The Ancients - Chichén Itzá

Episode Date: July 30, 2023

One of the new Seven Wonders of the World, Chichen Itza is home to monumental pyramids, temples, and is a treasure trove of archaeological findings. Built in the early 5th century by the Maya, it has provided invaluable insight into Maya civilisation; from discoveries of sporting arenas to ancient feathered serpents, it's allowed an image of Mayan daily life to be created. But what specifically does Chichen Itza tell us about Mayan society - and what can it tell us about the collapse of Mayan civilisation?In this episode, Tristan welcomes Annabeth Headrick back to the podcast to talk about this incredible site, and to shine a light on recent discoveries that have been made there. Exploring the immense architecture and art, ancient religions, and precious gemstones and metals discovered - what can we learn about this impressive wonder of the world, and what does it tell us about the Maya?Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.For more Ancient's content, subscribe to our Ancient's newsletter here.

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and architecture such as the El Castillo pyramid, the ball court, the massive colonnade in front of the Temple of the Warriors and so much more. Now to delve into the archaeology of Chichen Itza, well I was delighted to interview Professor Annabeth Hedrick from the University of Denver. Now Annabeth, she's been on the podcast once before. She was our interviewee for an episode all about Teotihuacan last year as part of our special Ancient Americas series. She was absolutely enthralling during that episode and we've always wanted to get Annabeth back for a second one. Lo and behold, here she is to talk all things Chichen Itza and boy, she did not disappoint. This was so much fun to record and I really do hope you enjoy. So without further ado, here's Annabeth.

Annabeth, welcome back. It's great to have you back on the podcast. Well, it's lovely to be back here again to talk about things I love. Things you love. And this one, I mean, what a sight of all sites in Mesoamerica. This Chichen Itza, it is a wonder of the world, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, it's so visited and there's so many tourists all over the place and merchants and everything and all that that are at the site. But every time I go, I'm blown away. If there's only one site you can visit, maybe this is the one. And I do think there's reasons for its iconic elements. If there's only one site you can visit, maybe this is the one. And I do think there's reasons for its iconic elements. If we start with the background, as we always do,

Chichen Itza, do we know much about its origins or its earlier history, how it develops as this important city? Well, there's a lot still to be known, you know, digging a little deeper and understanding that, although they've made some progress on that. And certainly it had some early stuff. But when we really see the site get going, I would say more like the 800s or something along that line is where things really start to happen in that site. What happens is we do seem to have a series of droughts in the Maya area. And a lot of those sites that are so famous, Palenque, Tikal, all of these places in what we call the Patin that are further south, start to collapse. And the droughts were probably happening in the north, but maybe not as bad. But it's not just drought. I think it's also that maybe the political system of the Maya was a bit tenuous at that point. You had these kings and all of their retinue and you had a burgeoning elite that were really sapping the economic power. And those places start to collapse and Qicheng sort of benefits from that collapse of those places that have been famous for thousands of years.

And in regards to those other great settlements of Mesoamerica, of course, last time you were on the entrance, you were talking all about Teotihuacan. In comparison with Teotihuacan, is Chichen Itza therefore much later when it enjoys its own golden age almost? It really comes to its own prominence. Yeah. So, you know, we don't quite know the exact date of Teotihuacan's collapse, maybe 550 or 650, somewhere in there. And Chichen, you know, of course, is several hundred years later on that context. I do, this is a tricky part to say, because I do think that the collapse of Teotihuacan certainly had impacts on why Chichen was successful. I think there was migration that was happening over those hundreds of years, nailing that down. We have some progress there, but precisely saying, ah, these people, you know, are from here and there, that's where we're really

struggling. But we do see a lot of influence from Central Mexico at Chichen. And so people are moving around, just like we're seeing right now, right, with all the images of migration because of climate change and economic hardship and such. And so those kinds of dynamics, I think, were also part of the reason for Chichen's success, is people moving in with new ideas into the Maya area. Now, you also mentioned a bit earlier places like Tikal and Palenque. And it is interesting how Chichen Itza is just one of so many different incredible Mayan sites. But what exactly was Chichen Itza? Was it primarily a city or was it a place of ritual and religion? What do we know about its almost its primary purpose?

Certainly a city. Absolutely. I think certainly when there were big festivals, people from all around were coming in to watch them, right? That's what happens. Think about Rome when there's a big event, you know, on Easter or something and people from all over the world come in. And so things like that happened at Chichen. But there's some archaeology of the households and such like that. And we see these lovely complexes and palace-like things. I wouldn't call them, I don't know if palace is the right word, but there are these complexes where we have different elites that are outside around the main ceremonial center

that are certainly doing very well for themselves. And so you had probably a very cosmopolitan community, much like Teotihuacan. I don't often call the people living at Chichen Maya. There certainly were Maya there. I call them the Itza just because of the name. Chichen Itza translates to the well of the Itza, which is that very famous cenote that has these steep walls and drops.

And you imagine people being thrown in and certainly people were. But I just call the people the Itza because we don't necessarily know who all these demographics were in this fight. Because I think it was a variety of people that had come to this area. And the people who did come to this area. So was Chichen Itza, it was just one of many different urban centers in the Maya world at that time. Is that always important to understand when kind of understanding the larger geopolitical situation of the Maya in this, is it post-classic period? Well, what we're talking about is the late classic. And Chichen had a footprint in the

late classic, but there's a very small footprint before that point. So when you think of the Maya of Palenque and Tikal and stuff, those people had been going on, you know, 250 all the way to 750 and such like that. But Qicheng's late. They're starting around the time those sites are getting weaker. And then it really comes on later. And it does go somewhat into the post classic. And it lasts for several couple hundred weaker. And then it really comes on later. And it does go somewhat into the post-classic. And it lasts for several couple hundred years. And then later on, this site called Mayapan really takes over as things fall apart at Chichen. So it's a late inheritor of those traditions. But it's not Maya like the Maya sites that you think of, you know, that are down

in those more southern regions. And how much of Chichen Itza survives today? Oh, I think like with a lot of archaeological sites, probably the things that are the most threatened are the ones that are further away from the ceremonial core. Because people today need places to live and farm and have businesses and such. And so you have encroachments and you have all those problems in all of the archaeological sites. Teotihuacan, you know, there's an archaeologist friend that he only will excavate in the places that are threatened because he knows those places are going to be gone. I work often in the ceremonial centers, right? But the households are important too.

And that's where we might see some things that are maybe a little bit more threatened and not knowing what's going on in those areas. And the ceremonial center of Chichen Itza is always on the postcards. It's what an incredible monumental architecture, hasn't it? That's what we always focus on when we talk about Chichen Itza. I just wanted to ask that question first of all, because before we delve into the detail of a few of those structures, just know, as it is a city, do we have much surviving archaeology of, let's say, the everyday residential houses of the people that were living further away? But it feels like that archaeology is less visible than the great monumental structures at the center. Yeah, it is less visible. I mean,

these would be small house mounds and such like that. And I mentioned these things that are somewhat like palaces that are outside there. And I think they just reopened so that you can go down and visit some of those areas now. So you can see those. But the ceremonial center, you're absolutely right. Like every time you see a Maya pyramid, it's the Castillo. It's the Castillo at Chichen. In fact, I remember watching a show that was talking about the Inca down in South America in Peru, and they used the Castillo, which of course drove me crazy because it wasn't even the right culture on television, you know, with that. But it's the iconic pyramid.

It's just fantastic. It's this four-sided pyramid. And as people may know, it has elements of 365 steps so that it was certainly associated with the calendar. It also has this stairway that on the north has serpents on it. And so there's serpent heads down at the base of this. And then balustrade, which are the sides of the stairway, on the equinox, the sun comes in and it hits those stairways. So it looks like a serpent is slithering up on that area. So it's a very calendrical structure and it's lined up with the cosmos. It's lined up with the order of the gods. Lined up with the order of the gods. And

it's the pyramid, you've got this massive great staircase going up. I didn't know that 365 steps, as you say, so you get a hint of its purpose. I mean, what about right at the top? What's at the top of this iconic piece of Mayan architecture? Well, at the top of it, you have some different figures that seem to be letting blood and such. You also have associated with this pyramid, there's an earlier version of it too, that's called the Castillo Sub. So it's a small version of that. These structures are associated with thrones, jaguar thrones. The one that's inside in the Castillo Sub is really well preserved because it was buried by the

Itza themselves. And it's this wonderful red jaguar throne. And they got jade inlays for the spots of the jaguar. And then it has shell teeth. And it's just spectacular. And it's the throne of whoever was the ruler there. So it's certainly associated with the royal people in that concept, the ruler of Chichen and the royal throne. And perhaps we don't know a lot, but perhaps it was part of the rituals that were associated with installing rulers and such like that. You mentioned earlier how on one side of the Castillo, you have these serpents on the balustrades. This seems an interesting piece of art that you see again and again across Chichen Itza. Now, what exactly is this feathered serpent? I have an article coming out soon that will talk about some of these issues.

So the feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl, is on this pyramid. But pyramids are symbolically mountains. And what we see is an association with something that the Aztec called Coatapec, which means literally translates as serpent mountain. And so we know that the Castillo was a serpent mountain, and these were important structures. One of the earliest, if not the first one of these was actually Teotihuacan. There's a serpent mountain, the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, that was very, very important to Akan. And it may have become legendary, right? And rituals and rituals associated with rulers seem to have happened at these Serpent Mountains

or Kuwatapeks. And what I'm arguing in this article that's coming out is that it may be that these Serpent Mountains were part of what you had to do to establish your political authority. You had to put up a serpent mountain, you had to place a serpent mountain somewhere to show that this was your territory, your region, that kind of thing. And this is a central Mexican idea. It comes from the north, way up near Mexico City in those areas. And this is why I resist necessarily calling these people Maya, because we have so much Central Mexican influence. I'm certainly not the first person to say this. Everybody, I mean, we've had this long

debate. It used to be that there was this idea that there were these Toltec people that came in and set up Chichen Itza. I don't particularly know if Toltec's the right word. That's why I just use Itza for that. But this is an idea that comes down from that area. And it was super popular. And it spread all over the Americas. We see it north of Teotihuacan. We see it down at a site called Tula. We see it at Chichen Itza. We see it at some other sites in Central Mexico, and the feathered serpent becomes this real important symbol. I do think the feathered serpent may have had some association, sort of like a mascot or a deity that people claim to be descended from. So in Egypt,

for instance, you know, the Pharaoh would be Horus while he was alive. And there's some indications, and some of this comes from the work of a great early Mexican scholar, Alfredo Lopez-Austin, who argued that there may have been people living that were sort of man-gods. They were the human impersonation of a deity while they were alive. And I think there may have been individuals that manifested themselves as the feather a deity while they were alive. And I think there may have been individuals that manifested themselves as the feathered serpent while they were alive. We also know that the feathered serpent was associated, you know, a deity that merchants worshipped. And so there may have been an important aspect of that in there too. It's really mixed up and

complicated, but certainly something they were very, very important deity at Qichen, if not the most important. Well, that and I would say Tlaloc or the rain god, because you always need rain. If we do go back to the Qistiyu a little longer before we go on, because many of us do have that image in our heads of prisoners of war being led up to the top of one of these pyramids and then being brutally, I don't really want to use this sacrifice, but you know what I'm getting at. They meet a gruesome end at the top of the pyramid. How much evidence do we have to suggest that that might well have happened at the top of the Castillo? It didn't happen at the Castillo. It did for the Aztecs. It did happen for the Aztecs. We actually have paintings at Chichen, and they show us exactly where they sacrificed people.

And it was over at another building called the Temple of the Warriors. However, I think that we have to think about these structures as not just all by themselves. They all functioned as a unit. So people were probably sacrificed just across the plaza over at this Temple of the Warriors structure. But the Castillo is oriented more or less to the north. I mean, it's not due north, but it's oriented towards the sacred cenote. The sacred cenote has these straight sheer walls, and it's this dramatic drop down to the water. And I'll explain what a cenote is in a second. And then from the Castillo to the cenote is a straight causeway. We call them sacbés or white roads. It's an elevated road. And so

certainly I and other people, it's not implausible because we have found people's remains inside the cenote. And they're primarily not women. There's all these fantasies of women being thrown into the cenote, but they're primarily men and some children and such in there. But it's possible that they did sacrifice them at this other structure, but then use that route from this castillo to the sacred cenote to deposit those remains in that area. In that scenario, if there are, they might have been dead before they were thrown in there. So our ideas of people splashing around may or may not be true in that kind of context. It's important to understand what the cenote is. So in the Yucatan, it's actually limestone shelf that forms that area. It's a little different

than other places in the Maya. And because it's a limestone shelf, it that area. It's a little different than other places in the Maya. And because it's a limestone shelf, it doesn't have surface rivers. What happens is the water trickles down through the limestone and there's underground rivers. And sometimes what happens is in these underground rivers, the ceiling above gets weak, and then the limestone collapses and it makes a hole. Some of these holes are shallow, right? You could just walk down gradually. But the one that's so dramatic at Chichen, there's two of these cenotes that are really famous at Chichen. But the one that's the big sacred cenote, A, it's very large for a cenote, and B, it just is this incredible straight drop that you have. And so, of course, it's a

source of water, but it also certainly was used for ritual purposes in that context. So, cities in the Yucatan do tend to cluster around these cenotes for a source of water. But this one was certainly used for ritual purposes. So, instead of throwing them down the pyramid, they're throwing them into the cenote in many cases. And Annabeth, alongside the cenote, you also have these things, I've got on my notes, Venus platform. Yeah. So there seems to be a certain way that ritual space was lined up at Qichen. So you have a four-sided pyramid with stairs on all four sides, although at the Castillo, the serpents are only on the north. All right. So it's focused straight towards the cenote. stairs on all four sides, although at the Castillo, the serpents are only on the north,

all right, so it's focused straight towards the cenote. But in the middle of this causeway, right, when you're going to walk from this Castillo to the cenote, there is this Venus platform, and they're modest size, they're not huge, but they are shortish, sort of flat platforms. And then on them, they also have four stairs on all sides. And sometimes they've actually found inside one of these platforms inside was actually found a chalk mole, which a lot of people when you talk about the Castillo being so iconic, the chalk mole is another thing that's even been used in advertisements by Aeromexico and things like that, you know, come visit and see this. And a Chacmul is a reclining person, they're reclining on their back, but their heads kind of raised up, and their knees are bent. And what are they used for?

There's been a lot of debate. Recently, someone argued that they're ballplayers. I'm not completely convinced at that. A lot of people have argued that they're defeated warriors, people that were sacrificed, and I think there's a lot of evidence that that's true. But there is some variation in the Chakmul, so there may be a wide variety of, or somewhat a variety of what they represent, different people in that context.

Some of them certainly have warrior contexts and such like that. There's one under the Temple of the Warriors, an early version of the Temple of the Warriors called the Temple of the Chacmul, and it has a chacmul that is holding a weapon and such. So certainly there's some evidence that they were used to represent defeated warriors. But on the Venus platform, what's really interesting is, again, we have some central Mexican evidence of influence. So there's decoration on all four sides that repeats one is a big feathered beast with

clawed like hands that a lot of debate, some people think it's Quetzalcoatl, some people think it's another, again, central Mexican influence deity. But what we do know about that is one side has a star that's associated with Venus, which was a symbol that shows up all over the Mesoamerican area and sometimes associated with warfare. But then the other side, what we have is a bundle of sticks. And this is really interesting because what this is, is an early version of a bundle of sticks that represents a new fire ceremony. So in one of the calendars for Mesoamerica, every 52 years, the calendar ends and then it restarts. It's sort of like when we get to the year 2000, right, and end, but this happens every 52 years. And we know a lot about this from the Aztec who are much later,

you know, they're more in the 1400s. But what they would do is all the fires would be put out. And then they would start a virgin fire, and then you would light your fire and take it to all the communities in the surrounding areas. So a version of that seems to have been happening at Teotihuacan. So several hundred years before Chichen. But then we get this imagery at Chichen on those on those Venus platforms, so we know that this new fire ceremony from central Mexico has come into the Maya area. So this is that cosmopolitan thing that's so exciting about Qichen, right? It's not Maya in the way that those other sites were that are in the south.

This is a site that has embraced things from central mexico probably because you have people that are from different places coming in ah yes these people i guess so are merchants a key part in those people who are making those journeys who are bringing those influences do we think to places like chichen it's yeah we have pictures of these people going places i mean one of the things that's so neat about Chichen is that archaeology was happening in the 30s and such like that. But they published this material. Some of it's from the Carnegie. Some of it's from the early Mexican archaeologists.

But they found murals. And these murals come from the Temple of the Warriors. And we see people in canoes. And we know that they're on the coast. They're a marine coast because we see stingrays swimming in the water. We see fish in the water. But, you know, stingrays are only going to be in saltwater, so you can identify. There's also crabs.

And so we see animals that are only in the ocean. Not only that, but there's an island, if you go due north from Chichen towards the ocean, there's an island, Isla Cerritos, that has a lot of evidence of Chichen and probably was sort of their little island place that they could engage in trade on there. So you would have this corridor that went from Chichen straight to the ocean, probably numerous communities, and there's archaeology being done on those communities in between, because you might not walk one straight to that place. And Isla Cerritos seems to have been their naval area for these merchants to get access to the ocean, and they're going up and down the ocean, particularly going to the south,

but probably up to the north too, and getting resources from all over the place. Hey, I'm Don Wildman, and on American History Hit, my expert guests and I journey across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made the United States. From first flight to first ladies, from stitching the star-spangled banner to striking gold in California, to shooting for the moon with Apollo, we've got you covered. Catch new episodes of American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit, every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. Well, you mentioned in there the Temple of the Warriors. That's going to be our final destination.

But let's say we're going from the Castillo. Our next place in telling the story of Chichen Itza is one I've got in my mind is the Osario. So where is the Osario in regards to the Castillo. So where is the Osario in regards to the Castillo? And what is this particular building that I know you've done a lot of work around? Right. So the Castillo is, you know, the ceremonial ritual structure of Chichen Itza.

Further south of it, there's a whole complex that probably has more of a palace administrative kind of area. In between the two, later was built another structure called the Osario. So it's later than the Castillo. And in fact, I and then a colleague of mine, Jeffrey Braswell, we now really are in agreement that the Castillo was an early version of these serpent pyramids. really are in agreement that the Castillo was an early version of these serpent pyramids. And the Osario was a later version. And they really, it's a smaller pyramid, but they really amp up the imagery on that pyramid. It's a lot more decorated than the Castillo is. And so they do that. Now, just like the Castillo, the Osario, it faces towards another cenote. So it's on an east-west rather than a north-south axis. So we have one that goes north-south and one that goes east-west. It has a Venus platform

in front of it, and then a causeway that leads to another cenote. So again, you have a pyramid, you have a Venus platform, and you have a cenote. So this is probably very much what a ritual structure has to have, those things. But on this pyramid, we have a cenote. So this is probably a very much of what a ritual structure has to have those things. But on this pyramid, we have a couple of things that are really wonderful. It has serpents on all four sides. So again, it has stairs on all four sides. But then what they've done is they put more serpents on it this time. And not only that, but we see different serpents. So you have feathered serpents like you have on the Castillo, but you also have jade serpents.

You have turquoise serpents. You have cloud serpents. There's all these different serpents that are there. I think that what's particularly interesting, the jade and the turquoise serpents are at the top of the structure. And what's interesting is jade was the most valuable thing in Mesoamerica. Maybe jade and quetzal feathers, big, long green feathers. But jade was the thing that for centuries, you know, that had been the most precious stone.

Because green's the color of water. It's the color of corn. It's the color of food and water. It's the color of life. It's the color of food and water. It's the color of life. It's the color of the center. What happens now, though, is they're getting access to turquoise. And the turquoise is coming from the southwest of the United States. So they're going all the way up into New Mexico.

Now, whether they're traveling all that way, probably not. You know, there's probably interim people that are moving this. traveling all that way, probably not, you know, there's probably interim people that are moving this, but Chichen is so cosmopolitan, and so outward thinking with its trade, that they're actually engaged with getting objects that are all the way from the southwest, they're not in their own little region and being local, they're going and getting resources from all over their known world. So I think when they pair the jade serpents with the turquoise serpents, what they're talking about is the old blue-green stone and the new hipper-cooler blue-green stone, which is turquoise. And it's just wonderful. And we can

go back to the Castillo sub, and they put these round wooden disks there that have mosaics made out of various stones, but including turquoise. So we have evidence, and then we find some also over at the Temple of the Warriors. But this turquoise becomes the cooler, neater, more exotic thing to have because it's from further away, and it's more rare. And that will continue with the aztec the aztec will really prefer turquoise and i think it's just because it's harder to get more exotic more precious and how better to emphasize those connections that power that's you know the the new trend cool stuff that you have it and to portray it alongside, you know, the depiction of a serpent on this monumental late pyramid at Ciccinizza. I mean,

the Osario, it really feels like this was a monument meant to be seen and to be admired for the amount of incredible sculpture and the beautiful sculpture that it had on it. It's maybe more like a wonderful jewel box, right? A precious little tiny church that has lots and lots of things on it, right? And the Castillo was sort of big and massive in that way. And it's highly, highly decorated. The other thing that's really neat about the Osario is it has, when you go up the stairs, it has a shaft that goes straight down.

And it was built over a cave. Now, these caves are manmade, and they're not probably necessarily natural, but that doesn't matter. I mean, if it's an underground chamber, it's symbolically a cave to these individuals. There's some controversy about that it was excavated by a very early archaeologist, Edward Thompson, who at one point owned the Chichen and different things. But he excavated and talked about finding ash and bone in that structure. Other people have recently gone down and said that that's not necessarily true. I think it's hard to know because we just don't know how much damage he did to the structure.

But if there was bone and ash in that structure, I think that there's evidence of cremation rituals that are happening. And that's particularly interesting because at Teotihuacan, the most elite burials were cremation burials. And so that might be more evidence of this central Mexican, you know, the Mexico City area coming into Chichen Itza and cremation rituals. If they are cremating people, I suspected these people that are merchant warriors that were not rulers, not kings, but people that were very, very important to the society of Chichen. It's also so cool to hear that there is this subterranean structure right underneath the Asario, which is just, wow, amazing.

Right. Well, and think about the cosmology, right? You have a cave underneath and then you have a mountain. So you go from the underworld to the upper world as you go up the pyramid. So it's got all the symbolism all packed into that one little structure. And the Mexican archaeologists have identified a void underneath the Castillo. So there may be a cave under it the problem is right now we don't know if the itza knew about that cave or not because you need to demonstrate it's not that it's just there but they knew it was there right okay well hopefully time will tell and answer those questions but yeah it is so interesting so i'm glad that we got that in one last thing on the azario is we've talked all about this sculpture, this serpent imagery, but are individuals

also depicted on this structure? Well, there's these individuals that have their arms outstretched, they have rattles, but there's flowers and wonderful things around it. And in this way, I pulled from the work of Carl Taube, who's argued that there's this concept of a flowery world that goes, again, back to Teotihuacan. And Teotihuacan were also very much these merchant warriors. That's how it was successful. They went out, they went to exotic places, they got feathers from Guatemala and brought them back, but they were trading back and forth. But it was a high risk endeavor. And so you had these flowery worlds that were promised places if you died, you know, doing this warfare and trade that you would get to go to a flowery world. And so I've taken his

work and suggested that perhaps these individuals that are surrounded by all these wonderful things, jewels and flowers and such, are actually those merchant warriors who get to have this flowery world. And it's a little bit of propaganda of convincing people that, yeah, you know, you could go to an exotic place and die away from your family and all, but you could also come back and be really rich and famous and have this special afterlife that other people don't get. And this idea of merchant warriors, it is so, so interesting with the story of Chichen Itza, isn't it? And how highly they are valued if you have these potential individuals being depicted

on an incredible monumental structure like the Osario. It speaks volumes to their importance in this society. Yeah. And the perfect example of that, I mean, I think the key to understanding Chichen Itza is the Temple of the Warriors. So if you think about that Castillo is on a big, massive platform, and that's a ton of work. They built these retaining walls and filled it in with lots and lots of fill. And on this massive platform, just to the east of the Castillo

is a Temple of the Warriors. And so you could walk straight from these two structures. And of course, that's where I said they were sacrificing people is at the Temple of the Warriors. How we know that is that there's a small stone, it's maybe about a foot high or so. And this is the stone that we know from imagery is that they would bend people over it, they would put them on their back and bend them over it, which actually helps you take a person's heart out. It tightens the muscles, and so you can cut their heart out over this stone. And that actually shows up in the Temple of the Warriors. Apart from that little more gruesome side is the Temple of the Warriors is a structure that you do upstairs and such, but in front of it was a huge colonnaded hallway. It's got column after column after column on there. And the columns on each side of these columns, they're square columns, not round. Each of the four sides actually has portraits of people. These portraits are carved. The portraits were then had plaster, lime plaster placed on them, and then they were painted. And so we have 220 portraits in front of this structure. This is unusual, colonnaded hallways. This is a new thing. This

is an innovation in architecture. And I think that's really, really important. But when you talked about those merchants, what you have is there's a few priests, there's some priestesses, some other figures like that. There's some captives from warfare, we see people with their wrists bound. And so we assume that they're captives from warfare, and they're, they probably don't have very much longer to live. But 73% of the 220 portraits show warriors, they show people that are holding atlatls, which are spear throwers and spears. But I don't think they're just warriors. They're also merchant warriors.

I think these are the people that you need to be armed when you go out to do trade, because if you're going to bring back all that turquoise, or in Qicheng's case, we can talk about gold. When you bring back all these goodies, people are going to want to take it from you. So you go armed in there. And I think these are the people that were key to Qicheng's success. I would also say what's interesting, I mentioned this hallway, it's unusual. It's new architecture, right? In Maya sites, and even at Teotuacan, interior space was really

small. Just a few people could go in there. They had corbel vaults, which were triangular roofs, and that you can't have the walls very wide. So just a few handful of people could be inside these structures at a time. The columns in front of the Temple of the Warriors allow you to invite maybe 100 people inside. That matters, right? Because if you have a society where only one or two people, you know, are inside the temple up top, say 10, or you have a really important public architecture where 100 people can be inside, that tells you that more people in society are important, not just the ruler, right? Architecture tells us that. And that's why it's so important to understand the history of the past.

So more people are important at Qichen. And so if that is just the front of the Temple of the Warriors, what would have greeted someone if they went into the Temple of the Warriors proper? the temple of the warriors proper this if you're saying that this is such an important building for understanding chichi in itself what would someone be greeted by to really kind of comes across almost right so if you think about it there's a big huge plaza right so the general populace could stand in that plaza then you would have these colonnaded hallway that had a roof over it. And it's open air, right? They didn't, it doesn't have walls. And so even if you weren't allowed to go, say, inside that colonnaded hallway, you could see and hear the people that were in there, right? So we could have sort of a ranking, you could have your lowly people outside, you could have these middle elites, these merchant warrior people that

were allowed to go inside that. And then as you go into that temple, there is one, a set of stairs that are kind of hidden in the back, but then you would reemerge above the roof of the colonnaded hallway. And there's a temple up there. And we see more pictures of warriors in there. But we also, if we look at not only the Temple of the Warriors, but the earlier version, the Temple of the Chakmul, they built a version and then they remodeled and made it bigger and made a second larger version. We see people sitting in council. We see the people that are ruling Chichen, right?

They're sitting on jaguar thrones, but it's not just one person. It seems like a council of people that are making decisions. And we see columns that again, have pictures of warriors there. And there's a big platform that's like a throne, which may be the most important person sat on, but it's large. In Maya areas, the throne would be sort of at the most, you know, a small dining room table. But at Chichen, this is a platform that maybe four or five, six people would comfortably be able to sit on. And so we see maybe the place at the table has gotten larger at Chichen and the people making decisions has gotten larger. So if there was a

ruler at Chichen, we only have the name of one and he's sort of earlier in Chichen's history, his name was Kakupakal. But... Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen

who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. If there was rulers consistently through there, they had to share power with these merchant warriors. And I think these merchant warriors got very wealthy. Because when we look at their pictures, we can see that these were men. And they are men. The warriors are men. We do have some women priestesses and such.

But the warriors were extraordinarily powerful. And they deserved part of the political power, too. And they helped make decisions. And that's what we see above is this council house up there is it too hard to kind of understand from the surviving archaeology we got when we talk about them as merchant warriors and then bringing all of this wealthy material back to chichen itz and you also mentioned gold there which i'd love to focus on a bit as well should we really call them merchants or do we think this is more loot acquired from fighting and brought back

or actually obtained? I'm guessing we can't know the answer to that. It's just interesting that we call them merchant warriors. But of course, if they go into these places, maybe they are bringing back goods which are acquired in a not so friendly manner, shall we say. Yeah. And some of this is an article that Don Hoopes and I, a friend of mine from the University of Kansas, recently published. And what we looked at is these murals. And so in that temple that's up top, they found the remains of murals, painted murals. And they tell us exactly what you're talking about. In fact, I didn't put this in there, but as you'll see when I talk about this, I sometimes wondered if these guys were pirates more than they were good old businessmen and that kind of thing. So what do we see in these murals? We see evidence

of naval commerce, but also with warfare. So we see very, very large canoes. And that's what the Maya use. We see massive, massive canoes. And we see people that are standing, which I don't know if that's the best thing, but that may be how the artists decide to show it. But we see people in these canoes that have shields and they have atlatls or atlatl darts and throwing spear throwers in that. So we see these merchant warriors that are in these canoes. What's interesting, though, is in the sacred cenote, cenote along with these well let me go back to the other part of the murals we also see some scenes where they certainly have attacked another canoe

and we see people in the water flailing around and people capturing them and that capturing is shown by them grabbing them by their hair and that's a universal symbol that you've been captured is grabbing someone's hair. So we do see them being, you know, very much like warfare, right? They're going, they're attacking somebody else's canoe, and they're grabbing them by their hair. Over at the Cenote, they found way back, you know, published in the 50s, small gold discs. These are very thin pieces of gold. And they're made in the Qichen style. But we know that Qichen, there's no evidence that Qichen could actually make gold.

We think that they could take these thin sheets of gold, and they could make with a repoussé style decoration on them, and they decorate it themselves. But we don't think that they were actually making gold there. That means that they're acquiring gold from other people, right? So what John and I did was look back at these things. And it's a wonderful story, taking those murals, but pairing them with the gold discs. And these gold discs are, I don't know, five inches across, but they're incredibly detailed, really fine detail. And so what we see is another scene that shows Chichen guys in canoes, all decked out with their warfare implements. And we see these other people in rafts. There are no other occasions where Maya people are in rafts. It's not a Maya thing.

We have accounts from Columbus and his folks that they encountered balsa wood rafts over on the Pacific side. And so what we think is that there were these balsa wood rafts, but they're further south. So this is something that comes from southern South America up into Central America. So when you're thinking about Nicaragua, maybe Costa Rica, Panama, those areas. And Columbus and those guys, well, and the people that were with Columbus, they talk about seeing these rafts and people were decorated with all kinds of gold. They had feathers and salt and all kinds of wonderful objects on them. And so what Don and I think is that you have the Chichen folks in a raft, I mean, in the canoes, you have Chichen folks in the canoes that attack the rafts

and take all their stuff. Ergo, maybe they're pirates more than anything else. We see people on the rafts wearing different headdresses. But most importantly, we see a guy in a raft wearing one of those gold discs on his chest. I think they saw these merchants that were further south. So maybe they were going down as far as Honduras and areas like that. These merchants where the gold is coming up from the south, and they're starting to make gold in Central America further south of Chichen. And they see this shiny, exciting, wonderful new thing they'd never seen before. And they start sacking these people. Maybe there was trade in some cases, but there certainly was, you know, taking it to more like a pirate. And we see them,

the people on the rafts falling off the rafts. And not only that, but in the murals, and in the gold discs, we see them capturing a person that has, and I want to be careful saying this, he has yellow hair, which is not common. Usually the hair is dark. And he has green beads in his hair. So who are these yellow haired people? I know that people will say, oh my gosh, it's evidence that there were people from Europe there. I think what happens is if you're a merchant and you're on the ocean a lot, your hair gets kind of colored.

You know, you're in the sun and the salt and it bleaches your hair out, right? And it becomes that yellowish, orangey kind of color. And so these people were out on the ocean all the time. And so that's who these folks are. What's interesting, though, is they capture one of these guys and they bring him back to Chichen, the guy that has the yellowish hair with the green beads. And they paint a mural of him bent over this stone, the sacrificial stone, and they extract his heart in that context. Not only did they take their fancy gold, but they probably thought this guy with all these riches was also a wonderful thing to have. And they brought him all the way back to Chichen and sacrificed him at the site. Who knows, maybe his bones are in the cenote, you know, after that, but we don't know that part of the story. So it's a really interesting story that you pull it off.

He had to have been a really special case, right? You know, a really, it's sort of like, I don't know, when Cleopatra was paraded around by the Romans, you know, to show that her domination, it had to have been an epic story at Chichen, enough that they painted it and they also put it on these gold discs. It is so interesting. You've got to start wrapping up now, but I love that you included that story there, Annabeth, because it really highlights, doesn't it, how, and I know you and many other colleagues and archaeologists working at Chichen Itza are ongoing and doing this now and finding out more, but how the rich imagery, the sculpture, the carved reliefs that survive from these monumental buildings that have been preserved at Chichen Itza.

The stories that they're revealing, the information that they can provide about the people, the Itza, the people who lived at Chichen Itza more than a thousand years ago. It's fascinating to learn the stories, not just about those particular buildings in which that artwork is, but about that society as a whole, how that society was put together, the makeup of it. Well, and if you think about the Maya, those people that are just, you know, the ones that they're citing collapsed at this point. What's different, those people often put up monuments that just had a picture of the king, right? Here's another picture of the king. At Chichen, of the king, right? Here's another picture of the king. At Qichen, all those merchant warriors are portraits of them on those columns. And not only that, these guys are decked out in feathers,

they're decked out in fancy cloth that they're getting. And there's a bunch of them that are wearing those gold discs on their chests. They get to wear gold. So if you go out and you sack these things, you get to share in that wealth. And I think what we have is a real sharing of wealth with a upper middle class group. It's not unlike what happens in 17th century Holland, where all at once you have what do you have, you have those merchants, and frankly, they were merchant warriors. The people in the East India country company were just going around and conquering places, bringing in slaves, bringing wealth back to Holland. And I think Chichen was somewhat like that. They had trade going to the north, trade going to the south, bringing in all this wealth,

but they didn't all give it to the king. They let those merchants celebrate and be important in society and become an upper middle class. And so it totally revolutionized society. It wasn't concentrated wealth as much as more shared wealth at Chichen. As we've hinted at, there's so much more to the story of Chichen Itza and its society. We haven't even talked about the ball court, which I know is another huge thing. Indeed, that will have to be for another time. I mean, last thing, with the whole story of Chichen Itza, do we know roughly for how long its prominence endures almost?

Do we know what kind of is the golden age of Chichen Itza and kind of what happens to it? Yeah. So what? It starts around 800, that kind of area. You know, at 850, we start to see some of this influence from Central Mexico coming in. And that's when it really starts to take off. I don't think it would have been so important if that hadn't happened. But really, what we have is a time period that some refer to as the international style. And that's from about

925 to maybe around 1100. Chichen could have hung on to maybe around 1200, but we're not really sure. But 1100, maybe 1200 in that kind of thing. But we do have a series of droughts that probably weakened them. Maybe there were some social uprisings and such like that. And Mayapan really starts to take over after that point. And Chichen is no longer there. So, you know, basically 800 to around, let's say 1100, 1150, somewhere in there. Well, there we go. It is an extraordinary story, an extraordinary site, and looking forward to seeing what new archaeology is unearthed in the years ahead. It feels like there is still so much to uncover to figure out at Chichen Itza, isn't there?

Absolutely. And that's what some of the archaeology being done by the Mexican archaeologists is so important right now, because the early archaeology, they excavated and they didn't save the ceramics in a safe way. And so ceramics are important for understanding chronology. And so they're doing wonderful work excavating new places and getting us some more factual things so that we can really understand how it developed. Annabeth, this has been absolutely fantastic. Last but certainly not least, you have a book coming out too. We have a book that some friends of mine edited.

It's two volumes with a bunch of new scholars commenting about this time period about Qicheng. The title is East Meets West with some other words on there. It's a wonderful book and I think people learn a lot new things from it. Fantastic. And it just goes to me to say,

thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Absolutely. It's always fun. Well, there you go. There was Professor Annabeth Hedrick talking all things Chichen Itza. I hope you enjoyed today's episode.

It's good to be back and talking about Mesoamerica. And don't you worry, we'll have more Mesoamerican episodes lined up in the near future. Last things from me, you know what I'm going to say, but if you have been enjoying The Ancients recently

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you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca.