Dzibilchaltun (Place of Inscribed Flat Stones)

Dzibilchaltún

The location of Dzibilchaltun (Place of Inscribed Flat Stones) was first settled around 1500 BC, and is known to be the longest functioning city of the Mayan world.  It was still inhabited at first contact, unlike other abandoned cities that were only visited for ritual and ceremony.



This is why missionaries debuilt Mayan temples and began constructing a church, which was left unfinished.

This 16 century Franciscan chapel is located in the Central Plaza.

Archaeologists have studied nearly 35 sq km of the city, which is believed to have been approximately 85 sq kms.  The area that has been mapped includes over eight thousand structures, though most of these are not able to be seen when visiting due to growth of trees and vegetation.  Depending on how long one spends here, there are some structures to visit that are out of the main central area, and believe me I know, I walked several miles around these ruins going through apparent trails, which some led to some very anticlimactic sites, but hey, never know till you check.

This is what I found at the end of the road, very nice building, but down a beaten path, nice little surprise, but the sun was beating down hard now.

One of the things I did not enjoy of this site, is that they did not allow any sort of back packs or bags, so I had to leave my camel pack behind :-(

Now one huge misconception of mine (or me stereotyping) is that my people (The Mayans of course) were people of small stature, and I do say that on a serious note as most locals are in the 5' or less (typical natives), but after walking this city, which seems to be most platforms with steps and some decent size step buildings, I came to the conclusion that there's no way ancient Mayan people were of small stature...

...as most of the height of each step is an average of 18-22" tall!! Who needs a stepmaster when you have these ruins in your back yard! Man, I tell you, I was having a hard time reaching up to each step, guess I'm just a tad tired of several days in a row of doing sites, but wowsers!! Talk about buns of steel!!

The Temple of the Seven Dolls

The Temple of Seven Dolls is an observatory, which maps the movement of stars, the sun and moon.  When it was excavated, seven dolls were found in the central room, hence the name of the structure.  These are now on display in the museum.  This observatory was re-built before archaeologists realized that the roof was originally left open, and unfortunately it would be a difficult task to debuild and correct this.  Even so, the Temple of Seven Dolls is an important structure making Dzibilchaltun a site worth seeing, especially during the equinox.

The temple is also known as the temple of the sun, as you can tell it's a quadrangular substructure, which at one point in time was a monumental building, in order to get to this building, there was a path called a Sacbe, please see the description on the following picture:

Aside from the impressive structures they have through out, this is one of the site that has a cenote, even though this is not a caved cenote, it's still quite impressive to see.

Cenote Xlacah is close to 40 meters deep, and was explored in 1958 by divers who were funded by the National Geographic Society.  Approximately 30 000 Mayan artifacts were recovered, some of which are now housed in the museum on site.  Even during high season, it is rare to find many people swimming in the cenote, making it a lovely place to swim.  Though not a large cenote, it is very deep and the water is clean. (It doesn't look nearly as deep as it is, as the bottom is so clear.)

Well folks, this is the end of another wonder site explored, following are more pictures taken on site, please enjoy and feel free to comment on any of my blogs!

Thanks for joining me on this fantastic ride!