The story
Chichen Itza, in the north of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, became the most powerful Maya city of the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods, roughly 800 to 1100 CE. Its builders raised El Castillo, a stepped pyramid also called the Temple of Kukulcan, with a staircase on each side, together totaling 365 steps with the top platform, one for each day of the solar year. Around it stand the Temple of the Warriors with its colonnades, a round observatory called El Caracol, and the Great Ballcourt, about 146 meters long, the largest in Mesoamerica.
Chichen Itza rose as the great southern lowland cities such as Tikal and Calakmul declined in the Classic Maya collapse of the 800s and 900s, shifting population, power and trade north. It drew on Classic Maya writing, calendars and architecture, and its ballcourt hosted the rubber-ball game played across Mesoamerica for millennia. The city controlled coastal trade in salt, obsidian, cacao, cotton cloth and jade, through ports on the Yucatan coast.
Some of the city's art, including feathered serpent columns and reclining chacmool figures, closely resembles that of Tula in central Mexico. Scholars once explained this with a Toltec conquest; today many see a shared international style spread by trade and elite contact, though the relationship is still debated. Chichen Itza waned after about 1100, and Mayapan became the leading northern city. The site became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.
Why it mattered
- Power in the Maya world shifted decisively north to Yucatan, where Mayapan later succeeded Chichen Itza.
- The Sacred Cenote, a natural sinkhole used for offerings, preserved thousands of objects that inform modern study of Maya religion.
- El Castillo became one of the most visited ancient monuments in the Americas and an icon of Mexico.
- The city's ties to Tula became a key case in debates about how ideas moved across Mesoamerica.
Sources
- Chichen Itza World History Encyclopedia
- The Return of the Toltecs: Chichen Itza and Tula Mesoweb (Stanley Guenter)
- The Iconography of Toltec Period Chichen Itza Mesoweb (Karl Taube)
- From Tula Chico to Chichen Itza: Implications of the Epiclassic Sculpture of Tula for the Nature and Timing of Tula-Chichen Contact Cambridge University Press (Keith Jordan)
Contested history
Consensus: Chichen Itza shares striking art and architecture with Tula in central Mexico; the reason for the resemblance is debated.
- The Return of the Toltecs: Chichen Itza and Tula Mesoweb (Stanley Guenter)
- The Iconography of Toltec Period Chichen Itza Mesoweb (Karl Taube)
- From Tula Chico to Chichen Itza: Implications of the Epiclassic Sculpture of Tula for the Nature and Timing of Tula-Chichen Contact Cambridge University Press (Keith Jordan)
- Chichen Itza World History Encyclopedia
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