Maya: Ancient Metropolis

Now legendary across the world,

it was the last great Mayan city -

Chichen Itza.

Located in the south-eastern State of Yucatan in Mexico,

this sprawling, cosmopolitan city

attracted thousands of men and women in its heyday,

as much as Paris at the time.

It has opportunities, it's exciting. This was the place to be.

The sublime pyramid of El Castillo radiated.

When you would emerge from that building,

you were looking out over this enormous plaza,

20,000, 30,000 people.

Whoever was the person wielding that position

would have been godlike themselves.

A pyramid that hides a strange secret at its core.

A temple that's forbidden to the public.

And a giant cave upon which it may have been built.

If that is true,

it's going to be the foundational trade of all the city.

They must had done everything from that cenote,

and the archaeological elements there

must contain valuable information to understand the city.

This city-state was brutally ruled by a powerful military guild

that never thought twice about spilling blood.

Argh!

Literally you could stand here

and count the number of human sacrifices.

Probably in this case

there would have been hundreds, if not a thousand or more, skulls here.

From human sacrifices to ingenious architecture,

experts are about to take you deep within this incredible city-state,

which marked both the zenith and the downfall

of one of history's greatest civilisations.

By the 11th century AD in Southeast Mexico,

Chichen Itza has reached its apex.

It is the most powerful Mayan city in all of Mesoamerica.

Built in the heart of the jungle,

the city spreads over three kilometres.

It includes dozens of lavish monuments.

Among them is El Castillo,

a pyramid standing 30 metres high,

dedicated to the powerful snake god Kukulkan.

It represents the city's religious centre.

To the north lies the Great Ball Court,

a 170-metre-long playing field,

where two teams compete as part of bloody rituals.

Towering over the canopy is El Caracol,

one of the first observatories ever built by mankind.

Its unique architecture

allows for incredibly precise measurements

of the movements of the stars.

And, finally, the Temple of the Warriors,

with its vast covered arcade and its 200 columns,

headquarters the ruling masters of Chichen Itza.

It is a cosmopolitan city of nearly 50,000 inhabitants,

as much as Paris at the time.

A truly unique city that hides a world of mysteries within its heart.

It is built over a network

of underground tunnels that span kilometres...

..and caves so deep that even oxygen is sparse.

We are in the heart of Earth, we're in the underworld,

we are on the dark side of the universe

and, yeah, this represented fertility,

you know, um...

The modern Maya from Chiapas said

that the stalactites, sometimes are dropping,

they are the breasts of the Earth.

They said that the stalagmites that grow on the floor

are the phallus.

And when they get together and form a column,

the Earth is copulating to make life happen.

So here we are on the sanctum sanctorum

of Maya religion, ritual and beliefs.

If Chichen Itza was built on top of caves,

it's because they were essential to the Mayas.

In their eyes, they represented the world of the dead

while also being the source of life.

They were the stage for their bloody ceremonies...

..and human sacrifices,

when a priest would use an obsidian blade

to carve out his victim's heart

to satisfy the gods and assure the city would prosper.

We have probably the earliest date in Chichen Itza from this cave.

It's a piece of charcoal.

You're taking one of the... around the mud of one of the walls

that the Maya build to seal the cave.

So probably a lot of the development of Chichen

started on this very cave.

It was hence from great depths

that the world's largest Maya city and its incredible pyramids

rose to prominence.

The year was 500 AD.

In the heart of the Yucatan jungle, on wild, virgin territory,

men built the first huts and christened their new village...

..Chichen Itza.

No-one knows where these first inhabitants came from,

but they were part of the powerful Maya civilisation,

whose cities flourished

from the highlands of the Pacific Coast

to the shores of the Caribbean Sea.

Meanwhile, to the west,

the Mexican highlands were dominated

by the most powerful city in Mesoamerica, Teotihuacan.

Choosing to build a city here was no accident.

This vegetal desert,

the porous surface of which allows no lake or river to form,

is actually home to an abundant source of freshwater...

..the Cenote Sagrado.

This enormous natural reservoir is 60 metres wide and 40 metres deep,

formed by limestone that eroded with rainwater...

..a water source seen by the Mayas as a gift from the gods.

I do believe that the first builders of Chichen Itza

came here because of the cenotes

and this one in particular -

the most important sacred cenotes in the Maya area.

I believe this is the mother of all cenotes

if we're talking about ritualism, if we're talking about cosmogony.

This cenote was used to give offerings to the gods.

Many of the offerings which have been found

within the sacrificial cenote

came from cities in the southern lowlands,

so it is very likely that people went to Chichen Itza as pilgrims.

Pilgrims that would strengthen the ranks of the Chichen Itza population.

And that's not all,

because, 700 kilometres away,

a terrible drought

struck the Maya plains.

Tikal, Caracol and Palenque,

large cities

with tens of thousands of inhabitants

experienced a mass exodus.

Their all-powerful leaders couldn't soothe the anger of the gods.

We are understanding in archaeology

is that communities, cities, villages, are not forever,

so maybe these people had to leave

and they resettle a new place to live.

So we see a general rise in the Yucatan in general

of cities and communities

in the period 700 to 800, 800 to 900.

Chichen was one of these places.

With the big cities crumbling in the south

and given its sacred cenote,

the odds were in Chichen Itza's favour to become a significant city.

As a new order started to take shape,

it began to work its way to the top.

Back in the 8th century AD,

Chichen Itza only comprised a few basic structures

made of adobe and wood.

Competition was ferocious.

Uxmal, 130 kilometres to the west, was leading the way.

The city had undertaken an ambitious architectural plan.

Temples, palaces and pyramids were built to ensure its local supremacy.

In the battle to be the best,

Chichen Itza had no choice -

it had to start building.

Monumental architecture is something that human beings do.

It reinforces religious ideology,

it reinforces our identity as a people - "Who are we?" -

but also it shows a power to build these things -

the energy to do it,

the economic power to do it,

and also the power of the state to create these kinds of structures.

Buildings that, unlike the people's humble dwellings, were made to last

because the people of Chichen Itza had a highly desirable resource -

limestone.

A large deposit was found right outside the city.

It looks like they were carving this stone,

which it was going to be probably a serpent head.

Can you see the shape of the serpent here?

You can see the mouth.

The eye still visible somewhere.

But it looks like, when they were working it,

it breaks,

so they leave it, they leave the work unfinished.

The hard work was not to extract it.

The hard work was to carry it all the way to the site.

You imagine how many people they needed

and a special technique.

Maybe they push this stone

through rolls of wood, logs,

so it could be manageable.

But it's amazing to believe the big city of Chichen Itza

is built with big pieces of stone like this one.

Without the help of pack animals,

and using the sole strength of their arms,

the Mayas crossed the jungle

carrying the heavy stones for hundreds of metres.

That's how the first pyramid was built, El Osario.

At 12 metres high,

it was built atop a 25-metre-deep cave,

which is connected to the temple by a staircase.

It's a symbolic doorway to the underworld.

Further south,

Las Monjas, a 50-metre-long complex, was the heart of the city.

Its upper level was home to private apartments reserved for the elite,

with long, narrow rooms.

The Mayas were not familiar with keystones.

The technique, which originated in the Western world,

allows to distribute weight along the length of a supporting wall

to create large open vaults.