Chichen Itza in Mexico is one of the most monumental of a series of Mayan ruins in the Yucatan area. Mayan culture has been polularized lately due to some poorly historically structured films and because of the Mayan 2012 apocalypse predictions. However, very little that has been popularized about this amazingly advanced and complicated culture has been accurate. My fascination with the Mayan culture began with my trip to Chichen Itza. We were lead through the sprawling ruins of the fallen city by an amazingly knowledgable Mayan guide that explained to us that Mayan history came in phases and that the ruins were in layers depending on their period of origin. There were the Olmec, Toltec, and Classical Mayan phases, none of which were surviving when the first Europeans set foot on the shores of the New World.
One of the most fascinating things our guide explained to us about the Mayans had to do with the popular 2012 prophecy. At the time we travelled, the 2012 prophecy was far less well known. Our guide told us that the Mayan calender was cyclical and that the Mayan's believed that the world was born and died many times. He talked about the last apocalypse. He said that it was an apocalypse of water and that the earth was covered in a great flood. He said that when that age, the age of water, was brought to and end by the flood a new age was born, an age of fire. We are now in the age of fire. In 2012 our age of fire will end in fire and an age of ether will be born. The end of the world will also be the beginning of a new world.
The history of Chichen Itza itself is bathed in blood. The Mayan's were deeply religious and believed that it was a great honor to die for the gods. In the Popul Vuh, the Mayan Bible, the Mayan's lay out their faith in sometimes tedious details. Their faith was deep and long and they were willing to die for it. In fact, some of the best athletes that competed in the famous ball courts were sacraficed. The Mayan's didn't fear death and see sacrafice with dread and horror. They saw death as a passage to the next world. Chichen Itza was the site of mass sacrafices.
Chichen Itza may have also died in violence. Some archeaological evidencs shows that in 1221 a great civil war may have contributed to the disappearance of Mayan Culture in the great cities at the time. By the time the Europeans saw Chichen Itza, it was already a ghost city.
What is most interesting about the ghosts that are said to wander these old ruins is that it is not the great pyramids that are haunted. The places where the sacrafices went on and where the stone was stained with blood remain quiet. It is the old observatory that is said to be haunted by the spectors of old priests and Mayan men. Many tourists and guides have described seeing spectors wandering this site. The Mayans were brilliant astronomers and were able to compute the circumference of the earth long before Europeans. They mapped the stars and predicted astrological events so perfectly that we can still count on their astrological predictions to come true. The observatory was in many ways the most important place to them as their religion was deeply connected to the movement of the stars. It therefore seems appropriate that it is this place that the ghosts cling too. The ghosts of the sacraficed have gone to the embrace of the gods, but those that searched for knowledge in the light of the stars are still lingering, searching for answers in the night sky.
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