Palenque

Palenque is a Mayan ceremonial center that is located in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. According to heiroglyphic text, Palenquet was begun in 431 A.D. The majority of its contruction was commisioned by two ruler: Pacal and Chan-Bhlum. They immortalized themselves in glyps, stucco tablets and paintings that adorned the temples.
The temples at Palenque were unique amongts the Mayan because they minimized the load of the great stone bearing walls by reducing their arch span with dividing walls and using hollow intricate stone work to minimized wall stress. This allowed the builders to make multiple piers and doorways that would be open--allowing light and air to penetrate unlike most of the other Mayan dwellings.

The most important stucture is the Palace (as shown in the picture, curtosy of Loco Gringo Inc.). The Palace was most likely begun during the riegn of Hanab Pacal and was subseqeuntly added onto by his sons Chan Bahlum and Kan Xul. Next to the Palace lies the Temple of Inscrition--with its protruding astronomical tower. Every winter soltice, from the tower, an observer will see the sun set over ther Temple of Inscriptions. Like many other Mayan ruins, these temples and buildings were built around astronomically calculated days that coincided with important times throughout the year.

Copan

Copan is located in the Central American country of Hondurous. It's most renound Mayan pyramid is called the Hierographic Stiarway. The pyramid was built is succession by two Mayan kings named Smoke Shell and his successor Yax Pac. This pyramid was completed somewhere around 800AD, at which point Copal had radius of about 9 miles and a population of about 20,000. The stairway is made of 2200 stone blocks, rises more that 70 steps and holds the longest Pre-Columbian American text todate.

There are also many famous Stelea that give us a glymph of how the rulers used stone carved heiroglyphs to produce their own grandizing propoganda. Altar show, as shown in the picture above, shows the how Yax K'uk Mo' who was the first ruller of Copan, passed on the royal septer of power to Yax Pac, the 16th ruller in the 16th century. This discovery has lead archeologist to beleive that many of the stone carvings found througout the Mayan kingdom are also a form of progeganda, showing us that power and knowlege were important factors in maintaining power amongts the people.

Tikal

The picture is of Temple I, "Temple of the Great Jaguar", which was used by Mayan nobility and priest for ceremonies and rites. The temple(s) were originally adorned with vibrant colors, painted reliefs and religious iconagraphy. The temple rose above the forest floor in the main sector of the city so that the general population could observe the rites and ceremonies of thier time.

The ancient city of Tikal was developed during the Mayan Classical period which began around 200 A.D. and subsisted to around 900 A.D. Nestled in the dense jungles of what is now Guatemala, Tikal is the largest Mayan ruin city to date. Tikal was one of the cultural, ceremonial and administrative centers of Mayan civilization and bore the highest known pyramid structures
of it's time. During it's hieght, Tikal held at least 10,000 residents over a six square mile area. It is estimated that about 3000 different structures including temples, palaces, platforms, shrines, ball courts, plazas, water cisterns were contructed in this six mile radius. The main ceremonial area held held about 200 stone stelae (stone carvings engraved with hieroglyphs that record significant stories and dates) monuments commemorating past rulers and events.

Templo De Kukulkan

Located in the dense jungle of the Yucatan Penninsula, Mexico, the Temple of Kukulkan, the Feathered Serpent God (or Quetzalcoatl in Aztec culture), is the the biggest pyramid in the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza. The pyramid was built in about the 1100 to 1300 a.d. and stands 90 feet tall. The four-sided pyramid is an architectual, mathematical and astronomical masterpiece in that it encodes the Mayan calander by having 91 step staircases on each side that, together with the top platform, all add to to the 365 day Mayan calander. The pyramid is also celestially alligned with the various solstices and equinoxes throughout the year so that the changing of the seasons was precisely marked--coinciding with important agricultural and ritual dates. Another engineering fact is that the axes that run on the southwest and northwest corners of the pyramid allign with the rising point of the sun in the summer solstice and its setting point in the winter solstice.

In "A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya", Shele and Fridel write that, "To the Maya, the world was alive and imbued with a sacredness that was especially concentrated at special points, like caves and mountains. The principal pattern of power points had been established by the gods when the cosmos was created. Within this matrix of sacred landscape, human beings built communities that both merged with the god-generated patterns and created a second human-made matrix of power points. The two systems were perceived to be complementary, not separate....The world of human beings was connected to the Otherworld along the wacah chan axis which ran through the center of existence. This axis was not located in any one earthly place, but could be materialized through ritual at any point in the natural and human-made landscape".

Mayan Temples

I have always had a fascination with the Aztec and Mayan culture. What impresses me the most about those civilizations was an interweaving of the spiritual, intellectual and physical world. This interweaving of the physical and spiritual world is most appearent in their elegant architecture, artwork and writing system. It is by no accident that the all three elements consisted of a dualism between the physical and spiritual world. The construction of massive pyramids in the south of Mexico and Central America are but one example of this dualistic world view. In one sense, the pyramids are a perfect representation of the obsession with the secular and heavenly or the mathematical and natural. This paradigm was so well imbeded in the culture that their great pyramidal structures allighned perfectly with corresponding celestial bodies as to precisely detect the arrival of winter, spring, summer and fall solstices.