7/13/2023
Performances and Artists
National Geographic Live Presentation Uncovers Millennia-Old Murals and Sculptures Found in Mexico and Central America
Art historian and microarcheologist Dr. Diana Magaloni Kerpel has spent her career delving into stone memories. “As historians, we yearn to fill in the stories of humanity to really understand a place and a time. Even one well-documented life can teach us so much about society,” said Diana. “But with Mesoamerican cultures we so often must rely on pyramids and plazas, statues and monuments. These are stone memories.”
In her National Geographic Live presentation Mesoamerica Illuminated September 20 in The Smith Center’s Reynolds Hall, Dr. Diana Magaloni Kerpel will bring ancient Mesoamerican civilizations to life in a way you've never seen before.
Her presentation begins 4,000 years ago with the Olmec civilization. “The tremendous Olmec heads are sculpted portrayals of ancient rulers who have a meditative gaze and are carved in Basalt from the Tuxtla Mountains–50 miles from away from the sites they were found,” explains Diana. “The Olmec is the mother culture of Mesoamerica, a historical and cultural region that expands throughout Mexico and into Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Belize. The Olmecs were the first ones to build structures that are in dialogue with the surrounding mountains, and that can serve as timepieces to measure time.”
Almost millennia later Diana time travels to Teotihuacán, which at its time was one of the largest cities in the world. “Teotihuacanos were amazing muralists and painted more than 2,000 apartment compounds, where people lived, with their stories of creation and their gods,” she explains. In particular she sites three historical monuments found in Teotihuacán’s urban center, the pyramid of the Sun, of the Moon and of Quetzalcoatl (Feather Serpent).
One of her final stops is the Mayan city of Chichén-Itzá. “The city represented a true fusion of two cultures and contained one of the most amazing buildings of Mesoamerica. The magnificent pyramid Kukulkan was built as a cosmogram, a physical representation of Mesoamerican beliefs about the three realms of the cosmos,” says Diana, who adds that the pyramid has perfect symmetry with each side facing a cardinal direction and each having 91 stairs and then an upper platform. These combine for a total of 365 steps, which is the number of days in a solar year.
“These American civilizations are a unique, original experience of what it means to be human, and of all the possibilities we have to shape our world in relation to nature,” explains Diana. “The Americas’ originality continues to live in the present and it is a moment for humanity to learn how to listen to their experience and knowledge, which has survived throughout time and despite the systematic practices of destruction they have been submitted to.”
National Geographic Live is National Geographic’s touring series that brings to life the real and awe-inspiring stories of Nat Geo Explorers and Speakers.
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