In this work, which barely exceeds four centimeters in height, the detailed modeling of a dressed male figure with an elaborate posture and pathological features is surprising. Macrocephaly, short neck, obesity, narrow pelvis, and short, thin lower limbs correspond to dwarfism, an inherited or mutational genetic disorder whose medical name is achondroplasia.
The representation of pathologies constitutes a prominent theme in the sculptural imagery of the Shaft Tomb culture. This society, named after one of its architectural features, had a long temporality, evidence of it having been recorded from the south of Zacatecas to the coast of Colima. In this strip, from west to east, it ranges from the Pacific coast to the Altos de Jalisco and neighboring areas of this state and from Colima with Michoacan. In several of the stylistic modalities that are identified throughout this territory, there is the representations of the diseased: women and men with kyphosis, pustules, famished appearance and dwarfism, among others. Hasso von Winning rightly stated that the frequency of hunchback sculptures did not necessarily imply that they were abundant in the population, but rather that they held a special position and, in the same symbolic sense, highlighted images of the diseased in general, in their function as companions of the deceased during their stay in the underworld. It is highly probable that works such as the one we see were part of burial offering, in a shaft and chamber tomb.
Delving into the subject of pathologies with respect to the remote Pre-Columbian period forces us to go beyond the biological in order to approach its cultural dimension. This involves the way in which the different types of ailments were classified and their causes, repercussions and, where appropriate, healing procedures were explained.
In a substantially dualistic worldview, made up of complementary opposites that were manifested in all entities, substances, and events of nature and the supernatural, disease served important functions in an alternation of divinely-derived forces. Regarding this character, Eduardo Matos has highlighted some Mexican myths recorded in the fourteenth century, in sources such as the Legend of the Suns, which give evidence that the Fifth Sun arose from a sick god, full of pustules that voluntarily threw himself into the fire for a new era or Sun to be born. At the level of daily life, it is known that in the courts of the Mexican and Mayan sovereigns, beings with congenital deformations were part of the courts of the sovereigns and it was thought that they had great occult powers.
Even in its diminutive size, this achondroplastic from the shaft tomb culture shows elements that indicate a high social or religious status, such as the large earrings and the striking necklace made up of large oval and split shapes, it also sports a band headdress and a elaborated maxtlatl (truss) with decorated canvas. The active posture and the body in torsion are striking: it was modeled standing, with the legs apart; it energetically turns the head to one side; the defined facial features with the eyes and half-open mouth emphasizing that gesture. It bends one arm and places one hand on the bulging abdomen, while lifting the other arm and placing the hand on the back of the head. The corporal torsion accentuates the deformation of the corporeality of this powerful image; it is not a ive individual, but one who moves and acts, perhaps in a supernatural realm.
In this work, which barely exceeds four centimeters in height, the detailed modeling of a dressed male figure with an elaborate posture and pathological features is surprising. Macrocephaly, short neck, obesity, narrow pelvis, and short, thin lower limbs correspond to dwarfism, an inherited or mutational genetic disorder whose medical name is achondroplasia.
