Itza: A Forgotten History of the Maya

while Europe was in the Middle Ages across the world on the Yucatan Peninsula the Mayan civilization was in its prime well most of the pre-contact Mayan history was destroyed by the Spanish invaders there are a few stories that we can tease out of the remaining texts and one of those is the rise of a particular group of Maya called the Itza and they're long and influential history in the area they ruled from their mighty city of Chichen Itza which is today one of the most spectacular archaeological sites in the Yucatan and they were the last of the Maya to capitulate to the Spanish invaders 150 years after the rest of the Maya civilization had collapsed the rise the Magnificent civilization and the eventual fall of the Itza is a an epic tale the Beowulf for Gilgamesh of Mesoamerica it is history that deserves to be remembered the Mayan civilization unlike the nearby Aztec or Incan civilization was itself never an empire or ruled by a single leader instead the Maya were bound culturally and linguistically but were made up of numerous ethnic groups and tribes and were in general ruled by more powerful city states or local Lords the political patchwork nature of the Mayan civilization played a large part in their history one of these groups called lineages houses or tribes was the Itza it isn't known for sure when or where the Itza originated but it seems that they arrived in the Yucatan at the end of them by a classic period around 900 AD they may have come from the southern mine Highlands modern-day Guatemala and Honduras migrating during the massive collapse that marked the end of the classic Mayan period in all the narrative sources we have for the Maya the Itza seemed to be specifically a people apart they were feared and hated by other mine groups and called those who speak our language brokenly they seem to have had unique customs or one also called rogues and disrespectful of their elders Spanish friar Andrea de Avendano says that they beheaded men over 50 so that they shall not learn to be wizards and to kill when they arrived in the Yucatan they settled at a side of a smallish town called Balaam the name has not been positively dice deciphered but possible translations include seven great rulers seven Great Houses and seven bushy places shortly after they set up control the city it became known as chichen itza a name meaning at the mouth of the well of the Itza probably referring to the great water field sinkhole known as the sacred Senate a the lowlands of the Yucatan have no rivers or lakes and said they have sinkholes that offer access to one of the most complex systems of underground caves and rivers in the world under the hegemony of the Itza tribe chichen itza became the most important center of the Mayan lowlands the former centers of kabah and Joshua were on the decline and the Itza were able to fill the gap at its height Chetan itza held sway almost over the entire Yucatan Peninsula the city controlled a port on the north coast called the Isla Cerritos and through it the eat says became the important players and trade up and down the coast especially valuable and trade was their control of the natural salt resources and they traded for Jade gold povery and obsidian this was the height of cheats Anita's dominance the city of possibly as many as 50,000 people it was during this time that the greatest construction took place at the site possibly the most famous structure of the city stands over the carefully flattened ground of the city and dominates the ruins the temple of cuckoo column the Mayan word for the snake serpent God gets a quatl also known as El Castillo or the castle the large Step Pyramid is a marvel of architecture designed the same major ceremonial center it is perfectly positioned provide natural amplification for speakers standing a topic the pyramid was built to be a physical representation of the Mayan calendar each side of the pyramid has 91 steps with the last one leading into the temple at the top representing each of the 365 days in a year the nine levels bisected by stairways on each side represent the 18 months of the Mayan calendar perhaps most impressively on the equinoxes each year the light hits the pyramid in a way that creates the winding image of a snake on the stairway which slowly descends with the Sun to represent kukulkan's descent from the sky to the underworld signs of cheese Denise's wealth or even now present in the ruins of the site the temple of kukulcan lies atop a second temple and with the towers temples main chamber lies a Jaguar throne studded with valuable jade and shells at its peak the temples were painted with brilliant colors very little which remains today Chetan eats is also home to the largest ball court in Central America the ball game played by Mesoamerican cultures was unique among ancient sports in that it was played by many different cultures across a vast space over 1,300 ball courts have been found stretching across time from 1400 BC the contact with the Europeans the ball court a cheetah needs a Dwarfs any other yet discovered 550 by 230 feet its walls are decorated with detailed depictions of players the sheer size of the field was a statement of the oversized wealth and power of the city in the Postclassic period another symbol eats as well that their height is the enormous temple of the Warriors and beside it the thousand columns some the columns in front of the warrior temple are carefully decorated with depictions of individuals and no two of them are the same these may have represented trophies of captured foes as well as paintings of particularly famous or announced soldiers of the city two more much smaller ball courts stand within the complex just north of the city lies the great sacred Senate a an important and sacred ceremonial site where the Maya threw offerings including human sacrifices to their deities archeologists dread the Senate a day in the 1920s and found that the people sacrificed here seem to come from all over the Mesoamerican region sometimes during the reign the ETS became associated with the Toltecs the arrival the Toltecs traditionally separates old cheats and complex of smaller temples and edifices in the Mayan pew extol and new cheats in the side of the ball court El Castillo and the temple of the Warriors which have tall textiles the Toltecs have a complex place within Mesoamerican archaeology they've traditionally been remembered as a warlike people who ruled an empire from the city of Tula and their King was called gets a quadrille or kukulcan after the Mesoamerican God much of the history of the Toltecs we have come specifically from Aztec sources who revered the Toltecs as an ideal Society sometime during the reign of the eat says the Toltecs became involved with Chichen Itza which is evident in the Toltec style of the later and larger it's early literature theorized the city had been conquered by the Toltecs but modern study has brought this idea into question despite the Toltec influence on the architecture archaeologists emphasized that chichen itza is neither uniquely mayan nor uniquely Toltec but as an active blend of ideas from the central mexican area and traditional Mayan concepts that the Mayan relationship with the Toltecs is still a matter of interpretation and in fact some scholars suggest that the Aztec description of the Toltecs is so tangled in myth that the Toltecs might not really have existed as described at all sometime during their time in the Yucatan the eat service had to have abandoned cheats Anissa to found a city of shock and put'em this foray into the wilderness of the Yucatan may have lasted over 200 years although its veracity is uncertain they were eventually chased out of shock and put'em apparently by another group of Itza according to the Chronicles after that they lived for 40 years under the trees and ash and poverty they eventually returned to Chichen Itza in the tenth century well the Maya had many written histories during the Spanish conquest much of what was left behind was systematically and deliberately destroyed only a few late Maya text survived in which the coalescing indigenous in Spanish traditions combined to present a muddled memory of Mayan history one of these is the Chilam Balam the name representing an author Chilam meaning priest and Balaam meaning Jaguar among the miscellaneous Mayan in Spanish parts of the text it also relates the story of the decline and fall of Chichen Itza sometime around the turn of the millennium the Mayan ruler mama cut to tool shoe foundered what historians called the League of my upon an alliance between cheats and Itza Bush mall and Maya pon da girdle and our Spanish bishop involved in the destruction of much of the Maya codices wrote that mayapan was founded by Valerius captains of the Itza while Uche Mall was formed by another Mayan tribe the shoe of the three cities chichen itza was the largest most important the league of my upend a fictive lee ruled the entire peninsula but was beset by internal and external conflict what little we know about cheats needs his fall is entwined with oral history and myth and comes from a handful of the Chilam Balam books the one found at the city of Ani the narratives are fragmentary and have been described as incoherent but parts of the story can be understood gives the date that the head chief of the cheat Sunita was driven out because of the treachery of who knock sail and the city was too populated what precisely this Treasury was is a mystery involved was definitely the city whoosh model chalk chalk possibly mythical king of chichén itzá and who knocks sail leader of the city of mayapan wound up sails origin is unknown but one story we have from his life is that he survived being thrown into the sacred Senate a at chichen itza many people were thrown into the senate a is part of ritual sacrifices but there was a custom that if someone survived that we pulled or would climb from the senate a to give a prophecy about the upcoming year who knocks sail possibly as a prisoner was thrown into the senate a and the following day give a prophecy a mush cook leader of the cheats Nitza then helped terrain sail to become leader of my upon the events leading up to who knocks sails treachery or even foggier in a tale reminiscent of the Greek legend of Troy a prince of cheats needs has stolen others wife precipitating the war italia the story of survived the conquest son yachts or white flower was a princess meant to be married to all lel prince of each model but the princess had fallen in love with con cake or black serpent prince of cheats anita who on her wedding day brought his warriors to the festivities and stole her away to avenge lel and who knocks al raised a band of warriors from central mexico seven men is named in the Chilam Balam and with them sought to destroy cheats anita but when who knocks ale arrived the itza had already fled ahead of him it isn't clear if there was a fight or if the city was sacked there's some evidence that the city was sacked near this time but some scholars have suggested chichen itza it seems to be an important center decades before mayapan rose to prominence lisa were said to have gone into the heart of the forest of tashu look pool near lake pétain the it so were still at lake pétain 400 years later when they told Spanish priests had come from chichen itza mayapan then took over undisputed control the peninsula and remained in power for another 250 years till further infighting brought to have the League of mayapan entirely in the mid 1400s chichen itza remained an important ceremonial and pilgrimage site even after the conquest though they did not call themselves itza likely it's a descendants help to fight tenaciously against the Spanish before the Yucatan was subdued in the 1540s Maya pen itself sometimes called the last great city of the Maya was built to mimic the great city - has a temple of kukulcan similar to El Castillo although much smaller at its height it may have been a city of 12,000 people in pétain were the epicly it's a mile if today the itza founded a city called no japantown meaning great island unlike pétain the Spanish called it Tyus al a corruption of Thai Itza meaning place of the Itza and today it is known as flores guatemala while they remain busy building an empire of 230,000 square kilometers inside under four different kingdoms subordinate to the Itza which was at its height when Cortez landed in 1519 after the battle the synthezoid to the landing the Itza sent Cortez several princesses as an offering of peace and one of these princesses Marleen teen would play a role in the fall of the Aztec empire the it'sa were an embattled Empire than the conquest as the Spanish encroached on the kingdoms Cortes executed the last Aztec King while he was travelling through it's a territory in 1523 he celebrated Mass at no tape at 10:00 with connect that December after the fall of most of the Mayan world in the 1540s the Itza remained independent and steadfastly refused to submit to Spanish rule or the convert to Catholicism the heavily forested and remote nature of the Petain area contributed to the eats his continued independence as the rest of pre-colonial Mesoamerica fell one after the other to Spanish rule they defeated the Spanish armies and to conquer them in 1622 by ambush and his latest 1696 Spanish preach preach peaceful aid to the last it's a king and not a Pathan but in 1697 a Spanish army under Martin de ursa governor of the Yucatan came to the city and officially forced the Itza to submit to Spanish there was a short fight but the use of an or powered attack boat caused heavy casualties and forced the heatset to surrender they were one of the last injustice cities to be conquered 150 years after the Spanish conquered the Yucatan the story of the Itza is one of greatness of decline of tenacity in the ever-changing political landscape of Mayan culture they managed to cling to an extraordinary amount of power for more than a thousand years and while much of their history has been lost or destroyed or mytha sized what remains is the story of a determined and crafty people who have indelibly left their mark upon this earth their famous pyramid at chichen itza connected with the perhaps now infamous mayan calendar has become a famous icon of their people today only a few thousand ethniki to survive and only a few of those still speak the language version of Maya perhaps as you as a dozen still speak it fluently their great city of Chichen Itza had already been abandoned by the time the Spanish arrived in the Americas and by 1588 it was being used as a cattle ranch American Explorer John Lloyd Stephens published a book with illustrations of the city in 1843 which would leave more explorers and later photographs of the overgrown ruins in the longtime sense much of the site has been excavated the great Senate a has been dragged for Mayan artifacts and parts of the site have been restored it is now one of the most popular archaeological sites to visit in Mexico we see two and a half million visitors in 2017 2017 Sunita was voted one of the new wonders of the world the itza and their once magnificent civilization are literally itched in the stone there and in the minds of the millions of people who now come to cede the city that they left behind I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets of forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchants on teespring calm and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 405,874

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, mayan history, chichen itza, mexico, yucatan, ancient history

Id: 65Qr20TLBxQ

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 28 2019