BAH Visits the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
Cozumel -- Playa del Carmen -- Tulum -- Cancun -- Chichen Itza
The Rain God's temple at Chichen Itza. (No, I don't know who the folks standing in the way of my shot are...)
Some details from the temple, just to show you the intricacy of everything at Chichen Itza. That's the Rain God on the corner, but to his immediate right is a symbol indicating a female (her legs are a column, her ... uh, privates ... are indicted by the square box, and her head is above that), which ...
...when viewed with the male representation on the opposite corner (you can see his dangling member) represents life, which comes from the Rain God (long as we keep him happy with sacrifices).
Another detail of the Rain God. You can see his eyes, nose, and a rather vicious mouth. Cheery fellow.
More of the intricate details that decorate all the buildings at Chichen Itza. Try to imagine this when the building was new. It would have been intricately painted.
Here we are in front of the observatory, a rather famous structure because of its intricate and precise positioning of doorways and windows, all set to predict the movement of the planets and stars. The Mayans had a precise calendar with which they predicted -- down to the second -- eclipses and whatnot. The purpose for these predications was to allow the priests to control the population (but that's what religion's always been used for, yes?). If you had someone misbehaving -- say he was speaking out against the priests -- they would tell him to repent his evil ways or the gods would put out the sun in 3 days, 4 hours, and 32 seconds. Low and behold, the sun would go out, exactly when they had said it would. "See?" they would say. "We told you so. Now pray and the gods say they will restore the sun in ... oh ... 23 minutes and 5 seconds from now. But you, since you 'caused all this grief, you must look upon the face of the sun god when he returns and if he is angry with you still, you will be blind for life." For the rest of that person's life, as he walked around with a stick feeling out his way, everyone would know that the gods had taken his sight as punishment. Perfect advertising for the priests!
Rattlesnakes were important to the Mayans. They're everywhere in Chichen Itza.
A typical upper-class Mayan home in Chichen Itza. The columns would have supported a grass roof.
The famous El Castillo de Kukulcan. The entire structure is a very precise calendar.
Me, waiting for Betty to catch up. (It's a LONG climb. The trick is not to walk straight up -- the stairs are too narrow and the grade is too steep. You walk in a zig zag pattern, the same way the Mayan priests did all those years ago.) Going down is the dangerous part. Stumble and fall, and you won't stop until you hit the bottom -- it's that steep.
The famous ballfield as viewed from the top of El Castillo.
Betty with the Temple of a Thousand Columns in the background (shot from the top of El Castillo).
Yours truly at the top of El Castillo. If I look like a drowned rat, it's because it was raining on us most of the time we were there. This was actually a blessing, as it kept us cooled off. The temperature that day was supposed to be 105. Our guide told us to be grateful that we weren't there in August, when temperature reaches 130.
The intricate carving on the columns at the Temple of a Thousand Columns (also called, I think, the Temple of the Warriors -- which I think is the name I used in my book El Dia de los Muertos; I'm too lazy to go check for you).
Another shot of the same or a different column (all four sides feature warriors, priests, merchants, etc). Incredible workmanship for a culture that knew about metals but preferred to work with tooks made from obsidian.
More rattlesnakes. These are actually on the small temple around the cenote at Chichen Itza where every year a 15-year-old girl was thrown in to appease the Rain God. She would have lived her 15 years in splendor. On the night she was to be sacrificed, she would have been given the sacred elixir (a liquor fermented from honey) to drink (the priests wanted her so drunk that she could be easily handled). Because she was about to meet the gods, she would have been dressed in wonderful jewelry of jade and obsidian and precious stones (the priests wanted to make sure she sank straight to the bottom when thrown in).
The ballfield. It's here that the boys decided who had the honor of being sacrificed to the gods. See the rings on each wall? The trick was to get a very dense, 3" diameter rubber ball through one of those rings. The game was played much like soccer. Players could use elbows, knees, heads, and whatnot, but they could not use their hands. Because the ball was so hard, helmets and armor were worn. Clubs were used to bat the ball about. Getting the ball through the hoop was so difficult that it only took one point to win the game. Games lasted minutes, hours, days. The acoustics of the field are incredible. You can stand at the far end and drop a coin and hear it from the opposite end. This was so that relief players could be called into the game. Fans lined the top of the walls to watch (in the picture taken from the top of El Castillo, you can see the stairs that lead up there).
A closer shot of a ring. Note the black sections of wall. That is original stucco placed there by the Mayans.
The game had a deadly purpose. The winner or loser (opinions vary: I wrote in my book that the losers were sacrificed, but our Mayan guide is convinced that gods only take winners and it was considered such an honor to be sacrificed that players strove to win the honor of dying) lost his head at the end. This is depicted above. You can see the winning (to go with our guide's explanation) team captain kneeling on the right in the photo above. He's been decapitated by the other team captain. Spurting from his neck are six snakes (snakes always represent blood) and one flowering plant (representing the continuous renewal of life, even in death). The other team captain is on the left -- you can see him better in the photo below.
In this team captain's left hand, you can see the decapitated head with snakes streaming from the neck. In his other hand, you can see the obsidian knife with which he decapitated his opponent. Between the head and the corpse, there's a round dish which features a skull and a penis (life and death). The skull is talking to the corpse. The penis is talking to the head. In death shall you yet live (supposedly with the gods).
This platform represents the thousands of heads that were taken in the game. The heads were mounted on poles atop the platform, while the bodies were cremated.