Mayan Mysteries In The Yucatan Peninsula - Visiting The Ruins Of Chichen Itza
The great Mayan city of Chichen Itza is one of the most astonishing of all the Mayan ruins.
Chichen Itza was famous for its Well of Sacrifice. Humans and precious objects were tossed into the sinkhole as offerings to Chaak, the rain god. People had a blood debt to the gods, and human blood was the most precious thing that could be sacrificed to them.
Mayan civilization was not a unified empire, but many independent city states ruled by powerful dynasties with supernatural properties. Their kings were divine lords and their survival was crucial to the survival of his people.
The Maya are said to have built their spectacular monuments with stone age technology, not having access to metal tools. Stone and wooden tools were used to shape the building materials.
Personally, I find this hard to believe. The stones are so heavy and arranged with such precision it's hard to believe these were stone age people making the story of the Mayan people very mysterious.
Chichen Itza was the last Mayan temples to be built and the most well preserved of all the Mayan ruins. It is believed to have not had a king or queen as a ruler and was instead ruled by a counsel of ruling elites.
According to Wikipedia:
Several archaeologists in the late 1980s suggested that unlike previous Maya polities of the Early Classic, Chichen Itza may not have been governed by an individual ruler or a single dynastic lineage. Instead, the city’s political organization could have been structured by a "multiple" system, which is characterized as rulership through council composed of members of elite ruling lineages credit
A network of roads that all lead to Chichen Itza were used by the surrounding civilizations as trade routes to the ancient city and access to the Sacred Cenote or Well of Sacrifice where offering of jade and gold were made.
The mathematical system of the Mayans was ahead of its time, and in sophistication far surpassed the mathematics of the Greeks and Egyptians. The golden ratio was an important principal in their construction.
The Maya had developed the concept of zero by the 4th century AD, while the Europeans wouldn't understand this concept until 800 years later.
The Mayan calender, which I have seen when I visited the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City, is a sight to behold. I couldn't take my eyes off of it when I first saw it and in boggles the mind to ponder how accurate its calculation are. This could not be the work of stone age intelligence as history leads us to believe.
Mayan engineers used water pressure to bring running water into their cities. This technology is believed to have been more sophisticated than that of the Greek and Roman engineers.
Chichen Itza came to be the largest and most influential city on the Yucatan. This was due to the collapse of the city states in the south, and the building of elaborate road networks.
The most prominent structure of Chichen Itza is the El Castillo, also known as the Temple of Kulkulcan, the feathered serpent god. El Castillo was probably constructed between the 9th and 12th centuries AD, and was built on top of a much older temple.
The Mayans were obsessed with watching the night sky. Their calendars were more accurate than any other calendars used in the western world.
Another amazing structure on the ancient site is El Caracol or The Snail. This was an elaborate calender used to sight over 20 astrologically significant sightings by looking through openings in the structure that would align with stars, planets, eclipses, equinoxes, solstices, etc.
When the conquistadors arrived on the Yucatan, the great Mayan cities were abandoned, and the Mayan society had transformed into a one of small villages. Mounds of earth still cover undiscovered cities and temples in the rain forest.
No one knows for sure why the city was abandoned, where the Mayan went or what became of them making the Maya one of the biggest mysteries of the ancient world.
I hope you enjoyed this little contribution to ancient American history.