Sayil: An Ancient Palace Deep in the Jungle
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ธ.ค. 2023
- Sayil (Zayi)
20.1781897° N, -89.6518401° W
Yucatec Maya
Likely first settled in the late classic period (600-900 CE), this site shows many of the elements of Puuc architecture and the cult of Kukulkan which were common in the Terminal Classic period (900-1000 CE). While most of Maya civilization was collapsing in the southern regions, Sayil briefly flourished in this time, before also collapsing itself. Remarkably, this site has barely changed at all since it was first described by John Lloyd Stephens in 1843.
So many analogues to classical western architecture. Beautiful rhythm and proportions. The coxcombs are radical! Great tour! I want to go.
Amazing! Never heard of it. Excellent work! Thank you!❤
Perfect way to start my day off with a new pyramid review!! Very fascinating and one of my favorites so far
Thank you for your time and effort !!!! Great film , and. Information. !!!!! Very interesting ! T. California
We've been there. The structure just appears out of nowhere as you walk down the trail. There is a stela with a huge phallus. A lawn mower is kept in one of the ground floor rooms. Lots of bats inside.
Fantastic. "Who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe."
I am Sooo excited to find you! Boots on the ground PLUS QUALITY RESEARCH! Thank you brother, can’t wait to dive into more explores with you! Much peace and love✌🏻
...mmm...you are either a hippie or a pot head...
Having traveled in Mexico and central America and visited a few of the major sites; Tikal, Palanque, Monte Alban, Tonina, etc. back in 2006-7 I'm always interested to see some of the many sites that have been excavated since that trip. Some of the more recent additions to the archaeologist's tool kit, like LIDAR, have expanded our view and knowledge of the monumental civilizations that arose, flourished, and then declined, in the Americas, as cultures are wont to do.
The channel "World of Antiquity" with professor David Miano has a series of videos on Mezoamerican sites that I hadn't heard of (like Sayil) and watching his, and your, videos definitely makes me long to hit the road again and retrace our route and take in a whole new list of sites. We drove from Washington state to the Panama Canal and home. I'd likely opt for a plane and rental car, this time, however. I'll be looking for any other content you put up. Ciao!
Similarly, I enjoy using old maps and guidebooks and seeing what’s changed since then. There has been a lot of work done in the past few years coinciding with the new train that has been built in the Yucatán, and it looks like there will be new areas and museums open in sites like Dzibulchaltun and Uxmal, so it’s definitely a good time to visit. I have much more content to post, so stay tuned!
Really glad to see you back and creating new videos! 😎 Will catch up now! Cheers!👍
Thanks for showing this site. I don't think I had seen the style before
I will show some more in this style soon, at Uxmal and Kabah
Amazing find.
Youre livin the dream this is awesome. 😎
Many more videos to come, stay tuned
Thank you so much for an awesome and informative video!
Wow...great job my friend...I'm an ancient site amateur investigator, and have been through some of the Yucatan and Beliez sites. NEVER heard of this place....Thank you
That was awesome
Just came up in my recommendations. Great presentation. Subscribed.
Thanks Ray! Did you know that there used to be ancient mounds in Key West too? Although I don't think there is much left of them anymore...
Thx; I did that PUUC route last year incl. Sayil. As you mentioned; it doesn't get a lot of visitors; one of the main reasons to spend some time there. At their height, with a lot of agriculture keeping the jungle somewhat at bay, they must all have been connected by those Sac-bees.
Indeed, that whole region is one ruin after another and the Sacbes connect everything. Did you go to Xlapak or Labna? I will release some videos about Kabah and Uxmal soon but I didn’t visit those two.
@@pyramidreview8664 Went to 'all' of them. Didn't document as thoroughly as you do but it was fun (except for 'hunting for gas' in the jungle; poor planning). What they all have in common is that they're so 'understated'. Not flashy or glamorous, even their palaces look more like administrative centers. I also saw some archeologist digging/restoring inside one of the buildings and chatted with them for a while. I'll send you a few pix.
Beautiful
Interesting!!! TY and God Bless!!!
I would love copies of those illustrations!
I like art so I think it's a good idea
It would be great
Great video ❤
will be going there soon thankyou for your insight...
Beautiful :) thank you
Just discovered you, and your work is valiant, heroic, impressive . to go to these places, and deal with the heat, humidity, wasps, bats etc. Fascinating and intriguing to say the least. Question, was this entire area destroyed by the great asteroid impact, and floods? Thank you!
Thank you! Yes, much of the northern Yucatan is inside of the Chicxulub crater. It was underwater for a long time afterwards to it filled back up with coral and Limestone eventually and it isn't really visible now but the differences in the stone caused the Maya to prefer building settlements inside the area of the crater. I have a script for an episode about geology where I'll explain more about that.
This is so interesting! It must be very cheap for an American tourist visiting there.
Indeed, it can be quite affordable in comparison to traveling in the US. I am planning on making a travel guide with practical details about how to visit this area.
It seems to cover a large area, and the buildings are like no other, they seem opulent. So this area must have been governed by wealthy mayans
some people amd i stayed a couple times camping all-night at some of those ruins that are far away in YUCATAN i know that we shouldn't, but we did just camping because we though that it will be calm and silence but nope .
And i think is normal for all the people that lived there for hundreds of years ,at night we could hear people talking in maya and one of our friend knew maya so he could understand some of the conversation that i guess the souls of ancient mayan people still there,,we also could hear very clearly like people dancing and using the drums.,theres a lot metaphysical ectivity In those places at night
I would love to do that. I'm fascinated by the ruins of the America's. Everyone looks across to the old world but I have little to no interest in Europe. I guess in part because we know so little about the American civilizations that were on par with old world civilizations.
It must take a lot of money and a monumental work to bring it back. But it is incredible, and a very important mayan society. The government may not have the funds nor the University of Anthropology to do anything about it. It is so sad and a grat loss. There are other ruins around the world as well, waiting to be restored...
Cool stuff thank you ❤❤❤❤
Still trying to convince my wife this is a better vacation then a beach resort.
Such a mystery!
Beautiful ❤❤❤❤
Awesome
I’m sure you know of Mr. Edwin Barnhart. He has an email, I’m gonna send him a link to your videos. Super cool guy, and I think he will appreciate your research. I know I do. Thanks for sharing.
11:27 oh, my gosh man. I’m so impressed with your work. 12:00 unrecognizable it first this complicated multi faceted style of art just looks like rocks, but a migratory person could not carry around several different statues, so they put several different images on one stone. Yes sir, I don’t know if it was these people that made them or if they just used them , however, geologically speaking there’s no reason to have all these small hand size carry size stones. The only reason we know about it is because of the photo realistic portraits painted on the crystal packed in clay with wooden bows, teeth, charcoal, and precious stones not from the area in NC.
Hi. Great video, one of my favourites. Interesting palace. Two thoughts: as far as I can remember, scientist never know for sure, what building they discever so they give it a name and a purpose, when in reality it could have been a storehouse not royal palace. Mayan monarchy could be a criminal cyndicate praying on weak peasants and controlling trading routs, and their main building could be the place they keep their stash...don't you think so? I mean it could be not a palace but something we can never imagine from our own prospective. And another thought: when was a secondary student we used to play a self-invented game with my cousin. In a notebook we would draw a Mayan city and its citizens and then enemies and play a conquest using just poker cards to determin who wins here and there in hand to hand combat. Those cities we draw from the books about Maya and they had only pyramids and palaces like this one. Plus maybe magnificent arch from Labna... But we struggled to find an image of a common town house or better some reach family home. Yep some descriptions from Diego De Landa about village home which has 5 walls or something. Chronicles about fall of Tenochtitlan mentioning some Aztec city homes....But Maya....are you sure they lived in cities? Pompei, a little town in Roman empire had few thousand inhabitants, but it has soooo many common buildings....where citizens of every level lived, ate, been entertained etc. Maya absolutely lacking that. Why? Thanks once again for your great job. I mean it.
The main problem is that most common buildings and houses were built out of wood. But wood doesn’t last long in the hot wet jungle climate, so there is little left of these, especially in the Classic era or older, which are more than a thousand years old. Even the stone buildings from this time are in rough shape. There was a large city called Mayapan in the Yucatán not long before the arrival of the Spanish, and because it is quite recent, more things have been preserved. Also new technology like LiDAR has allowed archeologists to things they couldn’t see before. In Mayapan, the center of the city is open to the public, but there are many square kilometers outside that which have also been studied. Here is a good video about that: th-cam.com/video/YCp-WqrwuXY/w-d-xo.html
As for Sayil, it has also been surveyed extensively, and there are buildings everywhere. 220 per square kilometer, over many kilometers. there would have been thousands of residents. That’s not a city by modern standards, and it was small for a Maya city, but it was pretty dense for its time.
In the early 20th century, archeologists thought that Maya cities were just ceremonial centers inhabited by only a few elite people or religious authorities, but this view has changed as more excavations have been done on the outskirts of cities, and focus has shifted towards trying to understand the life of common people, and not just the rulers.
Thanks for the interesting reply. Sayil shows density good for a countryside settlement not a city, Mayapan is the city where Maya had their last stand against Spanish, so it is actually a postcolumbian city. Everything archeologists found there including gated walls and dense household's layout can be a resullt of European influence, shared ideas totally alien for Maya themselves. Same like city built in North America by Tecumseh was an abomination for North American cultures. I understand that the study of that culture is 150 years old but still in the very beginning. So our knowledge of Maya might take a 180 degree turn one day and we will realise something totally new and unpredictable about them.
Nice, thanks. The blocks and a majority of stone is a Geopolymer. Recreated stone. Cast, formed or worked before fully hardened. Or rendered like a stucco.. Not cut natural stone. As seen across the globe.
hey it sounds like heavy Equipment in the background. great vid by the way. I'm jealous that you can get to these sites easily.
There was some construction equipment near the entrance but the sound at the Palace was the guy walking around on top with a weedwhacker
@@pyramidreview8664 ya after a while I could see. great vid !
@@InFamousProductions I'm glad you liked it! Many more to come
Great. Love from India ❤
Of those stones could speak 😮
What a beautiful day you had to film in. This is such an interesting and important video. Thank you for bringing it to us ♡Do you think they thought the fertility goddess brought the babies? I've always wondered why a fertility goddess? Many civilizations created them. They were smart enough to make these fine dwellings.
I am glad you liked it I have dozens more to come!
Well about the fertility statue, in this region they had a lot of very male fertility imagery, and I will show more in later videos. It's thought by some that one of the reasons for the Maya collapse at the end of the classical era when many people disappeared, was that suddenly people were having fewer children. There are many sexualized statues and figures in that area. But there were also many Goddesses in mesoamerican religion, especially among the Aztec. I will mention that when I come to a video about them.
Ill just look at the book you looked at . Very nice
As far as I understand Diving God is found across Mesoamerica and Feathered Snake is sign of alliance with Tolteca culture.
The feathered snake is an ancient symbol and exists across most mesoamerican cultures
High probability theres still gold treasures burried in and around those ruins
The Maya did not have a lot of gold, since there isn’t much in the Maya region. They did acquire some through trade, but jade artifacts were far more common, and surely there are many of those still around.
smoked a jaunt there in 92
legend!
This guy he’s the guy ✌🏾👏🏿💨
😆😆🤣
Lol!
Phaha dats liitt ! ^^
i couldn't help but wonder if any of those flowers or berries found in these types of places could somehow be utilized to shape, melt or liquify stone. Probably never learn how these megalithic, smooth creations were done.
I do know that Maya concrete has been chemically analyzed and they found that in some cases they did some plant materials into the mix like tree sap from certain trees that made it stronger.
and watching these vids, when you go inside, I just try to imagine what it was like to live in them. certainly better that living in a grass hut, but it must have been still difficult with all the bugs and snakes.
I’m sure they knew how to deal with this with cultural roots thousands of years in the same environment. They did plaster stone walls as well and could seal up and clean up the spaces as needed. Smoke, ashes, lye, and fire come to mind as ways to reduce the unwanted pests in an area, plus myriad slaves or plebeians with brooms and sticks! Yet I wonder, like most cultures up to the 20th century, that they knew any ways to combat malaria.
@@pcatful yes, that's always a thought when is see these ancient empires. Malaria! one of mans most feared and deadly enemy.
Malaria wasn't a great concern because the worst types didn't arrive in America until transatlantic trade started happening, but there would have been other diseases to worry about for sure. It has been argued that the deformed figurines in another Maya site called Dzibilchaltun represented an epidemic of syphilis (I have a video about that site too). www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-19554-0
@@pyramidreview8664 wow, good point, I’m checking out the vid now
Has that building been excavated and cleaned up, or was it already clear when it was discovered? Who discovered it and when? Thanks for excellent video.
Yes indeed, I answered each and every one of these questions in the video
Looks like geopolymer was a worldwide technology.
Very interesting, but who are you and what is your interest in these ruins? Just wondering your interest in these out of the way places.
I am a historian, and I personally find these sites very interesting. I research them a lot in books and by visiting them. However, when I looked up many of these places on youtube, I saw that there wasn't much information about them available in English. And I think that's unfortunate. These places are very interesting and I think that more people should be able to learn about them. So I'm just trying my best to share them with others.
Your videos are dope but MAN I wish I could film/edit for you
Perhaps one day I will be able to afford a nice camera or an editor but until then it’s going to be very… uh… “authentic”
The damage is unusual.
Be careful with the jaguars 🐆 güero , you have to carry a machete in that jungle.
Pumas too!
Very dangerous area...
That palace.is huge wth?
You're so lucky.
That looks like the pallachios des las grecas,!!!! And the name is zoe =life
Resembles some places in india
watch out for those vines 🤣
After all the bats and bugs and snakes it really feels like everything is sneaking up on you!
What's that guy with a metal detector doing in the palace?
Tomb robber?
Metal detectors wouldn't help much in the Yucatan as the ancient Maya there used very little metal. But in any case, it was a weed whacker, he was mowing the Pyramid so that it doesn't get overgrown again.
Oh to fund the local university to restart excavations.
Maybe Zayi is also Zion.
😃
This is a place to start rebuilding Gods Kingdom. One of the 12. Kingdom Comes some. This is a axis point.
I just can't imagine humans building this. I just can't. Not back then. How??? How????
Limestone is pretty soft, people are pretty creative, and they had a lot of practice building hundreds of cities, and a lot of time to develop a society that could make it happen. It's truly wonderful and amazing though, I am always in awe.
Is Puuk where Pug-nosed dogs are from?
Moss not mold
Why didnt you go into the rest of the palace? You barely showed anything at all.
It's closed off to the public, I went to the parts one was permitted to enter.
@pyramidreview8664 Well, it looked like you were pretty well alone, was the guy mowing the lawn going to snitch you out?
Who’s mowing the lawn?
The guy on the pyramid with the weed whacker. Trees growing on pyramids destroys the pyramid as the roots enter and pull the stones apart, so they have to kill all the plants growing on top of them regularly.
@@pyramidreview8664 maybe its a weedwacker/metal detector combo
pyramid?
Two words; Metal detector!
😂 That was a weed whacker, that guy works there to maintain the site. The Maya didn't really use metal.
@@pyramidreview8664 I was thinking looking for GOLD.
@@pyramidreview8664Did they use gold?
You sound like Gene Simmons
😛
I wouldn’t go there either. Don’t like the jungle and poisonous snakes and other critters.
What do you think about Mayan ruins being related to INdia, when you learn ethe vocabulary, it seems obvious! WA worldwide community is also obvious! And Mayan Ruins in Florida and South West in America!
@@jopiet821 There are certainly some interesting ruins in Florida which I have visited, some of which have interesting connections to the Maya, but what would be their possible connection to India? Linguistically there is no connection as far as I know of.
@@pyramidreview8664 Maya, Mayan and so many, I have been down there, and the connections worldwide is uncanny. Maya is Mary and Kali and Mollly and Polly and many other related names, the Slavs Call Sophia , the mother goddess!