Modern humans, they believed, were created out of maize dough, like the Maya’s favorite food, tortillas. The Maya believed that earliest incarnations of humanity were made from mud and sticks, but these primordial humans disrespected the gods, and were thus wiped off the face of the Earth. One of the few Maya books to survive the Spanish conquest is called the Popol Vuh, which tells the story of the creation of mankind. The Maya viewed their lives as a complex set of such covenants – sacred agreements – with many gods who governed different aspects of their lives. According to post-Conquest sources (Maya and Spanish), pre-Columbian Maya sacrificed objects and human beings into the cenote as a form of worship to the Maya rain god Chaac. (Chichen Itza, Mexico, 2017.) The sacred cenote, located to the north of Chichen Itza’s civic precinct, to which it is connected by a 300-meter (980 ft) sacbe, or raised and paved pathway. The city’s water supply would be drain from these sacred spaces, and at least at Chichen Itza, many sacrifices – of gold, jade, animals, and humans – were cast into a sacred cenote in honor of Chaac, to ensure that rain would continue to fall for yet another season. It isn’t hard to see why cenotes – and caves in general – came to occupy a sacred space in the Maya cosmos, imagined as the home of Chaac, the rain god. As a result, at least in the vast, low-lying Yucatan, many Maya cities were founded near one of these vital freshwater sources. Water seeps below the surface rapidly, and is accessible only through a cenote (sea-note-tay) – a natural pit, or sinkhole, resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater underneath. Due to the porous limestone bedrock of the Maya homeland, such geographic features are rare. In most parts of the world, cities have historically been founded by rivers, lakes, or springs – life-giving sources of freshwater. This is Cenote Kankirixche near the village of Abala, Mexico. (Abala, Mexico, 2017.) Today, tourists to the Yucatan Peninsula value them as an opportunity for recreational swimming. Cenotes were the only reliable source of freshwater in parts of the Maya world and consequently became a sacred place, a home of the god Chaac. In the sea beyond, the Maya pictured great sharks that would on occasion be speared by the gods, spurting forth blood in tremendous spouts. Considering that much of their territory lay atop porous limestone and was bounded by the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and the Pacific Ocean, this image is fitting. Maize and cacao – two of the Maya’s most invaluable crops – were pictured as sprouting from the back of this floating creature. The Maya imagined the world as a giant turtle or crocodile floating on an infinite sea.
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