Yucatan, Mexico, land of the jaguar, land
of the cenotes, land of the Maya, this is the story of a wonder of the world as you
have never seen it before. Join me in this journey and discover the secrets
that the architecture of this ancient city keeps. What’s inside the pyramid of Kukulkan? How does the feathered serpent grow? What were the human sacrifices like that the
Mayans offered in the sacred cenote? What did Chichen Itza look like? This city, located on a valley in the peninsula
of Yucatan that was still used as a pilgrimage center when the Spanish first arrived, saw
its golden age between the 9th and 12th centuries AD. Unlike Teotihuacán and other cities in central
Mexico, Mayan cities were not formally planned, and they expanded organically, most Mayan
cities showed a tendency to grow outward from the center, and upward as new structures were
built on top of the previous ones. The idea of the pyramid was born as a need
to rise and see above the enormous sea of jungle that exists in this area, however,
over time the pyramid became an object of worship and rituals, part of the worldview
of the Maya. Today, buildings have a gray appearance due
to the stone they’re made of, however, back in the day they were covered in bright colors. Red was the color for temples, pyramids, and
religious buildings, but yellow, green, black, and especially white were also used for civic
buildings. Blue was the color of the gods, in human sacrifices
Mayans covered the victims with this color. The blue pigment was very easy to make, since
it was obtained from the indigo flower, a copious plant in the region, and it really
impressed Europeans, who obtained their pigment from lapis lazuli, an extremely rare and difficult
mineral to work with, which is why the blue pigment was used very little in European paintings
of that time, while in New Spain it was very abundant. We begin the tour of Chichen Itza in the great
north platform, probably the oldest part of the city, which forms an important relationship
between its buildings. Mayans did not let trees grow in the important
areas of their cities, since we are in the middle of an immense jungle, where nature
is aggressive and can gradually destroy architecture. Upon entering the precinct, the first building
we find is the great ball court. The ball game was a sport that was played
by the pre-Columbian peoples of Mesoamerica. The rules of the game are not known precisely,
but it is known that it had an important religious connotation and that the players were sacrificed. The great ball court of Chichén Itzá is
the largest game court in Mesoamerica, measuring 120x30 m, although the most important thing
for the game was not the size of the court, but the shape. The shape of the court was so important that
it remained the same for hundreds of years. This basic form consisted of masonry walls
defining a rectangular playing enclosure, ending in a goal on either side of its axis. The plan resembles a capital letter I. The lateral structures enclosing the precinct
often incorporated a sloping bank, creating surfaces from which the rubber ball could
bounce or roll. In some cases, other structures share the
ballcourt walls. In the case of the Great Ball Court at Chichen
Itza, the North Temple uses part of the end wall of the court as its platform, allowing
the elite privileged views of the court. The goals are made of two stone rings with
images of intertwined feathered serpents into which the players tried to score by hitting
the ball with their bones, that is, with their elbows, hips and knees. Below, the sloped banks have reliefs of scenes
of player sacrifices. It is likely that the scenes depicted refer
to mythological or historical events related to the rulers of Chichen Itza. At the back of the walls, there are steps
that allowed spectators to climb to the top to watch the game. Over the eastern side is the temple of the
jaguars and shields. In its upper level, two columns in the shape
of a feathered serpents support a temple. This temple has rooms at different levels
and on its interior walls it has vivid images of processions and battle scenes of the history
of Chichen Itza. In the lower room there is a throne in the
shape of a jaguar. Next to the great ball court is the Tzompantli,
a platform completely surrounded by friezes with reliefs of skulls, which reveal the function
that this building had. The red color that originally covered the
surface of the platform can still be distinguished in some places. This construction consisted of exhibiting
the skulls of enemies and sacrificed prisoners. We know the function of this type of building
because some of these were still in use in various parts of Mexico at the arrival of
the Spanish. The skulls here were shown pierced vertically,
one on top of the other. The purpose of this impressive tradition was
to commemorate the great acts of war as well as to frighten the neighbors and possible
rebellious subjects. A few meters from the Tzompantli is the platform
of eagles and jaguars. It is rectangular, with four steps, and bears
a close resemblance to other platforms located in the central axes of the squares that formed
the great city, such as the platform of Venus, which is located right in the center of the
precinct. All of these platforms probably served as
podiums for different rites. On the balustrades there are ascending feathered
serpents and on the panels there are representations of eagles and jaguars holding hearts. The platform of Venus is square, with stairways
on all four sides and balustrades ending in serpent heads. The decorated friezes show bodies of feathered
serpents among fish; there are representations of mythical creatures, a blend of jaguar,
eagle and snake with some human features that have been interpreted as representing the
planet Venus. The platform of Venus is closely related to
the pyramid and the path to the sacred cenote. The Temple of Kukulcán is the largest construction
that dominates the city of Chichén Itzá with a height of 30 m. It has low ornamentation, other than the huge
feathered serpents on the balustrades and on the columns at the top. From them the temple receives the name of
Kukulkan, which means feathered serpent in the Mayan language. Its shape is very interesting because it has
a perfectly square plan and a staircase on each of its four sides, something not very
common in Mexican pyramids that are normally frontal and have a single staircase on their
main side, therefore the shape of the pyramid forces you to move around it, it forces you
to walk and observe it from different points of view. This configuration is due to its location
within a square; Like the platforms, it is an architectural object placed in the middle
of an urban area, therefore, it is perfectly symmetrical from wherever it’s observed. So even though it's not too tall, it's not
huge, it's very imposing and the sky feels really, really close to you, because architecture
from Mesoamerica has a play with the horizons and with the perspective of the horizon, so,
you can see how imposing this thing is, and how close the sky feels. The temple of Kukulkan, also known as "el
Castillo" (the Castle in Spanish), demonstrates the advanced knowledge of astronomy, geometry,
mathematics and acoustics that the Mayans possessed. To understand the facade of this building,
we need to know the Mayan calendar. Being an agricultural society, for the Mayans
the seasons of the year were important, so a solar calendar called Haab was used, achieved
with the close observation of the path of the sun and the stars. The Haab is made up of 18 months of 20 days
each, and 5 additional days considered as inauspicious days, in which it was better
not to get up because the evil spirits were around. In this way, a year of the Mayan calendar
is made up of 365 days. The Mayan calendar was so exact that it had
the same number of days as the Roman calendar we use today. The Temple of Kukulkan has four stairways,
each with 91 steps, this adds up to 364, and if this small platform at the base of the
temple is considered, it adds up to 365, which represent the days in the Haab. In addition to the Haab, the Mayans used a
second calendar called Tzolkin that represented a sacred cycle of 260 days. Both calendars were merged in this calendar
round in which the combination of both gives rise to 18,980 unique days, equivalent to
52 years, which means that every 52 cycles of the Haab calendar the combination of both
calendars begins to repeat itself, and it was considered as the equivalent of a new
century. The numbers 18, 20, 5 and 52 can be deciphered
in the pyramid of Kukulkan: the temple has 9 bases; If any of the facades is viewed from
the front, by having the staircase in the center, the number of bases can be multiplied
by two, resulting in the number 18, corresponding to the 18 months that the Haab contains. In the upper temple there were 5 crenels on
each façade, these represent the 5 inauspicious days of the year, and if you add them all
up, you get 20 as a result, which are the days each month has. In the riser of each base you can see 3 panels
in bas-relief, and 2 in the top base, if you add them all you get a total of 26, which
when added to the 26 on the opposite side of the stairway gives you 52, which represent
the 52 cycles of the Haab in the calendar round. Every year a spectacular phenomenon occurs
in this pyramid. As you can see, the buildings in the complex
are not aligned with the cardinal points, but are tilted about 20° from the north. This causes that at sunset of each equinox,
the sun projects a spectacular play of light and shadow. This is the pyramid of Kukulkan, and right
here in this very spot is where once a year when the sun is in the zenith, in the highest
part, so this is where the tail of the snake grows and it's projected by the sun. Kukulkan, the feathered serpent, was a divinity
present in the mythology of many of the pre-Columbian peoples of Mesoamerica. On the equinoxes of March and September, the
phenomenon can be seen in all its splendor when the sun hits the nine bases and these
in turn cast their shadow on the balustrade in the shape of the body of the serpent, which
seems to descend from the temple with direction to the sacred cenote. So today is not the Equinox, but we're pretty
close to it, and so you can kind of see right there how the body of the snake is projected--
You can kind of see it right now because we're not quite in the date, but you can see how
it grows and it's projected by the sun all the way to the top. It is impressive that they were able to achieve
this effect almost a thousand years ago only with the observation of the solar path. Due to the fact that the eastern and southern
facades of the pyramid are deteriorated, no phenomenon of light and shadow is observed,
however it is likely that if the stairs and balustrades were restored, an effect that
evoked the ascent of the serpent to the pyramid could be appreciated. Therefore, the pyramid is not only a building
to perform Mayan rituals, but it is also an instrument to observe the count of time and
to mark the solstices and equinoxes, which are important dates for agricultural cycles
because the seasons change in those days of the year. The word equinox comes from the Latin aequinoctium
and this from aequus "equal" and nox "night", and it is the moment when the sun is over
the equator, making the night of equal duration as the day. There is another curious phenomenon that occurs
in these buildings, and that is, when you clap in front of the Temple, an acoustic effect
is produced. I will demonstrate. A noise is produced that is very similar to
the singing of a quetzal, the sacred bird of the Mayans. So this sound is created because of the position
that these buildings have with each other, it's right in front of it, and because of
the shape of the stairs and because of the shape of the pyramid. Tipically Mayan temples are made up of three
parts: platform, pyramid, and sanctuary. The sanctuary has a flat stone roof supported
by corbel vaults, and inside there are three rooms dedicated to important deities. In other pre-Columbian cities, the upper temple
of the pyramids is rarely preserved, this is because they used a structure with perishable
materials such as wooden beams, but in Chichen Itzá this is not the case. Here the ceilings were supported by corbel
vaults, a construction method invented by the Mayans where the stones get closer in
each row. Stone, being a resistant material, has endured
and thanks to that the upper temple of this pyramid is still standing after about a thousand
years. The Temple of Kukulkan contains inside another
temple from an earlier time known as the temple of the Red Jaguar because of the sculpture
inside, this temple is also made up of a platform, a pyramid and a sanctuary. Sometimes, when a calendrical cycle was completed,
that is 52 years, the Mayans built a new temple on top of the previous one, therefore under
the interior pyramid there is an even older temple, all three oriented in the same direction,
and everything is built on top of a cenote. The temple of the red jaguar was an important
discovery, as it contains the sculpture of a Chac Mool and a jaguar throne. The Chac Mool still has its shell teeth, eyes,
and nails, and the jaguar throne has its jade-encrusted eyes and spots, and its white-painted stone
teeth. And just so you get a general idea of this
site, we have this platform here, we have-- Over there is the Ball game that we saw before,
here we have the pyramid of Kukulkan, and over there the Temple of the Warriors. In the eastern part of the enclosure, is the
Temple of the Warriors, which owes its name to the dozens of pillars with reliefs of warriors
and prisoners with their hands tied. The wide spaces offered by the colonnades,
once covered with corbel vaults, allowed the presence of a large number of people during
important events. The many men represented on the pillars, armed
and in ceremonial clothing, has given the building its name. Several of them contain iconographic elements
next to their heads, which must represent the names of characters, personal attributes
or titles. The upper temple has an entrance divided into
three by serpent columns, preceded by a Chac Mool, a statue used as a sacrificial stone
and as an altar, where human hearts and other objects were placed as offerings to the gods. The walls and the corners of the outside of
the temple show long-nosed masks and man-bird-snakes with remains of their original polychromy. The interior of the temple had eight rooms
separated by an interior wall with an altar-table supported by small Atlas. Next to the temple of the warriors is the
so-called temple of the large tables, a pyramidal structure with four bases that support a higher
temple. Inside, it had a long altar made up of rectangular
stone slabs, supported by small Atlas with raised arms. In the upper frieze of the exterior walls
there was a procession of jaguars made in bright colors. Right next to this temple there is a hypostyle
hall that was closely related to the temple. To the south of these temples is the longest
colonnade on the site known as the West Colonnade. Originally covered with vaults, its main facade
looks towards the Great North Platform, but it has a corridor that connects this square
with the Plaza of the Thousand Columns behind it. It must have been built to accommodate the
large crowds that congregated during festivities, gatherings, and commercial exchanges. When going through the corridor in the middle,
you reach the Plaza of the Thousand Columns, which is a wide space delimited by colonnades
on a large base. Corbel vaults were supported by these colonnades
and generated enormous interior spaces, however, today only the columns remain. Some of its buildings were two-story buildings
and it is likely that their function was civic-religious, although it is also possible to think of a
commercial or residential use. The columns are as dense as those in an Egyptian
hypostyle hall. The so-called Northeast Colonnade, a hypostyle
hall with an altar at the end, is characterized by having a "rejollada" to its north, which
is a deep natural deep cavity in the ground that contained the rainwater that drained
from the plaza. The eastern side of the square is made up
of several buildings whose use is not very well known, however, it is thought that their
use must have been closely linked to what happened in the plaza since you can see their
interior from the center of the precinct. These buildings from left to right are: The
Palace of Balam Kauil Ahau, the Palace of the Sculpted Columns, the Temple of the Small
Tables, and the Southeast Colonnade. In the southern part of the square is the
Market, which is the best and largest example of the “courtyard-gallery” structures. Its gallery is related to the events of the
square, but inside it has a courtyard with tall columns that carried a roof of perishable
material, sloping towards the sunken courtyard, and the rainwater was drained through a stone
channel. The altars complete its equipment. Around the square of the thousand columns
there are three small ball game courts. This sport was practiced both in daily life
and in religious celebrations, so there was a need to have multiple courts in the city. Like I said, the platform of Venus in the
Great North Platform has an important relationship with the pyramid of Kukulkan, as these structures
form an axis with the Sacred Cenote, which is located to the north. An artificial road called Sacbé communicates
the great precinct of the Pyramid with the sacred cenote. The Sacbé is 270 m long, and its sides are
slopes covered with carved stone. The processions departed from the Castillo
towards the sacred cenote, where the ritual cleansing of those to be sacrificed and of
the officiants would be performed by means of a steam bath. A cenote is a natural well, formed over thousands
of years by the collapse of the earth's bedrock. In the peninsula of Yucatan there are more
than 6000 cenotes, if you locate all of them on a map you will see that they form a ring. They were formed thanks to a meteorite that
fell on the Yucatan coast millions of years ago, associated with the extinction of the
dinosaurs. This phenomenon, and several subsequent geological
processes, caused the formation of the ring of cenotes, some of the most beautiful sites
on the planet. In the Yucatan peninsula there are almost
no rivers and there are very few lakes, usually with marshy water, the only source of drinking
water are the cenotes, so the Mayans formed their cities around them, since they contain
fresh and clear water. The Mayans also used the cenotes as pilgrimage
centers. In them they made human sacrifices that they
sent to the gods as messengers, since the cenote was considered one of the main entrances
to the underworld, where many of the gods were. This is also the reason why the pyramid of
Kukulkan was built over a cenote, because the cenote represents the underworld, the
lower part of the pyramid represents the earth, and the upper part represents the heavens. The sacred cenote of Chichen Itzá has a diameter
of 60 m, the water level is 22 m from the edge and its depth ranges between 6 and 12
m. The explorations carried out in its waters
have discovered pieces and fragments of gold, copper, obsidian, shell, copal, among other
materials, as well as bone remains of children and adults. The name Chichen Itzá in the Mayan language
means mouth of the well of the Itza, referring to the sacred cenote and the Itza, powerful
mythical-historical lords of the city during the time of its growth and peak. There is a second large cenote in the center
of Chichen Itza called Xtoloc, next to which is a temple with the same name. Probably its function was religious worship,
with ceremonies linked to the cenote. The entrance of the temple is oriented towards
a Sacbé that connects it with the Plaza of the Thousand Columns, with the Plaza of the
Ossuary, and with the Caracol. The Plaza of the Ossuary is made up of 5 constructions,
we first have the platform of the tombs, which had a funerary use, its columns that rise
from the bedrock supported a roof. Then we have another platform of Venus, very
similar to the one in the Great North Platform, with a flat surface, four access steps and
the reliefs of the man-bird-serpent that adorn the building. Then there is the round platform, which is
one of the few examples of that form at Chichen Itza, and finally the Ossuary, also known
as the tomb of the high priest. This square pyramid also has a staircase on
all four sides, and all its balustrades finish off the base with serpent heads and have their
intertwined body in bas-relief. The blue-floored interior had altar-tables
carried by Atlas, very similar to these in the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The alignment Ossuary-Platforms-Sacbé-Cenote
Xtoloc, from west to east, repeats the arrangement observed in the Great Platform with the Castillo-Platform
of Venus-Sacbé-Sacred Cenote, from south to north. It is a type of regularity in the architectural
distribution of the city. A few meters from the group of the Ossuary
is the House of the Metates, which forms a set of rooms with large porticoes connected
to each other, they were probably a residence for people related to the ceremonial use of
the architectural complex of the Ossuary and its maintenance. South of the Ossuary complex is the Casa Colorada,
Spanish for red house. Its name comes from the remains of red paint
inside. This temple must have had a religious and
public function because of the ball court that is attached to the back of the building. It forms a complex and a square with the Casa
del Venado, the deer house, which is a very similar building although today it is in ruins. A few meters further south we come to one
of the most important squares, the Plaza of the Caracol. The name is due to the spiral staircase located
inside this building, since caracol is the Spanish word for snail and for spiral staircase. It’s also known as the Observatory due to
its function. It preserves a round tower and several square
elements aligned with notable differences. The windows and openings are aligned with
events in the night sky that made possible close observation of the planets and stars,
the movement of Venus and the sunset on key dates. The temple of the panels is located on the
eastern side of the square, on a high base with a colonnade in the front, just like the
temple of the warriors. It owes its name to the north and south panels
of the colonnade, which show scenes with men, animals and plants. The offerings rescued during its exploration
belong to fire ceremonies that were celebrated inside the temple. Finally we have the complex of the nuns. It is a monumental complex to the south of
the city, which contains its own Palaces, its ball court and a low wall. The main building, with an upper temple on
the second floor, shows a rich interior decoration of mural painting, A stone for human sacrifice
visible from the plaza, speaks of the ceremonies associated with this building, and outside,
mosaics of Late Puuc style stone. The Puuc is an architectural style used by
the Mayans of certain geographical regions, mainly in the north of the peninsula. Along the route in Chichen Itza you can see
several characteristic elements of this style, such as long-nosed masks, round columns with
square capitals, corbel vaults, and stone mosaics on some facades. The courtyards attached to this construction
have one-story buildings that could have served as a residence for some high-status group. The eastern facade of the so-called annex
exhibits a profusion of long-nosed masks with a central character sitting on a throne of
feathers and a door in the shape of a monster's mouth, a distant reminiscence of the Chenes
style, another architectural style used by the Mayans of the south of the Peninsula of
Yucatan, where some of the Itza came from. The inscription refers to a solar calendar
date and mentions several planets. This building is known as the Church, a small
one-room building that receives its name because of its proximity to the nuns' complex. It shows an exuberant decoration on its upper
façade with long-nosed masks, figures of the four bearers of the corners of the sky,
and a character integrated into the central mask. Its function is unknown, but it constitutes
one of the best examples of architecture close to the Puuc style at the site. The city of Chichen Itzá was abandoned in
the 13th century, it is not known why, but the Mayans used to abandon their cities, and
most of the Mayan archaeological sites that we visit today are cities that had already
been abandoned when the Spanish conquerors arrived. Chichen Itza is one of the most impressive
archaeological sites in the world and certainly in Mexico, which is why today it is considered
a World Heritage Site, and a wonder of the world. Thank you so much for watching, I hope you
learned from this, I hope you enjoyed. Please leave a like, subscribe to my channel,
follow me on Patreon so I can continue to show you these kind of fantastic monuments. I want to thank my friend Mathias from Maya
3d for allowing me to use his 3d model of Chichen Itza to make the animations in this
video. In the description box of this video there
is a link to his website so you can see all of his work. Thank you so much, see you soon!
