Twice a year thousands of visitors crowd into the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá, located in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, in anticipation of the descent of Kukulcán. They gather around the site’s pyramid, called El Castillo (“the Castle”) by Spanish conquistadors, where, according to legend, Kukulcán, the feathered serpent god, alights from the heavens, blesses his worshipers on earth, and then makes his way to the underworld, or Xibalba. In reality, the setting sun during the spring and fall equinoxes casts a shadow on the northern balustrade of El Castillo that resembles the form of a snake slithering down the stairs, an effect which is heightened by the heads of sculpted beasts at the base. While onlookers observe the phenomenon on the outside, archaeologists have been exploring the inside of the pyramid for nearly a hundred years. Archaeological explorations of El Castillo have revealed not only the rubble or earth from which many Mesoamerican pyramids are built but also two earlier pyramids and possibly an entrance to hell, er, Xibalba.
With its pleasing radial symmetry, tidy stepped platforms, and crowning temple, El Castillo is one of the most recognizable Mesoamerican pyramids. It was probably built by the Toltec-Maya between 1050 and 1300 CE when the rest of the Maya population was dwindling. It’s famous not only for the descent of Kukulcán but also for its relationship to the Maya calendar. Each of the pyramid’s four sides has a staircase of 91 steps. The total number of steps, when combined with the temple at its summit, equals 365—the number of days in the Maya solar year. The temple on top was used exclusively by priests who performed sacred rituals at a height that brought them closer to the gods in the sky.
Priests ascended one of the four staircases to reach the temple—the pyramid was never meant to be entered. In the 1930s, however, a group of excavators began exploring and discovered that another pyramid-temple was nestled within the larger pyramid. Further excavations revealed that it had nine platforms, a single stairway, and a temple containing human remains, a jade-studded jaguar throne, and a so-called Chac Mool. The Chac Mool is a type of Maya sculpture of an abstract male figure reclining and holding a bowl used as a receptacle for sacrifices. Researchers theorize that this pyramid was constructed sometime between 800 and 1000 CE. In the mid-2010s archaeologists using noninvasive imaging techniques discovered yet another pyramid buried within the two others. They theorize that it was probably built between 550 and 800 CE and may have had a single stairway and an altar.
El Castillo is not unusual for having not one but two temple-pyramids inside of it—archaeologists have found earlier structures within several Mesoamerican pyramids. For example, excavations of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán, which was constructed by an unnamed ancient culture near Mexico City around 100 CE, found that the pyramid had possibly been built over three earlier structures. Scholars speculate that rulers often constructed over existing buildings as a means of outdoing their predecessors. Interestingly, archaeologists working in the 1970s also found a system of caves and tunnels below the Pyramid of the Sun, which connected to the city’s various underground rivers. The discovery suggested a purposeful decision to build on that very spot.
Archaeologists made a similar discovery at Chichén Itzá in the 2010s. Once again using noninvasive imaging techniques, they found what they believe to be a cenote, or large sinkhole, below the base of El Castillo. The depression is similar to Chichén Itzá’s Cenote Sagrado (”Sacred Cenote”), located at the city’s northernmost end. Associated with the cult of the rain gods, called Chacs, it was the site of regular offerings that included such precious objects as jade, gold, and copper as well as humans. This cenote connects to the numerous underground rivers and caves under Chichén Itzá’s limestone bedrock, a geological formation called a karst. Such underground cavities were not only sources of fresh water for the Maya but also, according to their beliefs, the entrances to Xibalba, or the “place of fright.”
In 2018 a team of archaeologists began exploring the underground water system beneath Chichén Itzá in an effort to find a connection to the presumed cenote below El Castillo. If the archeologists are successful in proving the cenote’s existence, El Castillo would then not only have served as a staircase that brought priests closer to the gods of the heavens but also as a gateway to the demons of the underworld. It would essentially be an axis mundi, the center of the world, uniting the earth with heaven and the underworld. El Castillo, thus, may have had a more significant role in Maya religion than archaeologists and tourists have previously thought, but such a claim requires further exploration.