Missives from Mexico, Part the Third: Silly Fun at the Temple of the Warriors in Chichen Itza

There's a lot of conjecture about the functions of the various structures in Chichen Itza, home to the Castillo, the great step pyramid of the Mayans and one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. We don't know a lot about it because Mayan culture went through a cycle of growth and dieback probably related to their use/misuse of land and maize production (although this, too, is conjectural), and the site was only lightly occupied by the time the Spanish arrived to conquer the crap out of everyone. When you visit it today, you see labels everywhere describing the sacred symbols and what they might mean with, unfortunately, a lot less critical thought than I would have hoped for.

Case in point: the ball court, which has stone hoops about twenty feet off the ground through which the Mayan ball court players would shoot their natural latex balls by bouncing them off their abdomens. We've since revised this estimate because physics says it ain't going to happen. You just can't get the height. So the stone hoops' function remains a mystery, although archaeologists still claim the game had a religious function. Maybe. The Coliseum in Rome had a religious function, too, AFTER the Christians took it over. Before that, it was mostly theatre with real blood effects. My point is that it drives people crazy to say, "I don't know," but you've got to bite the bullet before you put out a common sense solution that isn't very sensible.

At any rate, Brandi and I had a lot of fun clowning around in the Temple of the Warriors, and given that we're not entirely sure what went on in the Temple of the Warriors, or even if it had a secular function, we hope to spare the wrath of Kukulkan (Mayan Quetzcoatl) for another day. Who knows, really? Maybe hamming it up for the camera and tripod was EXACTLY why the Mayans built the temple.

Please don't eat my heart, feathered snake god.