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I think Toninà is the tallest Mayan pyramid in Mexico.

This video is ridiculously well made.

Play the famous NANCY KERRIGAN AUDIO FILE: WHY????????

Do you have any ideas or understanding of how all these ancient peoples could have such advanced knowledge to predict these different celestial events? Your videos are pretty good and beautiful in that they include the flora which the ancients considered important!

Very interesting to see the drawing of the original external pyramid on the Temple of the Seven Dolls, and this is a very enjoyable and thorough video. As I understand there's a larger pyramid outside the visiting zone which is not uncovered, called edifice 89. It is about 400 yards to the west-southwest of the very long structure. I read somewhere that it is unstable, and therefore not excavated. This would have been the second largest pyramid structure after the original structure covering the Temple of the Seven Dolls. The top pokes through the trees, but it has trees on it so apparently it is not obvious. I cannot find the source of this anymore, it was something I read on the net, but apparently a lot of the site is still in the forest and not accessible for visitors.

Visited in the early 90's, it's on the Puuc route w/ many other interesting structures in that area. think it means "place of the ants" in Maya. Best to stay at Uxmal, great hotel there (or there used to be) and go on in the morning.

I like the information you have provided before, during, and after the tour. Interesting!

Thanks for your vids. I'll be visiting Oaxaca next month and they've been helpful. I'd like to visit San Jose Mogote and I've read the museum would make the trip to visit the pyramids worth it. Did you happen to visit the museum while there?

The city planification of El Rey reminds me too much Teotihuacán... i mean the buildings in the corner of a long road that ends in the large pyramid in San Miguelito. Like the pyramid of the moon in the Avenue of the dead. Perhaps the mayans had Teotihuacan influences even in Postclassic times?

"EK" is "STAR" in Maya ::"Ek Balam" is "STAR JAGUAR" having the color black as in night, with stars

That was a great video! Thank you! I was at Mitla in 2002(ish), but I didn't realize at the time how large the ancient city actually was. Very interesting about the faultline, too.

I can't imagine going somewhere and staying in a resort, never leaving resort, and then complain you didn't see any ruins on top of it

excellent video as always! thank you for sharing your knowledge!

Great to see your new post! Very much enjoyed your new video and presentation and look forward to more. Your content is always very well presented with unique information and insights! Thank you! 👍

Thanks that was awesome!✌🏻

audio is a lot better in this reupload 👍will have to keep this video in mind when I'm in the area again

Blessed audio fix

Look forward to your content every time I see a new episode come out. Appreciate your knowledge of the area and cultural history. Please keep us posted on your journey, looks so exciting what could be next. 🍻

hell yeah fixed audio

Is dit een re-load? Zo snel al?

I know that we share an interest in Maya dialects so I thought that you might enjoy viewing this presentation by Marc Zender (a prominent Maya epigrapher)..... ruclips.net/video/R5XuYnoGa3Q/видео.html

heart attack waiting to happen.

Thank you for taking the time to share this video with me. Next time there is a complete eclipse (100 years from now.... +/-....) you should try to see it from a Maya site that is so isolated that you are the only one there- just you, and the present, the past, and an event shared between them- just you and the ancient Maya. (smile)

I am smiling. Your "bird" distraction was similar to the dogs on the movie "Up"........ "SQUIRREL!"

I loved your defense of EdzNah as "a machine with moving parts". This is a valid argument. I don't see any reason that the moving parts of a machine need (by necessity) to integral to the machine. They can be external to it. Alej

Of course they built a Spanish church on top of the underworld and it makes you wonder what’s under the other churches that they built bang on top of all these sites.

Please read my return reply to you under "The Sak Be between the ancient site of YaxuNah", below, but be aware that the voyage that I am sending you on will take you to very very dark corners of the Maya world. Alej

Please read reply to your book collection below.

Thank you for taking me along on your walk through of Yagul. I benefited from the journey, and your information along the way.

You are quite right about the Labyrinthine nature of Yagul. I have been to Mitla and was quite impressed but have never made it Yagul. Now I must go.... even if it is only for the views of the mountain valley and the colours that the landscape emits.

What god or goddess could resist a necklace made from somebodies teeth? (smile)

A suggestion. You should also go to Muyil (cloud) and do the site and also the three lagoons out to the sea, with the canal that the Maya cut between them and the small temple that they erected at the mouth of the canal and its entrance into the most inland of the lagoons. Then, you should also go inland to do Ko'ob Ha (Coba). It is a very large site with various centres, and a deep history, so you may want to plan to do it in a couple of days. You should research it well before you go, to get the most out of it. I would recommend a paper by Stanely Guenter concerning the 'Queen of Coba'. You should also read some papers concerning the Noh Sak Be (Great Sak Be) that extend for 100 kms from Ko'ob Ha in an almost straight line through the jungle to YaxUNhah, south of Chi Ch'en Itza. You could then follow this up with a tour of YaxUNah, which is a seldom visited site with a deep and tragic history. You would need to read a few papers on the dig at YaxUNah before you go there in order to appreciate what you are seeing, and what it all means. There is a good paper by Tracy Arden that talks about the dig at YaxUNah, and what they found there. But, be careful, because there were significant errors made in their early interpretation of what they uncovered and how it all seemed to fit together. Later reanalysis has corrected some of these and should also be read. It is clear from your presentations that you are profoundly interested in the Maya and are willing to read, research, study the Maya dialects, and get your facts right. I think that you would find this immensely personally rewarding. If you do this, and find that it was worth while, I can give you other leads to far less well known sites that are immensely important. Alej

I do wish that you had taken closeups of the frieze on the temple with the "Itzamnah head". I guess one can't expect to get everything right.... eh. (smile)

The toothless mouth with two eye teeth in the corners of the mouth, and the "Roman" nose indicate that this is probably the face of Itzamah. It also appears to have the indications of "God Eyes"

It is not another iguana. It is Itzamnah, in his other nauhual entity, gazing out to sea and remembering the old times. "When will my ships come in?" (smile)

After long days of traveling rough waters along uninhabited coast of Siyan Ka'an, with Xocob coming up occasionally to see if there might be an easy free lunch above, I can imagine that driving your dug out canoe up onto the powder beige sands in the cove at the base of the Zama citadel must have given one a great feeling of elation bordering on euphoria. The goods would be unloaded and stored. The dugout would be secured against storms for the night. Knowledge of a warm meal of atole and fire cooked kutz, and good laughter with old friends while deals were made, must have seemed like Ka'an itself. One could later take time to pay the priests with goods to make offerings for a continued safe voyage. The smoke of the day's fires would perfume the air with the incense of burning hearth fires with comalob balanced over them on the three stones of creation. As you drifted off to a well earned sleep, to the background noises of the people of Zama settling down for another balmy night, one could also hear the ubiquitous and eternal sound of the surf, and the hush of sea breezes through the leaves. Tomorrow, before dawn, the dugout would be reloaded and you would be off again to the port cities of Zaman Ha, and Cusamil.

I appreciate that you take the time to look up the name for things in Yukatek and include them in your videos: Ch'uy=Osprey

I do appreciate when you add still images of what you are referring to so the viewer can get a more stabile view of things. I also like you other post visit asides in which you correct errors that you have earlier made in your commentary, and add details or more accurate information.

You tend to move your camera too quickly past things, and walk to fast through areas of interest. Also, you are not always aware of where your camera is pointing so you often only take images of part of something in a hurry and you rush past. When you are moving so fast that you become out of breath you also have difficulty narrating your content. "Slow down, you move too fast. You have to make the morning last."

This place is highly overrated. Not as good as it looks.

A really interesting question is.... "Who was attacking Talol so intensely that the occupants of Talol built make shift desperation walls inside the two original substantial walls?" "Who were the attackers, and where did they come from?"

De Charney was also an earlier photographer so there may exist a lost photograph of the structures on the top of the eastern unexcavated pyramid. I own a number of these. I will have to check them carefully to see if I might have one of this.

If you had access to look down the side of the pyramid top that looks down into the palace courtyard you would see a huge circular stone lined "tank" imbedded into the centre of the floor of the courtyard, and I have always wondered if this was a huge bathing pool like the one that Nezahualcoyotl had constructed so that his digntaries could talk and bathe in the heat of the day while discussing matters of state, at his palace summer gardens at Tezcotzinco near Texcoco on the Mexican plateau, outside Mexico City.

The "woman sitting" is quite unique in Maya sculptural work. I have always wondered if she were a plasters node to a wife or girlfriend. (smile)

If you look at the bottom left (your left when facing the glyphs) on the sloping set of glyphs you will see the Maya name for the site, which is Ah Po (haw) Talol.

I propose that a game that was high on running, like soccer/futbol (played in Quintana Roo) would have ended quickly with passed out players all over the ball court. Try running from one end of a Maya site to the other and back and you will quickly discover what unconsciousness is like. You make a very good point when you propose that the Pitzil game was probably played more like tennis with static positions and reduced movement.

Wouldn't it be an idea to make a drawing of the glyphs, take them back to your place, and use your glyph books to help you to read what is written on the door lintel and door jambs.

In the "very large room" did you notice the square niche where the wall meets the inside of the vault. That used to hold a beam that stretched to the other side of the vault and helped to stop the walls from spreading, and acted as a curtain rod as well. This permitted regions of privacy and intimacy within the structure.

Isn't it amazing to realize that you are standing in exactly the same spot that Catherwood and Stevens once stood, while Catherwood was making the drawing that you are now looking at, in front of the building that he was drawing. Now that is touching deep history!

Red soil is called Chak Lu'um. Black soil is Ek Lu'um. White soil is Sak Lu'um.