Senaida Ba of the document scanning team of FLAAR Mesoamerica has dedicated many days to scan the entire published edition of Nicholas Hellmuth’s PhD dissertation to make this available to students, scholars, and the general public who are interested in Maya art, iconography, pantheon and archaeology.
Even though the text is auf Deutsch, the captions for the illustrations are also in English. Many of the photographs of Maya art are in color in this German edition. All captions to all 727 photos and line drawings are both in German and in English. Foreword by Michael D. Coe is in English. Discussion of Maya Archaeology, list and definitions of Maya deities in English. Footnotes and Summary are in English.
Published by the Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz, Austria. Hellmuth got his PhD from the Karl-Franzens Universitaet, Graz, Austria in 1986.
Monster und Menschen in der Maya-Kunst, 727 drawings and photos in book of 403 pages.
Surface of the Underwaterworld, 1987 publication of English edition of Hellmuth’s PhD dissertation, Vol. I, text.
Surface of the Underwaterworld, 1987 publication of English edition of Hellmuth’s PhD dissertation, Vol. II, illustrations.
We have not posted new material on this site because we have been posting on www.Maya-archaeology.org. Plus we have been working day and night on new FLAAR Reports. But today, in
November, we are posting six new reports on Sky Bands. This is work of many months since the
Iconography of Cosmology post of January 19, 2024.
Part I: Sky Bands on Plates of Classic Maya of Peten
Part II: Sky Bands on Classic Maya Vases and Bowls
Part II: Sky Bands on Kerr and Hellmuth Rollouts of Vases
Part IV: Sky Bands on Stelae, lintels and other sculptures of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize
Part V: Sky Bands of Late Classic Maya on stucco reliefs and sculptures at Palenque
Part VI: Sky Bands on woven textile hems of Maya clothing at Palenque, Tikal, Yaxchilan
This PowerPoint presentation will show scenes not available elsewhere. If you are a student you will find topics for your BA thesis, MA thesis or your PhD dissertation.
If you are a professor this PPTx provides you digital rollouts by Nicholas Hellmuth that have never previously been published. You have permission to download any and all images from this lecture and add to your own presentations.
For the general public this full-color lecture will introduce you to aspects of Classic Maya art (including derived from Olmec art) and continuing into the Post Classic Dresden Codex.
So on the evening of January 22, join us for several thousand years of art, iconography, architecture plus epigraphy of hieroglyphs.
The attached document shows sample illustrations from the lecture.
The sac nicte’ flower was respected by the Classic Maya for thousands of years. The wonderful aroma of these flowers late at night was very attractive, as were the bright colors of several color variants.
Our goal at FLAAR is to find, photograph, and document as many locations throughout the entire Republic of Guatemala where Plumera rubra is wild. These large shrubs or often small trees are native to Guatemala, Mexico and surrounding countries. Another species is in Belize and elsewhere. All wild Plumeria rubra are white with small middle area of yellow. Most that grow in gardens are red, maroon, pink, pure yellow or dark colors (these colors are never wild; only in gardens, but these colors were already in gardens of the Maya when the Spanish arrived).
Since we did field work in the swamps of the Caribbean area of Guatemala one-week-each-month two years ago, for this year’s Santa Claus sleigh we show NiCLAUS in his sleigh in a mangrove swamp pulled by three different species of crocodilians native to Guatemala (Crocodylus acutus is in the Caribbean brackish water areas; Crocodylus moreletii is in-land (in the areas of Peten where we are doing research for our five year 2021-2025 project. Caiman crocodilus is in the mangrove swamps of the Pacific Ocean coast. We thank Valeria Avilés for this nice drawing.
Klaus (or Claus for Santa Claus) is the nickname of Nikolaus, the German (originally Greek) spelling of Nicholas.
On Sept. 27, 2022 Nicholas Hellmuth, assisted by Belén Chacón Paz, will present full-color photographs of wetlands of Izabal, Guatemala and seasonally inundated areas of the Reserva de la Biosfera Maya (RBM, Peten).
This will probably be one of the few presentations using aerial photos (with DJI Mavic 2 Pro) and macro photos by our team of photographers. Usually six to eight people are on each field trip. Since there is no funding for all 21,600 square kilometers of the Reserva de la Biosfera Maya (RBM), we are focusing on Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre (PNLT), Parque Nacional Yaxha, Nakum and Naranjo (PNYNN) and the La Gloria concession area of the Municipio de San Jose (west of Uaxactun). We have found awesome seasonally inundated grassland savannas, sawgrass cibales, and tasistal palm (Acoelorrhaphe wrightii) savannas. 90% of the areas that we hike to have never been studied by any professor or student. This project is in coordination and cooperation with CONAP, the forestry agency of Guatemala.
Tonight the presentation will mention the jaguar hide and feather headdress found in Tikal Burial 196, so includes ethnozoology (obviously the feathers were just dust imprint but segments of leather of the jaguar were still preserved, and the claws).
For botany mentions cacao or other beans found inside one of the ceramic vases. Plus the wood used to roof the tomb (yes, the ceiling was wooden poles rather than vault capstone). We show the entire sequence of construction of this 8th century royal tomb chamber.
The main part of the presentation will be the architecture of the Str. 5D-73 pyramid: identical in every aspect to the pyramid of Temple I except smaller (Hellmuth also excavated the northeast corner of Temple I the month before excavating the entire pyramid of Str. 5D-73).
Discussion of the offerings in the burial (more ceramics than any tomb of Tikal or Uaxactun) documents that some of the pots were decorated, literally, by children or if adults, individuals who were not artists whatsoever. We also show the same for offerings in the tomb under Temple I (excavated by Trik several years earlier). Just as the pyramids were identical, many offerings in Tikal Bu. 116 (Temple I) and Tikal Bu. 196 (Str. 5D-73) were identical.
So lots to see, lots to learn about Classic Maya civilization, Sept. 19, 8pm EST, which is 6 pm in Guatemala.
