The
Mayans were great sportsmen and build huge ballcourts to play their games.
The Great Ballcourt of Chichén Itzá is 545 feet long and 225
feet wide overall. It has no vault, no discontinuity between the walls and
is totally open to the sky.
Each end has a raised "temple" area. A whisper from end can be heard clearly at the other end 500 feet away and through the length and breath of the court. The sound waves are unaffected by wind direction or time of day/night. Archaeologists engaged in the reconstruction noted that the sound transmission became stronger and clearer as they proceeded. In 1931 Leopold Stokowski spent 4 days at the site to determine the acoustic principals that could be applied to an open-air concert theater he was designing. Stokowski failed to learn the secret. To this day it has not been explained.
It
is not hard to imagine a Mayan King sitting here presiding over the games.
Legends say that the the winning captain would present his head to the losing
capitan, who then decapitates him. While this may seem a strange reward,
the Mayans believed this to be the ultimate honor.The winning captian getting
a direct ticket to heaven instead of going through the 13 steps that the
Mayan's believed they had to go through in order to reach heaven..
This
concludes the tour of the Chichén Itzá ruins. Just down the
road from the Chichén Itzá ruins, however is a natural formation
as spooky as the ruins themselves.
Come enter the Cenoté
(claustrophobics
should turn back now)
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