Bonampak and Yaxchilan

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A quick trip to Bonampak and Yaxchilan

Over New Year I went up to Chiapas and did a quick trip to Bonampak and Yaxchilan. I read about the murals in Bonampak years ago and I was very excited that I was finally going to see them. However, I was quite disappointed because they have been badly damaged. They were still pretty impressive though, and the trip was worth doing, even with all the insect bites!

These are the buildings at Bonampak that house the murals.

This what I thought the murals would look like - and it's a reconstruction of more or less what they used to look like, apparently.

And this is what they actually looked like - the story is that some well-meaning archaeologists in the 40s tried to clean them up and virtually destroyed them.

The architecture at Yaxchilan was far more impressive - and the stelae were incredible.

This is a close-up of one of the stelae - incredible detail! Almost as good as the Yaxchilan stelae in the British Museum.

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	These are the buildings at Bonampak that house the murals.		This what I thought the murals would look like - and it's a reconstruction of more or less what they used to look like, apparently.
	And this is what they actually looked like - the story is that some well-meaning archaeologists in the 40s tried to clean them up and virtually destroyed them.		The architecture at Yaxchilan was far more impressive - and the stelae were incredible.
	This is a close-up of one of the stelae - incredible detail! Almost as good as the Yaxchilan stelae in the British Museum.