Hello and Happy Solstice, first day of Winter, and Happy Holidays! Regardless of when you started your winter festivals, I hope that you either have been enjoying them, did enjoy them, or will enjoy them! Today’s episode was all about the Chichén Itzá and Tulum, two buildings that were designed with the Solstice in mind! I hope everyone enjoys the episode, and joins me for the 30 days of Instagram I am starting today, where I will be posting pictures, quotes, challenges, whatever I think of! If you have a suggestion, or want to see something in particular, let me know!
But without further ado, enjoy the episode!
TRANSCRIPT:
Grab your hot coco or apple cider, it’s time for Architecture, Coffee, & Ink.
30 second Intro song
Hello, this is Hollywood C. and you’re listening to Architecture, Coffee, & Ink. A podcast dedicated to introducing concepts, detailing out designs, and tackling the architecture you might not realize the meaning behind. I’m your hostess and I am here today to start introducing you to the designs that make you wonder why.
tag line: So I ask you to brew your coffee, grab your sketch book and pen, and let’s begin.
Welcome everyone! I am excited to continue a nice winter break! For many people, they have been celebrating the holidays already, for some it starts today, and for others it’s still coming up! So, where-ever you maybe in your winter celebrations, I wish you happiness and joy, and a season of festivities! So, in light of the variety of the holidays that abound in the winter season, which admittedly, I love, I was thinking about doing a series of BONUS episodes, with each episode dedicated to talking about a major building or landscape that is devoted/practices a particular religion. To be totally fair, I would cover the big 12 religions, and then possibly dive into a few additional projects and buildings that I have been asked to include. Now, I could make an entire extra podcast show built exclusively off the multitude of secs and denominations that have popped up over the years. But I would probably just build a list and then go in Alphabetical order so no one thinks I’m favoring one in particular. But let me know if you would be interested! It could be a great dive into how the rituals of the space influenced the construction, and a way of discussing the similarities and the differences between them.
Today also marks the start of my 30 days of Instagram! I will be generating some new images and if you have followed the show on Insta, you probably already have seen it. As much as I would like to say that it is going to be a slam dunk every post, we have to be totally honest with ourselves. But if you are not a follower, please give it follow! I am also willing to repost your projects, and share news!
But for this episode, I figured that since it is going to be airing on the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the best topic to cover, is one of the many sites around the world that were designed with the Solstice in mind, Tulum and Chichén Itzá in Mexico! So, I know that there are several other sites that also take the solstice into design, but, personally, I really enjoy Tulum, and the rich history of the people who live there. So please grab your balché, and enjoy!
When speaking about Tulum and Chichén Itzá, we are going to be breaking it up into several different topics. First, we are going to speak briefly about the people and the culture that lived there. Then we are going to talking about the religion, location, and the Cenotes and finally finish the episode by talking about the buildings on each site. I just want to give everyone an outline to understand how we are going to be approaching the topic.
So first, trying to research this topic has inspired my next few episodes of my thesis, because, the difference in information available is astounding. I know I pointed it out last episode, but it really deserves repeating. Make sure you always check your sources, check your facts, and check me.
If I had not previously been to Tulum, even though I was a child, I probably wouldn’t have realized at first that some websites are lumping together sites and locations that are pretty far apart. While they were built by the same people and the same civilization-well, it’s a bit like saying your town and the one across the state are both the exact same. I don’t know about you, but my old high school football team- American football or international football, would have been really upset to be lumped together-not to mention the mayor, socialites, etc. There is also the whole aspect of the fact that they would have been built at completely different times, sometimes there is overlap, but in the case of the two locations we are talking about, google directions says it will take us about 2 hours and 4 minutes to drive from one location to the other. That’s a pretty big difference. However, the guiding principles are the same, and I believe that maybe the reason for part of the overlap-or just shoddy research, who knows. Either way, the end result is the same, it takes a lot of the individuality and the differences that should be celebrated out. Once again, I had to include some of those sites to be totally fair, but I ignored a lot of research and pages because of the questionability of the work.
So, both of these sites were part of the Maya Civilization-whose descendants still speak the language and practice several of the traditions today. The Maya were originally focused on what is now the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala. According to several sources I saw, it would be incredibly likely for that to spread up into the Chiapas, Mexico and down into El Salvador and Honduras. Now obviously, there is always the possibility they spread much further than that. But The earliest currently known settlements start around 1800 B.C. and then the generic whole of the culture reaches its zenith at the 6th century. Until a notable collapse begins to occur, which is estimated to be around 900 A.D.-The sites that we are talking about today will actually be among the last to hold out as a big city. Now, as I stated at the beginning, their descendants are still around-so when I say collapse, in a majority of cases, the people moved or relocated to villages and rural areas. It’s not like Pompei, where a huge event took out everyone in a certain mile radius. It follows more of the population growth curves. If you have ever observed one of those, basically the civilization reached a peak, at which point it was unsustainable, or maybe there was war, a series of events or natural disasters, that caused this shift back to rural from the massive cities. Three factors were suggested right now from history.com, as quote “Overpopulation and overuse of the land, endemic warfare and drought”.
The Spanish Conquistadors really wouldn’t have hit the region until the 16th century-they reached mainland Mexico in 1519 for the Aztecs I believe, and really began with the Mayas several years after that and didn’t stop until almost the 1700s. But History.com breaks up the Maya into 3 periods of time: Early Maya (1800 B.C.-A.D. 250), Classic Maya (A.D. 250-900), and then Post Maya which would be 900-onwards.
So, what is so incredibility brilliant about them, is that they had extremely advanced calendars, chocolate, architecture, pottery, chocolate, agriculture, mathematics, chocolate, rubber and beautiful temples dedicated to gods and goddesses. And it is the combination of these traits that plays so heavily into to the designs we are going to be talking about today in our sites. Of course, most familiar to many of you is the pyramids that they built. Which is of course when the aliens argument comes into play. But, I am not getting into that right now-and if you haven’t heard this argument, live in fear of the day enough people convince me to make an episode about it.
But within the contributions that the Maya have made, they were extremely focused on the idea of the astronomy and mathematics as it played into the calendar and religion. They created two different calendars: a Long Count and a Calendar Round. The Calendar Round has a 52 year cycle, while the Long Count has a 20 year cycle. Additionally, the Long has larger cycles of 400 and 5,200 years. Wanna take a guess when one of those cycles completed? Dec. 21, 2012-one of roughly 50 predicted times that the world was supposed to end during my life time-yes, I counted. As you may have either learned or figured out, this was just a cycle end for the Maya, not End of Days pt. 1. So, they are further broken up into 360 days for the Long Count starting at 3114 B.C., and a 365 day with 260 day cycle for the Round. When they were designing their buildings, they often times brought these concept of both the calendar and astronomy into their designs, including the Equinox and Solstice. So, in the case of the solstice, consider that the sun and moon would have been Gods, tracking the moment would have been both a form of worship as well as a mathematical study. Now, hold onto that thought for just a moment as we move into another aspect, Cenotes and location.
So, Cenotes are well, sinkholes, and they are found world-wide. The Yucatán area is rich with limestone, and one of the natural occurrences, is that water will travel into the stone and eventually erode enough of the stone away to create a cave, that will eventually collapse inward. While the process takes a lot longer, there are several YouTube videos about an experiment that goes around every time a sink hole opens up. In the video, sand is presented in a glass container, with water pumped into the bottom. Over time, a hole starts to appear in the middle of the sand, until finally it gets so large that the top of the sand caves in, creating a crater. This is basically what happens, but with rocks instead, and the movement of water through the stone is sometimes why there is waterfalls seeping out some edges, while in other, the original gap the water was entering could be much lower down-either way the basic principle is roughly the same. Now feel free to correct me if I missed something or I am wrong, but the most important thing is that they have some form of water access-and are interconnected together. The thing about these Cenotes, is that, now we understand the logic. We understand why sometimes there is salt water-as it leaks from the ocean down below, but fresh water on top. But for the Maya, it was a place of worship, and a physical location where they could get water and also offer sacrifices as they believed it was the location where the veil between worlds was thin. A direct underworld route, or route to a particular god depending on the Cenote. I think the most commonly or publicly known God is Xibalba. Of course, people will mention sacrifices and give horror stories of young children, but several archaeological studies have shown that this wouldn’t have been the norm-most likely enemies and warriors, captured spies, and a variety of people. I read somewhere that it could have been a burial site, but I lost the website I read it on, so take me mentioning it with a grain of salt because I can’t find my research on it anymore. So, as you may have guessed, our sites are located extremely close to several of these Cenotes, and the proximity likely played a huge role in the site locations.
Breaking down our two sites: Both are located on the Yucatan. Tulum is located along the sea, while Chichén Itzá is located further inland. And there are several great Wikipedia images of some, I can’t tell if its paint or what program they used, but someone sat down and made maps for each location that is pretty clearly labeled. The Parque Nacional Tulum actually stretches around the Zona Arqueologica de Tulum. Both locations are firmly on the Caribbean Sea side of the Yucatán. So the concept of the celestial bodies were so important that they are among several locations were the central pyramid was designed to line up with the sun at a certain point in the day. You will see several pictures of various moments across time, that really show how well they managed to intersect architecture, space, and time. While there will be some pictures on the blog, the best pictures I have seen are copyrighted, so check out some of my sources-especially the link to the Yucatan Times. I will probably share it to the Facebook Page/Group as well, but they have some great images of these two locations and several others in the Mayan Empire. It’s costs about 500 dollars an image to have the rights to post the photos so, I am afraid that it’s just a little bit out of my personal budget.
Starting with Tulum, let’s focus on a brief recap of the Tulum and some of the important parts! First, and foremost, this was probably one of the coolest places I had been in my very young life. This was my first trip to another country, so I vividly remember all the iguanas, that were climbing up the cliffs and just lounging about. I was pretty young like I said earlier, so when I was looking at photos online, it seems like it is a lot more popular of a destination now. And 95% of the pictures I took were blurry pictures of plants and animals because yes, that is how young I was, but I will have some images I found on the blog post, just not my blurry iguana pics.
Believed to be built around AD 564, it was a walled city, and the two major places on the site are the Temple of Descending God, The Temple of Frescoes, and El Castillo. If you take a look at the map I mentioned though, you will noticed that there is at least two different palaces, and several temples and shrines. As I mentioned before, this was one of the last temples to be abandoned-by the time of the Spanish conquest, at the end of the 16th century instead of 900. More than likely, the diseases war and famine would have decimated the population before abandonment. The city was believed to have been called Zama as it faces the dawn. When I was there, my tour guide told us a story, of how some of the rocks would absorb the sun all day, and turn gold-thus some of them believed that it was the mythical El Dorado in the fables. And if you look at several of the drawings inspired by the first Spanish expeditions to the region, you can really see what he meant. As you may have guessed, some of the original materials and pieces of Tulum have been removed and placed into locations like the British Museum, and other collections across the world. So if you ever seen or have seen a piece of stone or a sculpture there is actually a good chance it maybe a piece from one of the temples of the Maya-not necessarily Tulum specifically. El Castillo here was actually a reconstruction-built on the remains of another building. Overall, Tulum would have served as a trading route and sea port. Though you may not be able to tell, it was built on the cliffs, but had nearby access to the sea. So it would have been a hub for trading, by both sea and inland travelers. Among the previous things I mentioned they specialized in, they would have also had an extremely large produce, like corn, Obsidian, gold, textiles, etc. As frequently mention, it is currently ruins, though it is some of the best coastal ruins.
In constrast, Chichén Itzá is actually considered to be one of the wonders of the world. It is one of the locations you will see pilgrimages too, and see some of the images of people raising hands in worship and celebration. Especially with today’s holiday. So, if you are there or happen to be there today, please enjoy! As many, many sites, stated that today is one if not the biggest holiday. It is 100% on my bucket list to make it down for the Winter Solstice one year. The major temple at Chichén Itzá, is the Temple of Kukulcan. According to chichenitza.com it was built by water sorcerers in the 435 A.D. Chichen means “Mouth of the Well”, while Itza “is Witches of Water”. While Tulum was likely more for trade, Chichén Itzá, would have been a sacred city. What is also interesting is that the designs of Chichén Itzá, actually has strong similarities to other cities that were abandoned during the 900, likely brought by a flood of people leaving the city from the Toltec populations-which were people who came from much further inland. However, unlike Tulum the Itza were defeated around the 13th century-and the area abandoned expect for pilgrimages. Like would have switched away from daily within the city, to its being a sacred location with relatively less travel then it saw during its hay day. However, the Cenote that was nearby would have kept people in smaller groupers not too far away. Chichén Itzá had several deities among the architecture, but the most famous would have been Kukulcan, as you can see his shadow along the El Castillo there during the equinox. He was a feathered serpent, and was often shown with a long body and the mouth open, almost as if to strike. There are actually still stories and fables that are actively being shared about him, so depending on where you are changes his meaning and origins, which varies from everything to changeling to war serpent, to evil, to God. I found stories and variations of him with all types. But on each equinox, he can come to bath in the Cenote, and travel to the underworld for another year. El Caracol on the site, however, aligns with Venus, which would have been a war god, and consulted often.
Kukulcan
But what is so important about the solstice that it would be contained within the designs? Within their belief systems, they would have considered the solstice a time of rebirth, or more so, renewal. A quote I found on a website by the J. Jenkins explained it the best, so, I will just read that quote to you, as I believe that it is a quote from his book, Center of Mayan Time.
“…more than the birth of a new solar year. It meant the beginning of a new Great Cycle of time, the resetting of the great celestial star-clock of precession and, perhaps, an unprecedented shift in the nature of human consciousness and civilization.”
Thank you, for tuning in, Once again a big thank you to all my listeners! A quick call to action: Please rate and review, share with your friends, neighbors, and family, your professor-whomever you think needs some architecture in their life. We again have a Facebook page and private group, both of which are under the same name: Architecture, Coffee, & Ink. The answer to the question-who is the host-is Hollywood, like the city. And second question is just your opinion, and I might just use it as a recommendation for a show with a little shout out. If you want to either be featured, or have a case study suggestion or perhaps just want to share a story of your favorite design or experience, you can either find me at Architecture, Coffee, & Ink the website is: https://architectureink.design.blog/ . Insta is now architecturecoffeeandink! Just like the email address! Everything will be linked in the show notes. You can also email me at architecturecoffeeandink@gmail.com all spelt out without the ampersands or commas. And as always,
May your coffee mugs be full, and your ink wells never run dry.
60 secs end song re-looped.
SOURCES:
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Stinnesbeck W, Rennie SR, Avilés Olguín J, Stinnesbeck SR, Gonzalez S, Frank N, et al. (2020) New evidence for an early settlement of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico: The Chan Hol 3 woman and her meaning for the Peopling of the Americas. PLoS ONE 15(2): e0227984. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227984
From <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227984>
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