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Cenotes: Natural Wonders of the Yucatan Peninsula

What is a Cenote?

Less than a million years ago what is now known as the Yucatan Peninsula was under the ocean’s surface. This relatively young (the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago) part of North America was raised above sea level over time by the shifting of the earth’s tectonic plates. The foundation of the peninsula is mainly limestone and it is covered by a thin layer of sand and top soil. There are no above ground rivers on the Yucatan Peninsula; all of the ground water sinks through the porous limestone and travels to the sea in underground rivers. Over time, some of the limestone ceilings covering these underground rivers weakened and eventually collapsed, leaving sinkholes filled with water - a “cenote

Not just a sinkhole

Cenotes played an integral role in the civilization of the ancient Maya. Almost every Mayan city on the Yucatan Peninsula was built next to, or in the vicinity of a cenote, as they were the only constant source of water. The Maya used cenotes for water - both for drinking and irrigation - and in important religious ceremonies. Divers have explored the cenote at Chichén Itzá (a large Mayan city on the Yucatan Peninsula) and have found offerings the ancient Maya made to the gods; among them copper and gold necklaces, pottery, jade beads, and skeletons of both sexes of all ages.

 

The first explorers who arrived in Yucatan were amazed to find an extraordinary culture focused around water, in a place with no rivers or lakes and with a lengthy dry season. For this reason, most of the beliefs and customs of the area's Pre-Hispanic inhabitants were concerned with rain as the basis of survival. Therefore, it was the water god who was most frequently found represented on the temples and ancient buildings.

Types of Cenotes

There are various types of "cenotes"; the cave, for example, in whose interior stalactites and stalagmites abound, and the young cenotes - those that are uncovered after the roof crumbles and caves in. The mature cenotes which have dried out due to evaporation and, for this reason, the bottom has become filled up with mineral deposits due to the precipitation of calcium salts. Finally, there are the dry cenotes where the water has evaporated and these ultimately become filled with organic and mineral residues.

Today at least 1,000 cenotes have been located among the approximately four thousand that are believed to exist on the Yucatan Peninsula. These unique places are now included in the ever increasing number of tourist attractions of the area, both for the archaeological value they offer, as in the cases of Chichen Itza and Dzibilchaltun, and for the exquisite natural beauty they possess, as found at the Dzitnup cenote near Valladolid.

Andrew Synyshyn

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