Kukulkan
On each side of the temple at Chichen Itza, we can see two snakes carved in the rock running down the side of the stairway that leads to the top. I have often wondered what does it symbolizes, what did it mean to the ancient Maya who used to live here? There are many guides working at Chichen Itza and it seems as many stories as to their significance as there are guides.
First of all the name, KukulKan comes from the Yucatec Maya. Ku means feather, Kukul means feathers and Kahn means snake. So Kukulkan means feathered snake.
- Ku – Feather
- Kukul – Feathers
- Kan – Snake
Chichen Itza
Second Chichen Itza. Chic means mouth but is also synonymous with the mouth or entrance of a cave. So Chichen means the mouths of the caves. Itza refers to the people. Interestingly enough the rulers of the city didn’t originate in the Yucatan. They came in from the north. We know this because of the architecture. It is similar to the architecture in Tula which is in modern-day Hidalgo which is on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico from the Yucatan peninsula. The people we call Toltec came to the Yucatan and built Chichen Itza. The original substructure being built around the time of the Mayan collapse around 600 – 800 AD, but the later temple, as we see today, was only being built around the 11th century AD, well after the Mayan collapse. Itza means the Water Crafters or Magicians.
- Chic – Mouth or Cave
- Chichen – Caves
- Itza – Water Magicians
Water Magicians
But I think they weren’t magicians of water. I think the difference between a magician and an engineer is that engineering works. The Itza people found a way of successfully extracting sufficient water out of the aquifer for a city that at its peak numbered in the hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. Every day the people living there would need to go and get a bowl of water for themselves to drink and also to water their crops. If they go to get water and there is none available, they would simply go somewhere else to get the water. So I think that they were Water Engineers or Hydrologists. I think that their understanding of the water system went beyond magic and into science.
Modern Mayan Water Pump
There is a modern Mayan man who has land in the jungle close to where I live with a small Mayan hut. He has a bigger home in the town and uses this as a place to get away from the town and enjoy the jungle. He has a hand pump for extracting water from the aquifer. It’s made of modern plastic piping and as one raises and pushes down the piping water comes out, simple yes? On first consideration, one assumes that the best way to get the most water out would be to make big sweeping motions with the pipe. But that’s not what he does. He holds the horizontal bar at a fixed height then in relatively small motions rapidly raises and pushes the pipe by only 10cm / 3″ or so. He says that if one makes bigger motions the water is bad because shallower water is dirty and lower water is salty.
As a cave diver, this is something we see when we go diving in the caves around here. Shallow areas of the caves are full of tannic acid. It is caused by organic material falling into the water. When we dive deeper we go into the halocline. The halocline is the boundary where freshwater from rain becomes saltwater that flows in from the sea. But I need modern scuba equipment and a whole lot of training to go and see this. He knows about these levels of tannic, fresh and saltwater without having seen them.
He says that if there is a drought or just very dry he needs to position the pump lower to get the freshwater. But if there is heavy rainfall he needs to hold the pump higher. So he has to understand how the aquifer works to draw fresh water out.
Is he a water Magician, Sorcerer or Warlock?
No, absolutely not he’s a water engineer or a hydrologist because he understands the process, even without having the insight I have had in going and seeing it for myself.
I think there might be a tendency for modern historians to be biased to what they consider to be quite a primitive race of people. So they call them Water Sorcerers when in reality they were Scientists, Engineers or Hydrologists.
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