The historical Chichen-Itza

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Maya-Culture

The mayan culture has produced an important architecture, that has gotten itself in numerous ruins, Palenque, Uxmal, Mayapán, Copán, Tikals, Uaxactún and Chichén belong to Itzá. These places were the big religious ceremony centers.
Normally, the installations consisted of a row of pyramid-hills, that grouped itself around an open place. The pyramids built over again and again were composed from hewn stones and normally showed a steep stairway on one or several sides. Usually, the inside of a pyramid consisted of earth and rubble; the foundations were from stone occasionally. At stone-walls, one gave up mortars normally. Wood was used with door-falls and sculptures. The bow was admittedly unknown, they approached the upper stone-layers of two parallel walls for roofed buildings more and more together until they met one on top of the other.

Chichen-Itza
is the biggest and most famous pyramid-installation of Yucatan. The place appointed from the UNESCO to the world-culture-heir is preserved very well.
600 years approach, the settlement enjoyed of an economic and cultural high-bloom. Then, strangers penetrated. Kukulcan took Chichen-Itza in property.

The figure portrayed above on top of the page, carries a stone-plate to the stomach. Researchers suspect that this peel was certain for the blood and the hearts of the sacrificial individuals.

Chichen-Itza

Biggest and one of the most important cities of the Maya. To date their origin precisely, moves the scientists still today. Indisputable is that the place, lived in by Maya, means "settlement at the well of the Itzas" and it had its prime between 600 and 900 p. Chr.

This well should have dried up according to the tradition which was the reason for the downfall of the city Chichen-Itza. Instead of digging in the otherwise dry country for other wells, the mayas should have given up the city about 1250.

The Areal of archaeologists was discovered only 1841. 14 years later an US-American consul acquired it and began with excavations.
With rescue-works, archaeologists promoted not only Skellette from the well but also sacrifices from gold, copper and jade to light.

The most famous building is the temple of the Kukulcan. The nine-steps pyramid with a side-length of 55 m and a height of 30 m documents the calendar-knowledge of the Maya descriptively.

On each side of the building, 91 treads lead up to the temple. So one adds itself to the 364 steps the one before the entrance of the temple, so it yields the number of the anniversaries. The 52 plates appropriate at the sides embody the 52 weeks of the year.

The name of the temple is also "temples of the feather-decorated snake". Twice in the year, in the afternoons of the 21. March and the 23. September reveals itself the wonderful secret of the snake-heads that is appropriate at the low end of the stairway.

A shadow-throw originates, that awakens the impression, as if the snakes would leave the temple and would down-crawl the pyramid.

Unfortunately we were some days there too late in order to experience this drama. But they told us, that approximately 30.000 people from the peninsula Yucatan were present.

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