Achievements:
Livingston Biodiversity Documentation

Posted March 16, 2022

Join us in our "Livingston Biodiversity Documentation" to learn about our achievements and experiences during our field trips.

<

This presentation will be in Spanish starting 6 PM on Thursday, 17 March.

Lots more to “Yaxha” than just Lake Yaxha:
there is a whole series of other small lagoons to the west

Posted October 15, 2021

In past decades archaeologists, geologists, soil scientists, pollen core specialists and ecologists have nicely studied many areas of Parque Nacional Yaxha, Nakum and Naranjo. Our goal for the 5-year project of cooperation and coordination with CONAP is to continue to find, document, photograph, and publish the photos of the flora, fauna and biodiverse ecosystems of the Reserva de la Biosfera where other scholars have not yet visited or if visited did not do high-resolution digital photography. This way we can suggest to other professors and students, where their own future projects could be productive.

It’s a lot easier as a professor or student in the era of COVID 19 work-from-home to plan your future field work in the comfort of your home if lots of fresh documentation is available in advance from our FLAAR reports.

Download Report

This first 16 pages is just an introduction. We have longer reports in preparation for each laguneta west of Lake Yaxha and the inlet at the southwest side of Lake Yaxha. But we wanted to start with showing how 90% of printed maps and Google maps on the Internet don’t show any name for the Laguneta La Guitarra (also named Laguneta El Juleque in Plan Maestra reports of the PNYNN). And we point out the confusion of names: Juleque for the lagoon over the other side of the hill; and Julequito for an inlet on the east side of the hill; an inlet of Lake Yaxha so not really a separate lagoon.

It would be great if soil scientists, geologists, botanists and geographical specialists could consider the several relatively pristine lagoons west and northwest of Lake Yaxha. And would be remarkable to have core samples collected from the Laguneta of 3 Conjoined Cenotes; all of us were amazed and astonished to see how many biodiverse ecosystems exist in this previously unpublished part of PNYNN.

How did the Preclassic and Classic Maya use the savannas of the Reserva de la Biosfera Maya?

Posted October 5, 2021

Every month we are finding more open grassland savannas. We are focusing on the Reserva de la Biosfera Maya: northern half of Peten: from Chiapas-Peten border across Guatemala to the Peten-Belize border. And from Lake Peten Itza up north to the Peten-Campeche border.

We focus on this area since the savannas of southern Peten (around Poptun have lots of pine and karst dome (small hills) in the middle of most of the savannas). And the savannas from south of Lake Peten to the west around La Libertad towards Sayaxche are mostly destroyed (and were studied in the 1930’s by ethnobotanist Cyrus Lundell). Plus these savannas are different than the ones in the Reserva de la Biosfera Maya (RBM, which, so far, lack pine and lack Curatella americana, sandpaper leaf trees).

Were savannas burned annually for thousands of years? The tasiste, nance, and jicarra trees have evolved to be adapted to survive these fires.

Were the savanna areas of the RBM ever “forested” or were they always grasslands surrounded by bajo forest and sometimes hilltop forests at their edges?

Were any or many of these savannas or cibal sawgrass grasslands modified by the Maya (the way the Aguada Maya was totally modified, in Parque Nacional Yaxha, Nakum and Naranjo)?

And why do most of the savannas and cibal-savannas have a ring of stagnant water around their edges (in the transition zone between the open savanna and the closed bajo forest or hillside forest surrounding the open grasslands)?

Wetlands ecosystems of the rivers, lakes, and Caribbean Coast

Posted April 20, 2021

Presentation Preview

Enlarge Poster

This presentation will be in Spanish starting 10 am this Saturday, 24 April.

ZOOM MEETING FACEBOOK LIVE

Though obviously nothing is there until Saturday morning. If you wish to be on our mailing list, please write us FrontDesk at FLAAR.org

How many trees of Guatemala have latex which is called lechemiel (Honey Milk)?

Posted March 25, 2021

To get here is a long uphill hike; then steep downhill, in the mountains overlooking the west end of Canyon Rio Dulce. We are standing in front of what we estimate may be a young lechemiel tree whose latex is called honey milk. This is for our project segment to find all wild native trees of Guatemala that can produce "drinkable" latex (for the Classic Maya thousands of years ago).-.

We all have face masks but when hiking long distances, especially up steep hills, it's not realistic to breathe through a mask.

The team consists of local Garifuna assistants, local Q'eqchi' Mayan assistants plus the university students working with FLAAR Mesoamerica. Photo was taken by Maria Alejandra Gutierrez, so she is not in the photo.

As you can tell from the surroundings (Heliconia front and right) we are in a very humid area. It rains more in the Caribbean Municipio de Livingston area of Izabal than in most other areas of Guatemala.

Enlarge Image

Enlarge Image

Here is a typical steep hill. One of the team literally wore out after the first kilometer and we politely suggested he return to the base camp to recuperate. If he had been wearing a mask he would never had made it. But obviously we all have face masks and when near any village we put on masks when in a vehicle or boat.

White pelican, Pelecanus erythrorhynchos, is featured in Classic Maya art

Posted January 14, 2021

Photograph by Nicholas Hellmuth, white pelican photographed at Auto Safari Chapin. Enlarge Image

Download Report

The brown pelican we have been studying and photographing in February and in March field trips to Rio Dulce, El Golfete, Canyon de Rio Dulce, and Amatique Bay (Municipio de Livingston, Izabal, Guatemala). Our report on these brown pelicans, Pelecanus occidentalis, is already available as a download. You do not need to register or pay; our goal is to make these photo essay reports and bibliographies available to professors, students, ornithologists, and bird watchers to document the potential of visiting Guatemala to study these birds. As far as we know, the brown pelican does not have the raised ridge. The photo at the left is from many years ago, Auto Safari Chapin (the birds are not in cages).

The white pelican male has a raised ridge parallel to the middle of his beak in the mating season. This raised ridge is a crucial differentiation that we recognized last year. We have been waiting for the mating season to accomplish additional photography.

So early tomorrow we will drive to two different areas of Costa Sur of Guatemala to dedicate three days to finding and photographing wild white pelican males with the raised beak. Once we have these photos we will publish the photos, including close-ups, to assist iconographers, epigraphers, and archaeologists to more easily recognize the difference between beaks of pelicans. We are taking 200mm, 400mm, 600mm, and 800mm prime telephoto lenses to capture high-resolution of these birds and their beaks (plus all other waterbirds present this month).

WILD vanilla orchid vines
FLOWERING in November

Posted December 07, 2020

Click to Enlarge

Buds and unopened flowers of wild vanilla orchid vines, November 30, 2020, Tapon Creek nature reserve of FUNDAECO, photograph by park ranger Lucas Cuz with telephone camera provided by FLAAR (USA) and FLAAR Mesoamerica (Guatemala).

Park ranger Lucas Cuz found and photographed wild vanilla orchid vine flowering the last day of November. There are wild vanilla orchid vines all over the Municipio de Livingston. We find wild vanilla orchid vines on most field trips: some in wetland swamps, others on karst hills.

We have never seen a wild vanilla vine flowering because they flower only once a year in the early morning; one day per year per flower! So we are literally rushing out to Municipio de Livingston to dedicate three days there (two days back and forth driving to the dock at Puerto Barrios; no cars can reach the nature reserves of Rio Sarstun or Tapon Creek).

This is a “once in a life opportunity” so off we go today. We appreciate the cooperation of the Alcalde of the Municipio de Livingston, Daniel Pinto, and his team. If by chance all the orchids bloomed last week, then at least we know where we will spend November 2021! Waiting for the same orchids to bloom again.

If we do stand in front of orchids in bloom this week in 2020, it will be the nicest Christmas present ever. We sincerely appreciate the Garcia family providing their house in Buena Vista as our place to stay near Tapon Creek nature reserve of FUNDAECO.

Only once we have photos of the fully opened flower will we estimate the species of wild orchid. And we will consult with Fredy Archila on this once we have the photos.

Classic Maya Music and 4^th-9^th century Musical Instruments

Posted October 30, 2020

I am especially curious to learn what trees were used to make the drums and the trumpets of the Classic Maya. To start we are learning how many sizes and shapes of trumpets there were. By coincidence Yucatec Maya linguist David Bolles kindly sent me a copy of his architect-archaeologist father’s book that has a nice drawing of a trumpet from a mural at Chichen Itza. I show this here.

Trumpet in use, normally (but not always) by advancing warriors going into battle. Chichen Itza, Las Monjas, Room 17, sketch by architect John Bolles, working for the Carnegie Institution of Washington project. This drawing is on page 44 of The Art Work of John S. Bolles and Mary P. Bolles. Permission to use the drawing from David Bolles. You can download this from DavidsBooks.org, Download PDF

We now have a web page to further introduce trumpets and the various plants that have parts large enough to make a 2-meter long trumpet.

Books on Yucatec Maya language,
linguistics, Chilam Balam and more

Posted October 27, 2020

David Bolles is one of the leading linguists and ethnohistorian scholars for books such as the Chilam Balam and all colonial period Yucatec Maya dictionaries. These publications are downloadable, but the main site is switching to a new domain: http://davidsbooks.org/

It is well worthwhile to visit this website to learn more about the Maya of Yucatan Peninsula.

I knew David’s father, architectural/archaeologist John S. Bolles (of the Carnegie Institution of Washington). John Bolles worked as an architect in the same Detroit firm as my architect father, George Hellmuth. Another coincidence, in my father’s architecture class at Washington University was William Lincoln, who mapped Yaxha for the CIW (decades before FLAAR started the project with Miguel Orrego to map the entire site of Yaxha (and improve the map of Nakum and Topoxte Island)).

Architect Bolles came with a FLAAR field trip to visit El Mirador several decades before this came a popular tourist destination.

But back to the main subject: we recommend visiting the Yucatec Maya linguistic and Chilam Balam book website, http://davidsbooks.org/. Also shows the family history of David Bolles and how he learned Yucatec Maya courtesy of his wife, Alejandra.