Chace-Mool is the name of the type prekolumbijskiego stone altar.
Objects called "Chace-Mool" represent the human figure in recline with head facing a different page than the rest of the body and hands placed on the abdomen. It appears that a fragment of sculpture representing the abdomen was intended for victims of human hearts.
Altars Chace-Mool generally meets at the entrance to the temples Tolteków, as well as in other cultures prekolumbijskich positions, such as the Mayan subsequent period when they were shown receipts tolteckie, as in the case of Chichen Itza.
Like El Castillo, this step-pyramid temple dominates the platform, just on a smaller scale. Like its larger neighbor, it has four sides with staircases on each side. There is a temple on top, but unlike El Castillo, at the center is an opening into the pyramid which leads to a natural cave 12 meters below. Edward H. Thompson excavated this cave in the late 1800s, and because he found several skeletons and artifacts such as jade beads, he named the structure The High Priests' Temple. Archaeologists today do not believe that the structure was either a tomb or that the personages buried in it were priests.
Among the other buildings in the temple city of Chichén Itzá belonged to the already mentioned architectural masterpieces the Platform of Venus. It is located beside the great pyramid, the platform stairs are flanked by a snake head of Quetzalcoatl-Kulkulkan as Morgenstern represents.
On the outskirts Chichén Itzás is the grave of the high priest and the red house. The first pyramid is built with snakes along the stairs. In its interior, a twenty-four meter deep shaft to the graves down. The red house was in turn taken its name from the red painted fragments, which are inside the house took place. The building probably served the public and religious purposes.
The market in the temple town of Chichén Itzá is an example of Hofgalerien, after the heyday of the Maya arose. The square is lined with columns and wide staircases can be achieved. Other buildings are the graves platform, the northeastern colonnade, which skulpierten columns and the nunnery. The building, whose purpose unrelated to a monastery to be done has been named by the Spaniards. They believed it served as home to sacrifice some virgins.
The Maya name "Chich'en Itza" means "At the mouth of the well of the Itza." This derives from chi', meaning "mouth" or "edge", and ch'e'en, meaning "well." Itzá is the name of an ethnic-lineage group that gained political and economic dominance of the northern peninsula. The name is believed to derive from the Maya itz, meaning "magic," and (h)á, meaning "water." Itzá in Spanish is often translated as "Brujas del Agua (Witches of Water)" but a more precise translation would be Magicians of Water.
The name is often represented as Chichén Itzá in Spanish and when translated into other languages from Spanish to show that both parts of the name are stressed on their final syllables. Other references prefer to employ a more rigorous orthography in which the word is written according to Maya language, using Chich'en Itzá IPA: [tʃitʃʼen itsáʔ]. This form preserves the phonemic distinction between [ ch' ] and [ ch ], since the base word ch'e'en (which, however, does have a neutral tone vowel "e" in Maya and is not accented or stressed in Maya) begins with a glottalized affricate. The word "Itzá'" has a high rise final "a" that is followed by a glottal stop (indicated by the apostrophe).
There is evidence in the Books of the Chilam Balams that there was another, earlier name for this city prior to the arrival of the Itza hegemony in northern Yucatán. This name is difficult to define because of the absence of a single standard of orthography, but it is represented variously as Uuc Yabnal, Uuc Habnal, Uuc Hab Nal, or Uc Abnal. While most sources agree the first word means seven, there is considerable debate as to the correct translation of the rest. Among the translations suggested are “Seven Bushes,” “Seven Year Corn,” “Seven Stone Corn,” “Seven Lots of Corn,” or “Seven Caves.”
Northern Yucatán is arid, and the interior has no above-ground rivers. There are two large, natural sink holes, called cenotes, that could have provided plentiful water year round at Chichen, making it attractive for settlement. Of the two cenotes, the "Cenote Sagrado" or Sacred Cenote, is the more famous. 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. American Consul Edward Herbert Thompson dredged the Cenote Sagrado from 1904 to 1910, and recovered artifacts of gold, jade, pottery, and incense, as well as human remains. A recent study of human remains taken from the Cenote Sagrado found that they had wounds consistent with human sacrifice.
Chichen Itza is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site built by the Maya civilization located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the Yucatán state, present-day Mexico.
Chichen Itza was a major regional focal point in the northern Maya lowlands from the Late Classic through the Terminal Classic and into the early portion of the Early Postclassic period. The site exhibits a multitude of architectural styles, from what is called “Mexicanized” and reminiscent of styles seen in central Mexico to the Puuc style found among the Puuc Maya of the northern lowlands. The presence of central Mexican styles was once thought to have been representative of direct migration or even conquest from central Mexico, but most contemporary interpretations view the presence of these non-Maya styles more as the result of cultural diffusion.
Archaeological data, such as evidence of burning at a number of important structures and architectural complexes, suggest that Chichen Itza's collapse was violent. Following the decline of Chichen Itza's hegemony, regional power in the Yucatán shifted to a new center at Mayapan.
The ruins of Chichen Itza are federal property, and the site’s stewardship is maintained by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, INAH). The land under the monuments, however, is privately-owned by the Barbachano family.
