El Caracol, or the Observatory, Chichen Itza (Mexico)

El Caracol, or the Observatory, is a remarkable structure of the pre-Columbian era that nestles at the very heart of the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza on the eastern Yucatán Peninsula, nowadays southeast Mexico.

Bird’s-eye view of El Caracol, facing northeast

Its name means ‘snail’ or ‘spiral-shaped’ in Spanish apparently due to the winding staircase that spirals up the interior of a cylindrical central tower, atop two nestled platforms on a trademark Mayan superimposed pattern.

The structure, almost 23m high, is estimated to date back to around 906 AD in the so-called Postclassic Mesoamerican age and is reckoned to have served as a space observatory, hence its other name, for the Mayas to track the movements of Venus in the night sky in particular.

Mayan astronomers, who doubled as priests, knew that Venus appeared on the western and disappeared on the eastern horizon on the far ends of a 225 day spell at different times round the year while five such cycles⁽¹⁾ amounted to eight solar years.

Sight lines of about 20 astronomical events of interest to Mayans, such as solstices, eclipses and equinoxes, can be found within the tower there has got to be said.

For that matter, the structure doesn’t look that different from modern observatories as it features that domed tower, comprising two concentric walls that enclose a pair of circular chambers in its lower level, in the middle with relatively small aligned windows on the side.

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(1) The so-called ‘Five Petals of Venus.’

Chichén Itzá, Yucatán (Mexico), virtual tour

El Castillo, Chichen Itza (Mexico)

This is the north side of El Castillo (‘the Castle’ in Spanish), also known as Temple of Kukulcán or simply Kukulcán, which commands the center of the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza on the peninsula of Yucatán, westernmost Mexico.

It is a Mesoamerican step-pyramid that served as a temple to the serpent deity of Kukulcán, meaning ‘plumed/amazing/feathered serpent,’ and was built in phases between the 8th and 12th century AD.

Kukulcán is a deity of the Pre-Colombian Yucatec Maya, closely associated with Qʼuqʼumatz of the Kʼicheʼ people (modern Guatemala) and Quetzalcoatl of the Aztecs, that originates in the Maya of the Classic era (250 – 900 AD) known therein as Waxaklahun Ubah Kan, which translates as the ‘War Serpent.’

The pyramid comprises several square terraces on top of one another as staircases climb up each of its four sides to the top with sculptures of plumed serpents rolling down either side of the north balustrade.

Interestingly, there are roughly 91 steps on each side that along with the platform of the temple at the top add up to 365 overall that matches the number of days of the Haabʼ year, which is made up by eighteenth months of twenty days each.

Archaeological research suggests that Kukulcán was fashioned on the concept of Axis Mundi (also called Cosmic Axis or World Tree), which represents the connection between ‘higher and lower realms’ of the cosmos.

Axis Mundi is the Latin term for the axis of the Earth (rotation) between the Celestial Poles in astronomy.

The pyramid further stands right above a cenote (water cave) aligned at the intersection of a further four; the Sacred Cenote (North), the Xtoloc (South), the Kanjuyum (East) and the Holtún (West) that render Kukulcán as an axis mundi itself.

Over the spring and fall equinoxes, late afternoon, the sun strikes off the northwest corner of the pyramid to cast a series of triangular shadows on the north balustrade shaping an illusion of the feathered serpent crawling down the pyramid.

As a matter of fact, the temple seems to simulate the chirping of the Quetzal (bird) at the clapping of people around, which is probably not accidental, through the echoing effect of its shape and structure.