January 25, 2025
“Their were no aliens, wizards, sorcerers, magicians, or….witches. It was just we Mayans in our capacity for great observation of nature”
Mayan Tour Guide
We had seen Mayan ruins before, in numerous documentaries or demented portrayals like in Indiana Jones, the History Channel, or the old Leonard Nimoy series “In Search of”. Or worse the Mel Gibson film Apocalypto. Even the Marvel movies reimagined Namor-The Submariner character as the Mayan god Kukulkan.
(I have to admit that idea was pretty cool and the portrayal is popular here in Yucatan)
But I digress..
In truth we had only a rudimentary understanding of with the subject and we were not prepared with the grandeur of what we saw this morning. Over the course of our travels we have had the privilege of visiting many ancient sites. We have walked over the stones of Angkor Wat and Pompeii. We have visited Greek temples and numerous Roman ruins. We have explored old crumbling castles and remains of once great estates.
Today rivaled and exceeded many of those wonders.
This is Uxmal. (Pronounced Ush-mal). This is one of the largest and most well preserved sites in the country.
The sheer scale of these 1000 year old stone monuments is humbling especially considering how advanced the construction techniques that were employed. In order to succeed the Mayans needed to understand fairly complex mathematics, acoustics, engineering, stonework, water management, and astronomy.
And despite the late great Leonard Nimoy’s insinuations, no aliens were involved.
The day could not have been better for touring. The skies were a brilliant blue with mixed high cumulous clouds. It was 78 degrees. We arrived and the jungle first gave way to the central structure here (Seen above) - The Temple of the Magician. - So named because in Mayan folklore, the great temple was built in a single day by a powerful wizard dwarf.
In truth it is one of five temples built on top of each other over many years. It was used for worship and administrative issues.
As we explore these sites in is probably a good idea to have a general idea of how they were governed. Unlike the Aztecs to the North and the Incas to the South they did not have a central government or ruler in which all cities served. Instead, the communities were more like city states of autonomous fiefdoms that mostly focused on just there own citizens.
While Uxmal had been here for hundreds of years , it did not reach it’s zenith until around 850 - 925 CE. At that time Europe was in it’s dark age and was mostly a series of agricultural communities dealing with marauding Vikings. America was a land of multiple largely nomadic cultures, and Japan, unknown to the world, was a thriving monarchy with elaborate court systems, art, and culture.
Uxmal does not have a natural water supply. Their were no rivers or lakes or even cenotes near by to service the estimated 25,000 population. The Mayans developed an elaborate rain cistern system that was separate from the effuse of the populations sanitation system to service the community.
Uxmal’s strength lay in agriculture - principally corn. The land near the city hosts rich red fertile loam that yields abundant crops. This in turn was traded with other neighboring communities for other supplies through a system of paved roads carved out of the jungle.
But, back to the buildings. In the day, these great structures were covered in a plaster like material and painted red and blue. Consider this fact, despite building stone buildings many meters high, no metal tools were used. The soft limestone was cut and shaped by hand using harder stones such as obsidian. Their is not masonry cement. What you do see today was used in reconstructions to help repair the buildings that had fallen into disrepair over the centuries.
The “Nunnery” you see here with this courtyard and surrounding buildings was so named by the Spanish who felt it resembled convents back home. It had nothing to do with training nuns. Archeologists have determined this was a university with numerous class rooms surrounding the central yard.
The friezes highlighting the tops of buildings are characteristic of Mayan architecture. Sides of buildings would be relatively plain then crowned with elaborate motifs honoring gods such as Chaak and Kukulhan. Once you figure out what the figures represent, deciphering the building becomes much easier. After a few minutes we could easily identify Chaak and Kulkuhan on the walls on our own. Other symbols such as snake skin, turtles, and feathers became clear as well.
This elegant structure atop a carefully constructed plateau is the Governor’s mansion. Here the ruler and his extended family controlled the city.
The series of parallel walls below was where Pok-ta-pok was played. This was a ball game played with young men. It was quite challenging. It was a cross between soccer, rugby, andquidditch . You hit a hard rubber ball without using your hands of feet back and forth. The captain was near the hoop you see on the wall. If you get the ball into the hoop, your team won instantly.
But the prize was less than desirable. You see the game was used by the local shaman to appease Chaak, the rain god. If a Captain won, he was considered worthy of sacrifice to appease the fickle deity. After he scored, he would immediately kneel down ceremoniously and allow himself to be decapitated.
It was considered a great honor. In a real sense it was the ultimate blood sport.
As to human sacrifices, the Aztecs were much more aggressive with this practice than the Mayans but I got to thinking about it. Yes it was barbaric and I am in no way condoning such practices. But, are we really so much better with our own country’s history? We enslaved millions of human beings under the most horrendous conditions imaginable and killed untold hundreds of thousands brutally. And this practice went on for hundreds of years. Are our hands really so clean?
Somewhere around the year 900 CE Mayan temples stopped expanding, and people left the great cities. There are many theories to why this occurred but to this day we do not know for sure. It seems evident that famine played a role, drought, environmental disasters due to over use of the land, and most likely, the effects of constant wars between the various city states.
We don’t have today many records that were written down that might shed more light on the mystery, It is not that the Mayans couldn’t write. The kept detailed codices and other written works. So what happened to them?
Diego de Landa was a Franciscan priest who was sent to Yucatan to convert the natives. They strongly resisted his efforts. So one day, in a Mayan community not far from here at his church he ordered every idol, written work, codices, and tablet the Mayans made brought to him.
Calling for a Inquisition similar to what was happening back home, de Landa wanted to purge the “evil” of the Mayan ways from the land. He would later claim his motivation was to stop human sacrifices. Who knows if that was true but he received a blessing of Pope Paul III anyway.
So de Landa took all of this history to the front of his church and he burned it all in the name of unity, peace, and christian justice. Only three books survived. They are located in Spain, France, and Dresden Germany.
It didn’t work. The Mayans would eventually assimilate to a degree in Spanish culture. But it would not be complete for another 700 years.
The Mayans were never defeated and still thrive today.
Wonderful pictures and very interesting. Thanks for sharing your trip with us