INSIDE THE PYRIMID
While the earliest archaeological artifacts thus far found at Chichen Itza date from AD 1 to 250, it is probable that the site was settled at a far earlier time. Proto-Mayan tribes had inhabited the flat limestone plateau that makes up much of the Yucatan peninsula for at least 8000 years. These nomadic peoples would certainly have discovered the enormous natural well, called a cenote, next to which the city of Chichen Itza later grew. As a Maya social center, Chichen Itza began its rise to prominence with the arrival of a seafaring people in the eighth century. Called the Itza by archaeologists, these merchant warriors first colonized the northern coastal areas of the Yucatan peninsula and then ventured inland. After their conquest of the holy city of Izamal, the Itza settled at the great cenote, then known as Wuk Yabnal, meaning "Abundance Place". Their city became known as Chichen Itza, which means "Mouth of the Well of the Itza". From this site, the Itza Maya rapidly became the rulers of much of the Yucatan peninsula.
"After over a thousand years of success, most of the kingdoms of the southern lowlands collapsed in the ninth century. In the wake of this upheaval, the Maya of the northern lowlands tried a different style of government. They centered their world around a single capital at Chichen Itza. Not quite ruler of an empire, Chichen Itza became, for a time, first among the many allied cities of the north and the pivot of the lowland Maya world. It also differed from the royal cities before it, for it had a council of many lords rather than one ruler."
The new structure was then built atop the old and, when it was ready for use, they conducted elaborate dedication rituals to bring it alive....So powerful were the effects of these rituals that the objects, people, buildings, and places in the landscape in which the supernatural materialized accumulated energy and became more sacred with repeated use. Thus, as kings built and rebuilt temples on the same spot over centuries, the sanctums within them became ever more sacred. The devotion and ecstasy of successive divine kings sacrificing within those sanctums rendered the membrane between this world and the Otherworld ever more thin and pliable. The ancestors and the gods passed through such portals into the living monarch with increasing facility. To enhance this effect, generations of kings replicated the iconography and sculptural programs of early buildings through successive temples built over the same nexus....As the Maya exploited the patterns of power in time and space, they used ritual to control the dangerous and powerful energies they released.
There were rituals which contained the accumulated power of objects, people, and places when they were no longer in active use. And conversely, when the community became convinced that the power was gone from their city and ruling dynasties, they just walked away."
Previous to the research of Schele and Freidel, the scholarly interpretation of the history of Chichen Itza held that the city was occupied several times by various groups of people, beginning with the Maya and ending with Toltec invaders from the city of Tula in central Mexico. While numerous archaeology and history books still ascribe to this interpretation, it is now known that the Maya occupied Chichen Itza continuously. The Toltec influences found in the art and architecture of certain areas of the great city were the result of the patronage of a cosmopolitan nobility involved in trade with the Tula Toltecs and other Mesoamerican peoples.
Recent studies at Chichen Itza by archaeoastronomers have revealed that other structures, besides the Pyramid of Kukulkan, have significant astronomical alignments. For example, windows in the unique circular building known as the Caracol were positioned to be in alignment with key positions of the planet Venus, particularly its southern and northern horizon extremes. Another fascinating, though seldom discussed, mystery at Chichen Itza concerns the strange acoustic anomalies observable at the great ball court and the temple of Kukulkan. Words softly whispered at one end of the great ball court (measuring 545 feet long by 225 feet wide) are clearly audible all the way at the other end and a single clap or shout sounded in the center of the ball court will produce nine distinct echoes. Visitors have also commented on a curious acoustic phenomenon at the pyramid of Kukulkan where the sound of a hand clap is echoed back as the chirping sound of the Quetzal bird, the sacred bird associated with both the name of the pyramid and its deity Kukulkan/Quetzalcoatl.
