Welcome to Bedtime History.
Hello, this is Breck.
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Imagine you are walking through a hot jungle in Mexico.
The trees are tall.
You hear birds calling from the branches.
Suddenly the trees open, and you see something amazing.
A giant stone pyramid rises in front of you.
It has steps going all the way to the top.
The stone is warm from the sun. you are standing in front of Chichen Itza, an ancient city built by the Maya people.
Chichen Itza is one of the most famous ruins in the world.
Long ago, it was a busy city full of people, markets, and temples.
It was built more than 1 ,000 years ago by the Maya.
The Maya were a group of people who lived in what is now Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Central America.
They were very smart.
They studied stars, made calendars, built cities, and wrote books using pictures called glyphs.
Chichen Itza was one of the largest Maya cities.
Thousands of people lived there.
They built homes, temples, ball courts, and pyramids from stone.
The most famous building is the big pyramid, called El Castillo, which means the Castle in Spanish.
But, the Maya had another name for it, the Temple of Cuculcan.
Cuculcan was a snake god.
The Maya believed he had great power.
El Castillo was built to honor him.
The pyramid has 91 steps on each of its four sides.
If you count the top platform, that makes 365 steps, 1 for each day of the year.
The Maya used the pyramid like a giant calendar.
year. Something very special happens at El Castillo during the spring and fall equinoxes.
These are two days each year when day and night are the same length!
On those days the sun hits the Pyramid just right.
Light and shadows create the shape of a snake slithering down the steps.
It looks like Cú Chulcan is coming down from the sky.
Thousands of people come to see this event every year.
The Maya were experts in math and astronomy.
They watched the stars and planets.
They could predict eclipses and knew when to plant crops.
Chichen Itza had an observatory called El Caracol, which means The Snail.
It got that name because its staircase looks like a snail shell.
From there, Maya scientists watched the sky and studied how the sun, moon and stars moved.
In Chichen Itza, the Maya also played a ballgame.
It was not like soccer or basketball, but it was just as exciting.
They used a rubber ball and tried to get it through a stone ring high on a wall.
They could not use their hands, only their hips, knees, and elbows.
The court where they played was very large.
People came to watch and cheer.
Sometimes the game had religious meaning.
Some games may have ended with sacrifices, but not all.
Qichen Itza also had a sacred cenote.
A cenote is a deep hole filled with water.
The Maya believed it was a place to speak to the gods.
They threw in gold, pottery, and sometimes even people to show respect.
This cenote is still there today, and divers have found many treasures in it.
Around the year 1200, people slowly stopped living in Qichen Itza.
We are not sure why.
There may have been drought, war, or other problems. The city was left empty.
Trees and plants grew over it.
For hundreds of years, Chichen Itza was hidden.
In the 1800s and 1900s, explorers came to study the ruins.
They began to clean and fix the buildings.
Today, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site, which means it is protected and cared for.
People from all over the world come to see it.
It is one of the new Seven Wonders of the World.
Qichen Itza shows us how smart and creative the Maya were.
They used science, math, art, and religion in their daily lives.
They built a city that still stands after more than 1 ,000 years.
When you walk through its stone paths and climb its tall steps, you can imagine the people who once lived there.
Even though the city is quiet now it still speaks to us.
It tells the story of a great civilization full of wonder and wisdom.
The stones of Chichen Itza are old but the story they tell is still alive.
