Shots around Chitzen Itza

Deep within the jungles of Mexico and Guatemala and extending into the limestone shelf of the Yucatan peninsula lie the mysterious temples and pyramids of the Maya. While Europe was still in the midst of the Dark Ages, these amazing people had mapped the heavens, evolved the only true writing system native to the Americas and were masters of mathematics (basically a "base 2o" system of calculation). They invented the calendars we use today. Without metal tools, beasts of burden or even the wheel they were able to construct vast cities across a huge jungle landscape with an amazing degree of architectural perfection and variety. These came up where there were pockets of limestone pools, or wells.

Their legacy in stone, which has survived in a spectacular fashion at places such as Palenque, Tikal, Tulum, Chichén Itzá, Copan and Uxmal, lives on as do the seven million descendants of the classic Maya civilization. The language is preserved, but the hieroglyphics and about 800 characters of their written word have been translated from the few documents that remain. Virtually all of the writings of the Mayan civilization were destroyed by the Spaniards and earlier by the Toltecs and invading cultures.

Even so, the Maya are probably the best-known of the classical civilizations of Mesoamerica. Originating in the Yucatan around 2600 B.C., they rose to prominence around A.D. 250 in present-day southern Mexico, Guatemala, northern Belize and western Honduras. Building on the inherited inventions and ideas of earlier civilizations such as the Olmec, the Maya developed astronomy, calendrical systems and hieroglyphic writing. The Maya were noted as well for elaborate and highly decorated ceremonial architecture, including temple-pyramids, palaces and observatories, all built without metal tools. They were also skilled farmers, clearing large sections of tropical rain forest and, where groundwater was scarce, building sizable underground reservoirs for the storage of rainwater. The Maya were equally skilled as weavers and potters, and cleared routes through jungles and swamps to foster extensive trade networks with distant peoples. They traded jade, turquoise and obsidian. They did not value gold--that came with the Spaniards much later.



Here in the Ball Field you can clap and hear the seven echos; the acoustics of the Field and at the base of the Pyramid are perfect.

There is a certain energy about the ball court. One fact is this repitition of the number seven, so sacred to the Mayans. There were seven players on a team, the rings through which they were to lop the 8 pound rubber ball was seven meters above the playing field. Either the winner (or the loser--probably the winner) or the first to score was honored by having his head lopped off and sacrificed to the gods, --with his head then sprouting seven serpents.

One repeated mystery behind the ball field/court at Chitzen Itza is the prophecy that on Dec 22, 2012, the great warrior serpent Kukulkan will rise from the ground beneath the playing field and end the world ---well the truth is that the prediction is not that it will end the world, but that it will end the ERA --like a millenium--a counting from the beginning of Mayan time. Like the move to the 21st century, only that solstice will mark the passage of time.



The Astronomical Observatory also called Caracol (snail) from the spiral staircase within it, is the result of several reconstructions. It is a structure that the Mayans used for the study of the sky. The original structure rested on a rectangular platform 219 feet by 170 feet, with slightly inclined walls 19 feet high with rounded corners. The west side is interrupted by a stair with flattened balustrades. On this platform a cylindrical tower about 52 feet high was constructed. To the rear on a solid base there was a circular platform constructed, perhaps to strengthen the whole structure. On this a terrace was added, then another platform on top of the first. This had a stairway on the west side and a circular parapet forming the heads of giants or caryatids. The Observatory was not absolutely tied to the religious functions of the city but was an area reserved exclusively for the study of astronomy.

Below are some of the tombs of probably the aristocracy, and also some good partial restorations of pre-Columbian Myan temples to the rain god, on whom the ancients depended for their agriculture



Remember to see these images in more detail, click on them for the larger version.