It’s the brutality of the Mayans that is foremost in my mind after visiting the ruins at Chichen Itza, near Cancun, Mexico. Yes, the Mayans were known for their excellence in mathematics, agriculture, pottery, and calendar creation. They also had an advanced system of writing.
But after seeing the sacrificial altars at Chichen Itza (pronounced chee-chen eat-sa), the brutality of the sacrifices is what I can’t quite get out of my mind.
There were two ways to sacrifice humans. One was simply to cut off the head and attach it to a pole, which the shaman priests would use to bless the altar in ceremonial events. The other was to hold down the victim by the arms and legs and dig out the heart while it was still beating. A still-beating heart was a great gift to the gods.
What saddened me most was that the majority of the sacrifices were children.
As a child, I saw drawings of Mayans playing a ball game where the teams vied to get a ball through a stone ring attached to a wall nine meters above the ground. I thought it might be fun to play myself. But here’s what I didn’t know.
I didn’t know that the game was primarily ceremonial, not competitive. There were two teams of seven, and once the game (or ceremony) was complete, one of the athletes was selected by the shaman priests to be sacrificed to the gods, by means of having his head cut off. The selected athlete could come from either the winning or losing team; there seemed to be no logical selection process. So, it didn’t seem to matter if you played well or played poorly, you had a one in fourteen chance of not going home for supper that night.
The only thing I don’t know is if it was an honour to have been chosen for sacrifice. Were the 14 athletes who were awaiting the shaman’s decision secretly whispering ‘pick me, pick me’? Or were they praying not to be chosen?
The Mayans were also into self-mutilation in order to impress their gods. The men would take sharp objects and slice into their penises, letting the blood flow onto the altar. Women would attach a sharpened stone to a long cord, bore a hole through their tongues with the stone, and then pull the cord through.
No wonder everyone was high on mind-altering plants all the time. Especially the shaman priests.
If you can get past the brutality, you will be very impressed with Chichen Itza. It is a World Heritage Site, and in 2007, the site’s El Castillo was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, a status which our guide, Gama, tells us is at risk because the unregulated site is swarming with merchants at every turn. “Please don’t buy anything from these merchants,” Gama pleads.
