At Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo the combined team of FLAAR Mesoamerica working with the park administrators through IDAEH and CONAP have found more than a dozen species of mushrooms native to this park. No previous botanical study of this park listed many (or sometimes any) mushrooms (or lichens or moss and not many ferns either).
While doing research on pre-Columbian colorants of the Aztecs and other cultures of Mexico, I was surprised to find that all three major books on dye colorants of Mexico clearly document that Aztecs (and assumedly their neighbors) used lichen to make colorants.
WOW, sure never knew this while doing research on useful plants of Mayan ecosystems for many decades (keeping in mind that a mushroom is “not a plant” and that a lichen is an algae plus fungus interacting in a mutualistic relationship). Plus not a peep about mushrooms and lichens as dye colorant source in my own decades of research on dye available to the Maya.
So now our full-color PowerPoint presentation gathers together all this information (together with high-resolution photos of the mushrooms and lichen at Yaxha) and also mention every vine, plant, tree, etc. that was available to the Mayan people for dye colorants from local Petén resources.
The lecture was 2 April 2019, 10 am (to 11 am), Museo Ixchel on campus of Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala City, Central America. We are now updating this presentation to create an English edition.
The co-author of this presentation, Elena Siekavizza, did research and found 48 mushrooms (that grow in Petén area) that can give dye colorants (usually need a mordant also). So as soon as the rainy season returns we would like to find as many of these mushrooms as possible at Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo. But during the last 8 months of field work at the park we have found at least an initial dozen of dye producing mushrooms. Ironically the most common mushroom in the park is a dye source.
Lichens are amazing biological organisms, I would be very pleasantly surprised to find any book on Mayan archaeology, Mayan way of life, or any general coverage of the Classic Maya that focused on the potential for using local lichens (yet books on dye colorants by Mexican scholars list and show photos of lichens in all of the three major books on dye colorants). Not one single book on dye colorants of the Maya (that I have on my desk) mention, list, or even hint at mushrooms or lichens. Yet the FLAAR team found lichens in the bajos and rain forests and Elena Siekavizza, did research and found 20 lichen species reported for Peten. Would be great for a PhD candidate to do field work in the Yaxha park to achieve a dissertation on Lichen as a source of Dye Colorants for the Maya.
Plus we (IDAEH + CONAP team together with FLAAR Mesoamerica team) have found 9 trees at Yaxha which would have produced dye colorants for the Classic Maya. Seven trees which produce dye colorant at Yaxha are totally missing from books on dye colorants of the Maya of Guatemala (because 99% of research on dye colorants is in the Highlands, especially Lake Atitlan, Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango, and Antigua Guatemala (plus Highland Chiapas). This is why the FLAAR teams are focusing on discovering dye colorants available at Tikal, Uaxactun, Yaxha, Nakum, Naranjo and thus of course at Holmul, El Zotz, Seibal and all the sites to the west in Chiapas and to the east in Belize. We are working to “rewrite what the Classic Maya had available in their diverse ecosystems for thousands of years.” Plus of course they had trade networks.
If your museum, university, botanical garden, foundation, organization, social club, or other entity would like the fresh full-color results of the work of the team of FLAAR and FLAAR Mesoamerica we have lots of lectures with high-definition photographs. For example, the ancient Mayan people had no plastic! Senaida Ba and Nicholas Hellmuth have worked together for several years to make a list, then to find and photograph, all the materials the Mayan had (since there was no plastic).
Contact: FrontDesk symbol FLAAR.org (we assume you can figure this out). We can lecture in English, Spanish, and German (and elsewhere the English presentation can be sent in advance to be translated for simultaneous translation during the presentation).
Ps: Nicholas is now doing research as to whether the moss discovered by park ranger Moises Daniel Perez Diaz can be used to produce a dye colorant and/or mordant. The moss (same species) came in green, orange, and reddish color (the color changed every few meters in a remarkable bog ecosystem that Nicholas found via an aerial photograph and then hiked with the team many hours to study what plants were present).
Posted Mar. 18, 2019
