Mexico, Part 4: Chichen Itza concluded

Sports arenas are found within the remains of many of the ancient Mayan cities. These arenas are adorned with wall carvings that have prompted historians to infer that spectators sat up on top of the stone structure to watch competition between two teams that took place on the field in the open space between walls. According to our tour guides, the prevailing theory is that points were scored when a player used his hip to propel a heavy (4 kg) ball through a stone orifice. Throwing and kicking were apparently against the rules.



Seriously, they used their hips? I find myself somewhat skeptical.

First of all, a 4 kg ball is heavy, and unlikely to bounce easily. Second, those target rings are 5 or 6 meters off the ground. Third, the present-day Mayans are generally quite diminutive; we Americans tend to tower over them, making me suspect that their ability to propel projectiles higher than we could is unlikely. And finally, I doubt that today's finest athletes would have trouble hip-slapping anything through one of those rings, no matter how long they practiced to do it. The whole thing seems implausible.

On the other hand, the same cultures do enjoy watching guys kick a soccer ball around for an hour while rarely scoring a goal -- so perhaps an impossible game that resulted in zero points was considered to be highly entertaining.

But here's the other consideration: The carvings include images of proud uniformed competitors carrying a severed head, in what has been assumed to represent a part of the victory ceremony. Our guides said that there is an ongoing academic debate about whether the disembodied head belonged to the loser...or to the victor. It seems natural to assume that the winner would remain intact as a perquisite of triumph. But because there is some evidence that ritual sacrifice was part of the culture, some of the eggheads think that the winning team's captain was beheaded as a reward for being awesome.

OK. Whatever. But here's my theory; the stone structure wasn't a sports arena at all, but a theater. And the whole "hip-thrusting the ball through the donut" thing was done with the pre-celluloid equivalent of special effects. The carvings of decapitated dudes are their version of our movie posters that show Arnold Schwarzenegger with half his face exposing a chrome skeleton.



Anyway, I guess I'll summarize my discussion of Chichen Itza by saying the buildings were really cool, the tour was fascinating, and the experience was delightful (despite the annoying crap peddlers.)

From there, we took the bus over to one of the local cenotes. These are basically limestone cave formations with fresh water (and fish) in them. There are some that are actually underground, but most of the tourist-accessible cenotes are better described as limestone sinkholes. The one we went to had viewing platforms built into the wall, and was gorgeous.







We swam around and looked at the fishes for quite a while. I even did a couple of watermelons off the dock platform, which probably made the fish wonder why their cousins in US caves get to swim in peace.

At least they did ask us to shower off our sunscreen before polluting the cenote. I have no idea how deep this particular hole was, but the bottom was not visible.

I would definitely recommend the entire experience. That concludes my discussion of our first tour. The next post will cover the subsequent tour to Tulum, Coba, and another cenote! See you then!