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Today we visited The Museum of Man, we have heard good reviews of it and wanted to walk through; we paid $9.00 each counting a $1 AAA discount. We were not sure how long it would take us, we did not read everything and breezed by a display or two so we spent about 2.5 hours.
We parked at the Inspiration Point parking area and took the park trolley to the plaza. There is a nice view of the harbor from Inspiration Point.
Because Inspiration Point is higher than San Diego International the planes come by low and loud.
The Museum of Man.
We started our tour in the Gods & Gold area which features ancient items from Mexico to Peru. The items we found most interesting were treasures from the Aztec, Maya and Moche people. I apologize for the images, all were taken through glass and there is some reflection evident in them.
These two items from the Aztec people were sculpted from Basalt Stone between 1300 and 1500 AD and were found in Mexico.
A Serpent.
A Human Figure.
The Mayan items displayed were recovered in Mexico and Guatemala. The figurines below were noted as (from left to right):
A woman’s head, a figure with large earplugs, a “grotesque head” made of pottery, and a figure with a false beak or nose.
There were reproductions of Stela found at Mayan temples on display. The first has hieroglyphic text that indicate it was dedicated on February 2nd 766 AD; the panels record the number of days that had passed since the creation of the present time cycle in 3114 BC.
This Stela is the tallest found from the ancient Maya, it was dedicated on January 24th 771 AD to honor an important time period in their history.
John’s personal favorite were the items from the Moche; these people lived on the desert lands of northern coastal Peru from 100 to 750 AD. They did not have a system of writing but made detailed pottery and items that communicated their beliefs and environment.
A Kero or cup made from one piece of gold.
A pottery bowl depicting 20 male and female spotted deer.
A figure I call the cat man.
This gold depiction of the alligator god was found in Panama.
On the 2nd floor was an area which describes human evolution and reproduction. The guys below were in the human evolution display, John took their picture because he thinks he arrested the one on the right a few years ago, the guy looks different without his Harley. JD would call this example “Homo Sprocketis”. Please note that we cropped the naughty bits.
The following items were in a display about the Kumeyaay Indians who are real native Californians that roamed the southern area of the State and northern Mexico from the coast east to the Imperial Valley.
The display and a museum worker described how this pottery was shaped and fired.
The process of firing this large piece left the distinctive pattern on the side.
Examples of weaving done by the Kumeyaay.
John holds a Kumeyaay tool used to straighten arrows (for some reason the museum guide thought he needed one), it was heated in a fire and used to smooth and straighten the green arrow shafts.
Mummies Of The World also featured Ancient Egypt Mummies and burial methods. There were several wooden sarcophagi on display.
We had our lunch in the Alcazar Garden when we finished in the Museum Of Man.
After lunch we decided to see the San Diego Model Railroad Museum. It interested us after seeing the Garden Railroad at Vale del Oro in Mesa. The layout in the museum is huge with separate layouts for several common scales, it would be hard to describe the amount of scale model trains we saw. Even though we are not enthusiasts it was worth the $7.00 we each paid to see it.
