SACRED CENOTE AND THE THE GREAT BALL COURT

The Maya people depended for their survival on successful crops of maize and beans - the staples of everyday calories for the populace. Because there are no rivers in the Yucatan, rain was essential to the germination of new seeded plots, and the rulers of Chichen Itza claimed they had the direct link to the gods, and in particular, to the rain god Chaac.

Above the Adventure Caravaners mill around our guide as he explains the psychology used by the rulers to the group at the edge of the Sacred Cenote.
The rulers would offer articles of jade, gold, and other precious types to Chaac by sending them to the depths of the Sacred Cenote. They also selected strategic times to make human sacrifices into the Sacred Cenote. According to out guide, human sacrifices were not an everyday event, but would be made on special occasions when Chaac needed more powerful invocation. He suggested that the rulers had to use this sparingly because if the rains did not come after many human sacrifices they could lose credibility, and that was the rulers' most valuable asset.
Along the paths between the cenote and other buildings was a multitude of local vendors of Maya artifacts, both new and claimed to be old.
Here is a vendor with his entire inventory on his back and head strap - Maya teamster style. They had no pack animals nor carts, so human transport was the main means of cargo transport. The ancient culture persists!

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Juego de Pelota - see the Chichen Itza plan in the previous post.

One of the first venues at Chichen Itza was the great ball court. Central American native cultures used a ballgame played between ramps and walls using a latex rubber ball in many civilizations. The game had religious meanings, and was manipulated by the priests and the ruling elites to influence the masses in the same way that the Roman emperors used bloody gladiator combat in the Coliseum.

This is the largest ball court in Central America. It has walls over 38 feet tall and goal rings high up decorated by intertwined feathered serpents. It must have taken long training and talent for the two teams of 4 to 6 players competing to pass the 6 pound hard rubber ball through one of these goal loops. The guide told us it was actually rare for a team to make a goal, and the game ended at that point.

At the base of the high interior walls are slanted benches with sculpted panels of teams of ball players. In one panel, one of the players has been decapitated and from the wound emits seven streams of blood; six become wriggling serpents and the center becomes a winding plant.

Our guide here is showing us a reproduction of a Maya book - an accordion-like fold of fiber paper coated with a hard chalk type finish - that depicts the mural on the wall of the court.

Notice the large obsidian knife held in the right hand of the defeated captain on the left, and the bleeding head of the winning team's captain (!) hanging from the other. On the right is his headless kneeling body. Only the winner merited to go in the presence of Chaac. TIP: Double-click on the picture to enlarge it! Click the back button to continue.

Few books of this type survive because the Spanish burned most of the Maya books they found in an attempt to eradicate their religion and replace it with Catholicism.