This was my onslaught of the museum of National Anthropology, a full-on day of one of my favorite topics–the study of Man. It was satisfyingly clear on the seven major migrations out of Africa, as well as dioramas of the Apes, Homo Erectus and Australopithecus, as well as a few dinosaur bones and stone flints. By time I got to the last gallery on anthropology,I had pretty much burned off 4 hours of walking and reading at a pace that normally gives Gee Kin Museum Sickness. fortunately it doesn’t affect me, but I do get lost with all the periods and cute facial expressions generated by each figurine.

So, without bothering to sort them into periods here, I hope you won’t mind if I simply post a “no comment” version of the ones I liked. There were four giant galleries, or basically four museums rolled into one venue or giant museum: the Mayan, the Olmec, the Teotihuacan (all the artifacts are here, not at the pyramids), the Mexica (artifacts from the site upon which Mexico City is built), the Aztec, and the Anthropology Museum wing itself. The photos are a sampling of each of these. I’ll try to make heads or tails of these in order with the text that I documented after I return this week.

As previously mentioned, there are the pre-classic, the classic, and the post Classic. All of these fall into the Pre-Hispanic Or in some cases Pre-Columbian designations, depending on the context. You can begin to see the level of sophistication in processing materials, design, and craftsmanship as these periods progressed. There was also a wing for post-Colonial indigenous artwork that I did not focus on.