The mysterious disappearance of the ancient Mayan civilization
In the jungles of Central America and southern Mexico, many cities were abandoned in the late 9th and early 11th centuries. The jungle then flourishes, natural scenes reappear above the ruins, birds sing and butterflies dance, and a mysterious hunter hunts silently above the ruins. The hunter is a jaguar, or jaguar – it is neither a common leopard nor a tiger. The jaguar is the third largest cat in the world and the largest in the Americas, only slightly smaller than tigers and African lions.
A jaguar hiding in the shade
For nearly a thousand years, the forest was the patron saint of the mysterious Maya, until the early 19th century, when rumors of ancient Mayans hiding in the jungle began to circulate in the world. Occasionally, explorers across these ruins find that the faces carved into the stone are silent, and the mysterious writing of Martian is confusing, who left this information in the distant past? For hundreds of years, it has attracted countless scholars to explore, but they refuse to reveal their secrets easily. There were two outstanding scholars, and although they lived in a century apart, the results of their explorations solved a great archaeological mystery, that is, the "Mayan civilization" lost in the jungles of Central America and Mexico.
In 1842, in Chichen Itza, Mexico, an American lawyer named John Lloyd Stevens wandered through the empty ruins in search of clues to the ancient Mayans. A true city-state surrounded by a spectacular central square, grand and sturdy architecture, exquisite stone carvings – the ancient Mayans did not hesitate to pour out their artistic talents on the walls and columns decorated with such beautiful and rich reliefs and motifs. Stevens takes two thrilling journeys through muddy, malaria, snake-infested starry nights, and explores the uninhabited jungles of Central America. He was looking for undeniable evidence that the ruins were not built by Egyptians, Phoenicians, or lost Israelites.
The Pyramid of Castillo hidden in the jungle
The magical Pyramid of Castillo is like a calendar
Stevens thought he had found it in Chichen Itza, a different way of writing than any civilization he knew, and he had seen the same writing in the ruins hundreds of kilometers away, proving that the ancient empires of native Americans were more advanced than anyone thought—and at this time, even a hundred years later, the prevailing view was that the builders of these vast ruins were by no means Native Americans. There's a bit of racism in it, saying that every great thing comes from Greeks, Egyptians, and European traditions, and can never come from a bunch of barbarians wandering naked in the woods. This also sounds reasonable, most of the other ancient civilizations originated on both sides of the great river, the Chinese civilization had the Yellow River, the ancient Egyptian civilization had the Nile, the ancient Babylonian civilization had the Euphrates River, and there were not only no big rivers here, but even small streams were rare, so how did the ancient Maya people originate?
A thousand years ago, Chichen Itza was a thriving and lively city inhabited by tens of thousands of people who built magnificent pyramids. The Pyramid of Castillo, located in the heart of the Grande Square, is a formidable building that is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The pyramid is made of millions of limestone boulders and is 30 meters high, the equivalent of a 10-story building. However, the Pyramid of Castillo is not just a magnificent building, its perfect lines use complex mathematical knowledge, and are related to astronomy and even to the growth cycle of crops. The pyramid is all related to the changes of the seasons, dates and sun, so the pyramid is also a huge calendar for the city of Chichen Itza.
The Pyramid of Castillo in Chichen Itza
The 4 sides of the Pyramid of Castillo represent the four seasons, each side has 9 tiers of platforms, which are divided in two by a stone staircase passage leading to the top of the tower, a total of 18 stone platforms representing the eighteen months of the Mayan calendar. Each stone platform has 52 large stone slabs, or fifty-two depressions, corresponding to the Maya calendar cycle of 52 years, that is, a century. There are 91 steps on each side of the pyramid, plus the top platform, for a total of 365 steps, each representing each day of the year. On both sides of the steps there are side walls of more than one meter wide and of varying heights, and at the lower end of the north side wall are carved a pair of feathered snake heads with a height of 1 meter 43, a length of 1 meter 80, and a width of 1 meter 07, and the snake spits out a large tongue of 1 meter 60 meters long. Every year at sunrise and sunset at the spring and autumn equinoxes, the two corners of the pyramid cast triangular shadows on both sides of the north staircase, and slide down as the sun moves, looking like a giant snake crawling down - that is, the feathered snake god worshipped in the temple on the top floor, Kukulkan.
This "light and shadow serpentine" spectacle lasted for a full 3 minutes and 22 seconds at a time, and the ancient Maya believed that this was the arrival of the feathered serpent god, which meant the arrival of the sowing or harvesting season. At the top of the tower is a six-meter-high, flat-roofed temple that opens doors on three sides and windows open only to the south. On both sides of the north gate, there stands a stone pillar statue of the feathered serpent god, so this building is also called the Kukulkan Temple.
At the base of the steps of the Pyramid of Castillo, the feathered serpent god has a head and a large tongue
The feathered serpent god who taught the knowledge and civilization of the ancient Mayans, Kukulkan
Kukulkan, the god who brought knowledge to the Maya, was the most important deity in Mayan culture. His image is found everywhere in the Mayan ruins, both in the pyramids and in the large stone carvings. He is usually depicted as a feathered snake, but others think of him as a dragon or a winged snake. The Maya lived in the jungle and apparently knew that snakes could not fly, but feathered snakes could, which led the ancient Mayans to believe that Kukulkan was a god descending from the sky. In many cultures, the serpent was the giver of wisdom, not only instigating Adam and Eve to steal the forbidden fruit, but also mastering the tools of civilization, knowing how to use metals and tools, having a wealth of knowledge and life experience, which he passed on to certain people and gave them a specific social status, so that they could pass on their knowledge to their people.
Feather snake god Kukulkan
Ancient Mayan civilizations record that Kukulkan was the teacher of the early Maya, and he selected eight boys between the ages of 7 and 12 to teach them mathematics, astronomy and other sciences, and Then Kukulkan disappeared. But he promised to show up in the distant future. The boys became the first priests and other teachers of the ancient Mayans, and As a result, Kukulkan was revered as the great god who brought knowledge and civilization to the Maya—but it is still not known who he was or where he came from. The strange thing is that this winged snake god image can be seen everywhere in ancient times, and the feather snake god is a god shared by many ancient cultures in the Americas.
In fact, the feathered serpent god is a widely believed deity in Central America, the "Olmec civilization" that first appeared before the Teotihuacan civilization. In the central highlands of Mexico, the ancient Maya civilizations existed at the same time as the ancient Maya civilizations of the Teotihuacan, Tolteca and Aztec periods. The capital of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlán, is now Mexico City, the capital of Teotihuacan earlier than the Aztecs, 40 kilometers northeast of Mexico, between The Popocatet per volcano and the valley of istasiwatel.
Pyramid of the Sun in the site of Teotihuacan
Covering an area of about 20 square kilometers, the Teotihuakan ruins are a religious shrine and economic center of the Toltics, a branch of the Ancient Indian Mayans. Between 1 and 150 AD, the Toltic built a city of 50,000 people here, and in 450 AD, in the heyday of the city, the population reached 200,000. The detailed history of the Teocean Empire, its origins and demise, is little known to posterity due to the lack of written records. Centuries later, the Aztecs discovered the ruins and called it "Teotihuacan", which means "City of the Gods". In the site of Teotihuacan there is the famous Pyramid of the Sun, the base of the tower is 225 meters long and 222 meters wide, the tower is 5 layers trapezoidal, basically square, 66 meters high, sitting east to west, the front has hundreds of steps to the top, is the largest building in the entire ruins, the volume of 1 million cubic meters, and the Egyptian Pyramid of Khufu is roughly equal, just in the four directions of southeast, southwest and northwest, the four sides of the tower are also equilateral triangles with the word "gold", and the ratio of the bottom edge to the height of the tower is exactly equal to the ratio of the circumference to the radius. The interior is built of mud and sand and stone, and the steps from the bottom to the top are inlaid with huge stone slabs carved with colorful patterns. The name of the Pyramid of the Sun was taken by the Aztecs, and the Teotihuacans used the Pyramid of the Sun to worship the sun god. The ruins also have a huge temple of the feathered serpent god, and in the center is a small pyramid, which is far away from the pyramid of the sun. The number of Mayan pyramids far exceeds that of Egypt, with more than 100,000 pyramids found in Mexico alone.
The "sacred bird" of the ancient Mayans, the green bite crane
Clapping hands in front of the Kukulkan pyramid in Chichen Itza, you can hear the echo from the tower, the ancient Mayans believe that this is the "holy bird" green bite crane, and think of this as communication with the gods, but I don't know if Kukulkan teacher heard it.
Huge structures like the Kukulkan Temple, which total up to 60,000 tons, are a marvel of ancient engineering – but there are no metal tools or wheels here, yet the Maya built magnificent cities and giant pyramids. This amazing building was built by the ancient Mayans to show their power, their spirituality and their science. Building temples and pyramids of this magnitude requires thousands of tons of stone, where did they get them?
Follow ➕ Hu Qing, the next article reveals the answer. #全能创作家 #