Mayapan Yucatan, Mexico, Archaeological Site
Travel Or Tour Pictures And Photos

George And Audrey DeLange

Mayapan Site Map, Courtesy Andrew Coe's, "Archaeological Mexico."

"The Caracol" Of Mayapan

"El Castillo" Or "Kukulcan Temple" Of Mayapan

Mayapan (mah-yah-PAHN), located in the Yucatan in Southeastern Mexico, approximately 24 mi/39 km SSE of Merida; GPS, 20°28'N 89°11'W. Our first impression of Mayapan is that it is a beautiful, uncrowded archaeological site and that it is a wonderful place to visit. As we walked around the site we also noticed that some of the buildings resemble buildings at Chichen Itza. The obvious difference between Mayapan and Chichen Itza is that the buildings at Mayapan are not built as well as at Chichen Itza. Even though they appear to be copies they are not built as sturdy and they are not finished off in such a way to be nearly as attractive as those at Chichen Itza. The lack of quality workmanship is very obvious. Archaeologists say that one problem faced by the city's builders was that the stone in Mayapan's immediate vicinity is of poor quality. This may have caused the builders to scavenge their veneer from the neighboring settlements. Another thought is that the rulers were more concerned with the widespread warfare going on in their area than in the building of temples. The site is not well marked with signs describing the various structures and only the major structures are marked. Even so, the descriptions of the ones that are marked are very limited. TOURING THE SITE We entered the site of Mayapan from the North. We noticed that unexcavated mounds lie on either side of the road into the parking area. Once we paid our fee at the small ticket station and entered the site from the parking lot we walked about seventy five meters South onto the ceremonial center of the site. We first entered a small plaza; to the West we see a four-stage platform with a small temple on top. Two carved serpent columns guard its doorway. Next, we walked past some low colonnaded platforms to another plaza, at the South side of the plaza we see Mayapan's most famous structure, the nine-tiered "Temple of Kukulcan." It is a smaller, version of the "Castillo" at Chichen Itza. The workmanship is very poor compared to Chichen Itza. We noticed that its staircases rise on all four sides of the pyramid to a square three-room temple on top, with two serpent columns facing north from the main doorway. From the temple, if we look South we see the Sierrita de Ticul-the hills which are located on the northern border of the Puuc region. We had read that a carbon 14 test performed on a platform below its base established a date of 1015 A.D. for its construction. We notice that the temple's angles are not well defined and that the staircases do not seem to be in the true center of each face of the platforms. On the South side of the Castillo, there are roofs which cover stucco reliefs of decapitated warriors. Walking to the East, we see that a platform holds the "Caracol" which is a spiral structure built around a solid core that appears to be a copy of Chichen Itza's observatory. Having studied astronomy for many years and the structure and alignments at the "Caracol", we beleive that the observational alignments at Mayapan are more obvious than at Chichen Itza. Most of the other ceremonial center structures at mayapan seem to be long hallways faced with colonnades. Archaeologists think that these were used as council halls and as schools. We were on the site February 7, 2004 at about 12:30 P.M. The rainy season is just starting, so the site was wet from an afternoon rain. It was actually cold when we were there and we needed to wear warm clothing! It continued to sprinkle when we were on site so it was a little difficult to take photos and to avoid getting the camera lens wet.