck back in and viciously cut out the heart of the Hippo mural. And probably ate it, because it wasn't made of solid gold or anything, it was just sugar candy.

Emboldened by their victory, the looters and the looting continued.

And continued....

Reinforcements were brought in, including Santa the Roaring Hippo, but to no avail.


Things were rapidly getting out of hand. In the interest of science, we had to participate, and by doing so revealed another mysterious symbol on one of the inner walls. What is that thing? Could it be... Peace?

The looters were getting cheeky, even venturing to replace the hippo's heart with a red M&M...

And then, even cheekier, putting one in Santa Hippo's mouth.


At some point in here, I tried to appease the Gods by sacrificing some marshmallow Santa's on the pyramid and rolling them down the steps, as is customary, but some people in the office got offended. Go figure. I mean, what's Christmas without a little Mayan sacrifice? Complete with Cherry Cordials for blood? So there are no pictures of that. Sorry. Try and have a good Christmas without it.

Some of the hippo guards starting arming themselves with toothpicks.


One rather large fellow decided to block the entrance.


While still others doggedly kept up the licorice rope-barriers.




And of course, a few of them started getting punchy after awhile...


And then, the unthinkable happened. Worse than looters, or gawkers, or amateur archaeologists, or meth-head "arrowhead hunters"- yes, that's right. Developers.
The next day we arrived to find this sign erected in front of the pyramid. We rubbed our eyes like the little Whos in Whoville, not believing what we saw. Also, it was very difficult to read the fine print.


But it was true. Our beautiful sacred Mayan Pyramid site had been re-zoned, right out from under us. Something called "The Pyramid Lofts" starting at $700,000! were "Coming Soon!" We were sore' amazed and confused.

The hippos put up a valiant last stand.

But in the end, greed won out, and historic preservation was annihilated by something the developers like to call "Progress."


I won't show you pictures of the destroyed pyramid. It's just too sad.
So boys and girls, brothers and sisters of all stripes, everywhere, please remember this Christmas to treasure and protect your cultural resources, whatever they may be. That's the only point of this blog, other than to show what a serious bunch of dorks we are. And also, if you live in a capital city, go to your local SHPO office and take those hardworking guys and gals some cookies or something, because clearly we're all losing our minds.

As Hippocatepetl would say, "Oooga Booga Wooga Chooga, Happy Freakin' Christmas to Ya!"