Mayan fresco from Bonampak, in Chiapas, Mex., original c. 800 ce, 20th-century reconstruction by Antonio Tejeda. Ygunza/FPG
Palenque: palaceRuins of the palace at Palenque, Chiapas state, Mexico.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Palenque, Mexico: palaceInterior of the palace at Palenque, Chiapas state, Mexico.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Palenque: Temple of the InscriptionsTemple of the Inscriptions at Palenque, Chiapas state, Mexico.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Palenque, MexicoTemple of the Sun (background), with the steps of the Temple of the Cross (foreground, right), at Palenque, Chiapas state, Mexico.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Palenque, MexicoTemple of the Inscriptions (rear) and Temple XIII (foreground) at Palenque, Chiapas state, Mexico.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)In the hills just above the floodplain of the Usumacinta lies Palenque, usually considered to be the most beautiful of Maya sites. The architects of Palenque designed graceful temple pyramids and “palaces” with mansard-type roofs, embellished with delicate stucco reliefs of rulers, gods, and ceremonies. The principal structure is the Palace, a veritable labyrinth of galleries with interior courts; over it looms a four-story square tower that may have served as both lookout and observatory. A small stream flowing through the site was carried underneath the Palace by a long, corbel-vaulted tunnel. The temples of the Cross, Foliated Cross, and Sun were all built on the same plan, the back room of each temple having a kind of sanctuary designed like the temple of which it was a part. It can be supposed that all three temples served the same cult. The most extraordinary feature of Palenque, however, was the great funerary crypt discovered in 1952 deep within the Temple of the Inscriptions. Within a sarcophagus in the crypt were the remains of an unusually tall ruler, accompanied by the richest offering of jade ever seen in a Maya tomb. Over his face had been fitted a mask of jade mosaic, while a treasure trove of jade adorned his body.
Northward from the Central Subregion, in the drier and flatter environment of the Yucatán Peninsula, the character of lowland Maya civilization changes. Just north of Petén is the Río Bec zone, as yet little explored but noted for temple pyramids and palaces with flanking false towers fronted by unclimbable “stairways” reaching dummy “rooms” with blank entrances. Río Bec structures are carved with fantastic serpents in deep relief, a feature that becomes even more pronounced in the Chenes country to the northwest, in the modern state of Campeche. At Chenes sites, Maya architects constructed frontal portals surrounded by the jaws of sky serpents and faced entire buildings with a riot of baroquely carved grotesques and spirals.
This elaborate ornamentation of buildings is far more restrained and orderly in the style called Puuc, so named from a string of low hills extending up from western Campeche into the state of Yucatán. The Puuc sites were for the Northern Subregion what the Petén sites were for the Central, for they are very numerous and clearly were the focal point for Maya artistic and intellectual culture. Uxmal is the most important Puuc ceremonial centre and an architectural masterpiece. It has all of the characteristics of the Puuc style: facings of thin squares of limestone veneer over a cement-and-rubble core; boot-shaped vault stones; decorated cornices around columns in doorways; engaged or half-columns repeated in long rows; and lavish use of stone mosaics in upper facades, emphasizing sky-serpent faces with long, hook-shaped noses, as well as frets and latticelike designs of crisscrossed elements.
Ruins of one of the main buildings of the ancient Mayan city of Chichén Itzá, south-central Yucatán state, Mex.© spiritofamerica/Fotolia
Kabah: Codz PopStone masks of Chac, the Maya rain god, cover the facade of Codz Pop (also called Palace of the Masks) at Kabah, Yucatán, Mexico.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Kabah: Codz PopSculpted figures on the east facade of Codz Pop (also called Palace of the Masks) at Kabah, Yucatán, Mexico.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Kabah: El PalacioEl Palacio (“The Palace”) at Kabah, Yucatán, Mexico.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Kabah: El PalacioEl Palacio (“The Palace”) at Kabah, Yucatán, Mexico.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
KabahMayan ruins at Kabah, Yucatán, Mexico.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)The nearby centre of Kabah, connected to Uxmal by a ceremonial causeway, has an extraordinary palace completely faced with masks of the Sky Serpent. Other major Puuc sites are Sayil, with a multistoried palace, and Labná. The Puuc style reaches east across the Yucatán Peninsula, for at Chichén Itzá, a great site that was to occupy centre stage during the Toltec occupation of the Northern Subregion, there are several buildings strongly Puuc in character.
Puuc sites may be said to represent a lowland Maya “New Empire” in the sense that their apogee occurred in the 9th and 10th centuries, a time during which the great Petén, or Central Subregion, centres were in decline or had collapsed. Just how late Puuc sites remained active, with major constructions being dedicated, remains something of a question. About 1000 a major change took place in northern Yucatán. It was marked by the construction of a number of Toltec-style temples and palaces at Chichén Itzá, a site that also has many Puuc-style edifices. It is not known if Toltec Chichén Itzá existed contemporaneously with such Puuc sites as Uxmal and Labná, and if so, for how long. Eventually, Chichén Itzá appears to have dominated northern Yucatán, lasting well into the Postclassic Period (about 1250). Questions also surround the bringers of Toltec-style architecture to Chichén Itzá. They may have been either central Mexican Toltecs or Gulf coast peoples who probably were Maya-speakers and who had adopted central-Mexican ways. In this connection, it should be noted that Puuc sites were under several influences from Gulf-coast Mexico, particularly from central Veracruz. Maya art of the Late Classic