Mayan Civilisation : Architecture

From top to bottom:

1. A late bloomer in the Maya world, the city of Uxmal in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula continued to flourish in all its splendor after the fall of Tikal, Palenque, and the other great cities to the south in the ninth century. A ruin with ornate roof combs known as the House of the Doves showcases the Puuc architectural style, named for the hills of the northern Yucatán Peninsula.

2. Set into the side of a mountain in southern Mexico, the elegant site of Palenque marks the western extent of the Maya territory. Many of its structures were built by the king known as Pakal, who was interred deep within the Temple of the Inscriptions (at left) with one of the greatest caches of jade ornaments yet found in a Maya burial. Allied with Tikal, the city faded around A.D. 800 after it was defeated by Toniná, in league with Tikal’s rival Calakmul.

3. With Polaris as a hub, stars streak through the night in a time exposure of the House of the Magician at Uxmal. Sophisticated sky watchers, the Maya tracked the movements of the stars and planets closely and created an accurate solar-year calendar based on their observations. The heavens also had metaphysical significance for the Maya. They believed the Milky Way was the path to Xibalba, the underworld, and they scheduled momentous events such as battles and sacrifices around the journeys of Venus and perhaps Jupiter.

4. Kabáh, in the Yucatán, shares the same ornate architectural style seen at Uxmal, to which it is connected by a sacbe, or stone causeway. Its most famous monument, the Palace of the Masks, displays 260 images of Chac, the long-nosed rain god. Repeated on many buildings in this arid site, this motif was likely meant to summon rain. The snouts could have held offerings of copal, the sacred incense.

5. The Temple of the Warriors projects a message of power at Chichén Itzá, which flourished as a trading center past the year 1000, long after cities to the south had fallen. Murals inside the temple show merchandise moving by land and sea, and the square columns outside bear armed figures with feathered headdresses.

6. A pyramid called La Iglesia (The Church) soars into the canopy of the rain forest at Cobá, in the Yucatán. Only a fraction of this little-known site’s 30 square miles (78 square kilometers) has been cleared of the tangled cover that overtook all Maya cities, and few visitors arrived until the promise of tourism brought a road in the 1970s. Now day-trippers from resorts on Mexico’s Caribbean coast climb the crumbling ruins, once reserved for priests and kings with godlike powers.