Well good...Well guys, thank you so much
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Hey, good day guys! So today I
am at a archaeological site called Dainzu.
I don't know what it is or what it's about, so I'm interested - I'm just as
interested in seeing what its gonna be like as you guys are. So I took a taxi
from Tule to here, and it's weird because there there is a sign for it, but
as you can see I'm kind of just walking on this paved path in the middle of
nowhere? It's it's almost very kind of desert like. Anyway, so we'll see if this
is a...let's see if this turns out to be a bad idea or not walking alone in
the back wood part, desert part of Mexico to an archaeological site. It does
exist, it's on my map. So that's good, but yeah, so we'll see what its gonna be like.
I feel as though these are the kind of times where you start wondering why you
didn't look up to see what kind of animals are dangerous, so I don't know if
they have snakes - probably. I don't know if they have scorpions - probably. I don't
know if they have anything like that in and around here. At least where I am. So
I'm in the, it's kind of like the southwestern part of Mexico and I don't
I don't know what kind of animals, if any, I should be wary of walking in like
areas like this. So if you guys know, it's a little too late now, but if you guys
know write it in the comments and be kind of cool to see if people are
aware of what kind of stuff to be watching out for and in areas like this!
I know some of the other parts there are like crocodiles and stuff like that but
in this particular area I'm not sure. So I keep hearing
little scampers in like the little wooded areas here beside me, and I'm not
sure what they are. If they're like birds walking around on the ground or one time
I thought I saw like just like a little Mole, or maybe like a little mouse, anyway
they haven't come out of the grass so I
can see what they are. Maybe that's a good thing, I'm not sure, but I do hear a
lot of them. They're just all in - especially on this side - they're all in
and around me. As long as it's not hyenas, which I don't think they have here, but
or Jaguars - they do have Jaguars here because I did learn that that's like one
of their most significant animals, because Jaguars portray strength and
that was very symbolic in a lot of the Mayan artwork. Snakes, snakes and Jaguars
seem to be a repeating theme here and all the artwork and
the stonework that I've seen from some of the original sites. So those are the
two things that keep, like, presenting themselves over and over again. So I'm
glad it's finally starting to warm up. So it was
cold this morning. So I came in overnight. I took my very first ever night bus here
in Mexico, and I came from a place called Tuxtla, and I came here to Oaxaca
City and it took about ten - ten and a half hours. So my bus started at right
around 9:30 last night and I got in some time around 8:00 this morning and I
didn't know what to expect out of it, I heard - thanks I heard that the buses
are cold, which is true, so I went to sleep, and it's beautiful because the
seats they recline right back - you're almost like lying down flat - but yeah, I
went to sleep with his sweater and I did end up having to get up in the middle of
the night and put on my, actually it's a winter coat, because the air is so cold in
there. But other than that it was fantastic. I slept all night, people were
very quiet, they had movies for a while, and so you
just have to bring your headphones and you can plug in and watch a movie. They
did turn it off at some point, I was already, excuse me, I was already asleep
so I don't know when. So it's definitely something that I would do again it's
fairly cheap compared to like flying and stuff like that
and then the only hiccup we had is that some point during the night the bus
pulled over. I kept hearing, like, it was like just a big sliding and banging it's
almost like if you like put like a bowling ball
up and like the storage compartment of like an airplane and just like sliding
back and forth banging, anyway, but when I turned around to actually see what I
was, there was a you know like an emergency exit hatch at the top and I
had like, I don't know, it had like bent in and it was broken and you could just
hear the wind, and all night you could feel the wind just pushing the bus, so I
don't know if, it's like something fell on it and I broke it and it pushed it in
or what the story was. Anyway, so that's the only like little problem that we had
with the bus, other than that it was fantastic.
Okay so we're finally coming up to the main entrance and I do see a
entrance, I do not see anybody there. There are no cars as you can probably
tell by how like barren this road is. So it may be very good, I may be able to get
in for free, which is one of my favorite things to do! So I guess we'll see!
Dainzu, which means "hill of the cactus plants" was built against the side of a
hill apparently due to aesthetic reasons. Its original entrance was on the
river side, at the western end of the site. It had long occupational sequence from
600 BC to 1200 AD, however according to evidence in the archaeological record, it
is possible that the site had been inhabited before Mont Alban. Based on
information resulting from the archaeological exploration, we know that
Dainzu reached its zenith between 600 BC and 200 AD. The main buildings that
have been unearthed in Dainzu are: Building (A): It was apparently erected for
religious purposes and is located on the highest section of the site. It has four
platforms built with stone and mud mortar. The so-called gallery of
monumental sculpture is located on the south side of the lowest platform and
has several sculptures carved in stone. They probably represent ball game
players, since each one depicts a human figure whose posture reveals movement.
At present these sculptures are not in situ due to restoration works carried
out on site. So we're gonna take a moment and we're gonna see where this tunnel
thing goes.
There are stairs.
So it is, I guess legit.
But we'll see. I can't stand up that's for sure.
Alright, does anybody want to guess...oh I can stand up now...does anybody want to
guess if this comes I would somewhere on the other side?
Or maybe I'm just walking into the next Mummy movie.
Oh! I guess it just goes
to a hole.
As you see, it just goes into...
I don't know.
One second.
What's up?
Just a grate.
Okay, so you can see the grate at the top, and all this extra space makes me think
there must be another...must be another room part to it. May be on this side?
Let's see. Let's hop over here.
Okay so there's no entrance. There's got to be something in behind this, behind this
wall because it can't just stop and then they build an extra wall, unless it's for
platform reasons but...yeah I don't know if you waste your time doing that if
you're a building just to make it a platform. To me it seems like there would
be like a an extra room behind there or something.
Building (B): Located opposite Building (A) as a structure has six architectural building stages, each
corresponding to a different time period. Inside this building was found a tomb in
which they can see the figure of a Jaguar carved in relief. The animal's
head forms the lintel of the entrance door, while its front legs constitute the
door jams.
Ball game: It is located in the southwest section of the site. Like ballgame courts
in Monte Albán and at Ya-gol it has an eye shaped ground plan.
So I'm standing in the middle of a ball court, but it's kind of neat just walking
on the field where people would have been playing this game. Now this game is
something of great importance because as some of the information said, that
players of, and it's just like today, players of this game where iconic and they were
carved into stone and they were made a big deal because they could play a game
and it's just neat being able to be here having no skill or knowledge of this,
that's probably why I'm not carved in stone though, but you know we can work on
that. We can work on that. Any like stone stone carver friends out there that you
know woke me up with a like a nice giant statue, perhaps life size - just make
me a little bit stronger? That'd be great if you could do that. Yeah. So I don't
know if you can see behind me actually what I do is all certain in a clip here
but the they are burning garbage, and that's something that I found all
throughout Mexico is what they do with their garbage is they burn it and really,
it really smells bad and it's probably really bad for the environment. That
being said, we don't do much better at home. We stick it in a landfill and it
gets buried, or it gets like sent overseas for somebody else to do
something bad with it, so this is a one of those things where you come
across something in nature or you see something and you want to preserve
beautiful stuff like this. So one thing I've noticed about Mexico is that people
just throw their garbage on the ground. Don't do that people! Put it in a garbage
can! It may not seem like a big deal, but you know the more people that get rid of
their trash properly the better and the easier it is is going to keep this
planet clean, keep it existing how it is a little bit longer.
Okay, I'm going down this path.
It looks like it's going to take me inside somewhere.
This must be like one of the interconnected chambers.
As you can tell,
it's not built for everybody.
Oh, this is kind of cool.
That's cool.
Well it doesn't go anywhere because it hasn't been excavated.
Now it's hard to believe but probably all this was like what's
exactly behind me, just a big mess and my hats are off to archaeologists who are
able to do like, dig this stuff up, find some meaning to it
because I mean if I saw something like that
a block of dirt with some rocks in it, and I wouldn't know anything about it so, I
don't know how they do it but it's amazing!
I just want to give you guys a
sense of cost with this, so I came from Oaxaca City and there was nobody there
so the park was free and all it all cost me about 30 - 32 pesos, so that's about two
Canadian dollars to get a taxi out this way.
It took about 20 minutes. Now I did break it up, because earlier today if you
haven't checked out this video do it right now, it's from Santa Maria de Tule,
and it is a giant tree. It is the widest tree in the world. So I went from Oaxaca
City to there, and then from there to here. So that's how much I'm expecting it
to cost me to get back about 30, pesos 32 pesos, so when you come here that's kind
of the idea of what you should be expecting as far as price point. Oh and I
should note, I think I figured out what the little scampering things were. I did
see a lizard, and it never occurred to me that we're kind of in like that desert
climate and there would be lizards in this part of Mexico, and I saw one and
that probably is what it was, probably not that Jaguar!
Well guys, thank you so
much for checking out Dainzu with me! I hope I'm saying it right, I haven't heard
it pronounced yet, so if I'm saying it wrong I'm sorry.
If you liked the video just let me know by hitting the thumbs up, and as always I
hope you guys subscribe the channel, you can check out more adventures here
in Mexico and you can see where I'm heading next. Alright guys, hope to see
you next one, take care!
These aren't even real steps. They're like tiny. Here look.
Pro tip: Do not touch this tree.
Pro Tip: Do not drop camera gear down a gated off tomb. You will not get it back.