Mayan Architecture at Uxmal
by Mark Tisdale
Title
Mayan Architecture at Uxmal
Artist
Mark Tisdale
Medium
Photograph - Photo
Description
The ruins at Uxmal remain among my favorite of the Mayan ruins I've seen, and in fact among my favorite Pre-Hispanic sites. The ancient Maya created some amazing architecture and what we see today, like in many ancient cultures, is a pale remainder of what was there. All these stone temples and buildings would once have been plastered and painted. What we see today is almost literally the skeletons of an ancient society's architecture.
Their buildings still tell us what was important to them, though. This building on the east end of what we know today as the Nun's Quadrangle has a row of Chac-Mool masks on the corner. This was the Mayan rain god, who was especially important to the May living in the Puuc Hills.
In the nearby flat lands (which characterizes much of the Yucatan), the Maya depend on cenotes (basically sinkholes) to access underground rivers. In the Puuc Hills, there were no cenotes, so they built reservoirs under the city to capture the annual rains. They could only stay here as long as the annual rains came. There's a general belief that the Maya culture collapse may have happened because those rains stopped coming. If that's the case, cities like Uxmal would have been among the first abandoned.
Whatever the case, Uxmal is a place of gorgeous architecture. In fact, the name of this variation of Mayan architecture is Puuc, derived from the very location where it's found in modern day Mexico.
Note: Uxmal is a UNESCO designated World Heritage Site.
Uploaded
May 7th, 2013
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