Introduction to Papaya, Carica papaya, as a food of the ancient Maya

Papaya today is eaten around the world. You can grow it in any tropical country. But the home of the papaya is tropical Latin America.

There are two major sizes of papaya: modern commercial papaya, and a wild papaya (Carica cauliflora), with round fruit the size of a plum. The two trees, as trees, look very similar. But the size and shape of the fruits is the difference between night and day.

Papaya (Carica papaya) flower at FLAAR office, FLAAR Photo Archive

Papaya (Carica papaya) flowers, FLAAR Photo Archive

Papaya from a local market in Guatemala, FLAAR Photo Archive

Papaya de montana

We will have an eventual separate page on wild papaya. Some species, such as Carica cauliflora, and even more,Jacaratia mexicana (Carica mexicana), have a fruit that shares many exterior features with a simplified cacao pod! The book, Trees of Guatemala (Parker 2008:145-146), discusses three species. This book also illustrates and describes Jacaratia mexicana (Carica mexicana).

Thesis potential: papaya as a cash crop

So much botanial and agro-business research is already available on the papaya that it would be tough to add new botanical information.

Papaya tree at Sayaxche, Peten, Guatemala, FLAAR Photo Archive

Thesis potential: papaya and the ancient Maya

The Popol Vuh is very clear and states specifically that the decapitated head of Hun Hunahpu is placed in a calabash tree. It is not placed in a cacao tree nor a coconut tree, nor ceiba tree!

Furthermore, the fruit is clearly at the level whereby the young virgin would be able to receive spittle in her hand. In other words, the fruit is at eye or waist level: the fruit is not a pataxte or anona or zapote.

There are at least four trees that can fruit from the trunk (that are native to Guatemala):

Cacao
Morro and jicaro (two species but basically a similar tree, so we count them as “one”)
Papaya
One of the anonna-like fruit trees. I photographed fruit on the trunk near Rio de los Esclavos, Guatemala, near Cuilapa, Santa Rosa.

I am sure botanists should be able to find one or two other trees that fruit from the trunk, but the only ones that have sizable fruits on the trunk are the four above.

Almost every Mesoamerican scholar that has knowledge of iconography at all constantly write that the trees in Classic Maya art that bear the fruit of Hun Hunahpu is a cacao tree.

Even if this were so for the Classic period, it does not affect the historical fact that for the 16th century Quiche of the Highlands, the sacred tree was a Calabash (morro or jicaro).

The best example of the actual tree in a Classic period painting, one that has not been faked under the pretense of “restoration” is the Nebaj-area vase in the Museo Popol Vuh. The flower on this tree is not a cacao flower (I raise cacao, and papaya, so have a tad of experience in both).

I bring out the fact that the papaya tree fruits from the trunk mainly to politely suggest that we should not be so quick to think everything was cacao.

Dr Hellmuth with several species that fruits from the trunk, FLAAR Photo Archive

Dr Hellmuth with several species that fruit from the trunk: several papaya, several cacao pods and calabash (gourd tree). Realize however, that there are other trees that also fruit from the trunk, such as Cuajilote or Caiba, Parmentiera aculeata.

And does the papaya really fruit from the trunk? Or only from high up?

98% of the papaya trees that you see have the fruit high up in the tree, among the branches. But this is because kids have already knocked off or picked off the papaya that fruit from lower on the trunk. I have spent hours in the papaya plantations operated by people from Taiwan, on the left of the highway from Flores to Sayaxche, before you get to La Libertad.