Popol Vuh: Sacred Book of the Quiché Maya - Mesoweb

Kukulcan. The supposedly Toltec-inspired Great Ballcourt at Chichen was dedicated on a
date corresponding to November 18, 864, and current archaeological evidence indicates that all
of the principal buildings of the city were completed well-before AD 1000 (Schele and
Mathews 1998, 200).
Rather than the result of a single event, such as the arrival of Kukulcan, central Mexican
influence in the Maya world should be seen as a long continuum of mutual interaction
extending back to at least the third or fourth century with the arrival of merchants and
perhaps military invaders from the great central Mexican city of Teotihuacan. There is clear
evidence of the presence of armed warriors from Teotihuacan who arrived at the largest of
lowland Maya centers, Tikal, in AD 378. There the foreigners oversaw the establishment of a
new dynasty of heavily Mexican-influenced rulers, if not Teotihuacanos themselves (Martin
and Grube 2000, 29-36). That this was no isolated event is attested by the presence at about
the same time of Teotihuacan architectural, ceramic, and artistic influences throughout the
Maya world, particularly in the Guatemalan highlands centered at the major site of
Kaminaljuyu (Kidder, Jennings, and Shook 1946; Sanders 1977; Michels 1979; Hatch 1997)
and in the Tiquisate area (Hellmuth 1975, 1987; Bove 1989).
Despite these influences from central Mexico, Tikal and its neighbors maintained their
fundamentally Maya character and within a brief time reestablished their own native
dynasties. Chichen Itza as well, notwithstanding its taste for central Mexican motifs and
concepts, was also likely ruled by native Maya lineages. Their claims to “Toltec” ancestry
were part of the political climate of the age where such legendary Mexican connections were
essential to establishing legitimacy based on ancient precedent. Schele and Mathews suggest
that the Itza-Maya rulers of Chichen Itza used central Mexican imagery as a means of
proclaiming themselves the legitimate inheritors of Toltec power in the same way that kings
throughout Europe declared themselves to be successors to the Holy Roman Empire,
regardless of their familial and social histories (Schele and Mathews 1998, 201). Indeed the
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