The descendants of the Maya Indians living on the Yucatan Peninsula have a legend about a sacred well, into which 17-year-old girls were thrown many centuries ago, sacrificing them to the powerful god Yum-Chak. At the same time, the girls allegedly did not die, but became the wives of the deity. To appease Yum-Chak, gold jewelry was also lowered into the well. How true is the legend? Many generations of researchers have tried to answer this question.
In 1836, the American traveler Joseph Stephens decided by all means to find a mysterious well. For several months, Stephens cut through the jungle and crossed the swamps. And then one day luck smiled at the traveler: he stumbled upon the ruins of an ancient city, so densely entangled with vines that it was almost impossible to notice them. Later it turned out that Joseph Stephens discovered the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza. Chi in Indian means source, and chen means well. This means that the unique structure was somewhere nearby! However, it was not possible to find the well then.
Half a century later, another American, Edward Thompson, read Diego de Landa's book A Report on Business in the Yucatan. At the time of the conquest of the Maya by the Spaniards, its author was in those parts, carrying the word of God to the “savages”. “The Indians had a custom of throwing living people into the well as a sacrifice to the gods during a drought. Before their death, they were put on a lot of gold ornaments. But if this was the case, then countless treasures lie at the bottom of the sacred well! Seized with the desire to get rich, the American went to the Yucatan. He was more fortunate than Stephens: after just a few days of wandering through the jungle, he was next to the coveted well. It was a colossal structure with a diameter of about 60 meters. Water filled the well almost to the brim. Thompson had no doubts: Mayan gold rests under the water.
Having bought from the owner the land on which the sacred well was located, Edward Thompson set to work. He himself designed and built a special dredger, purchased diving equipment and hired workers. The Indians reluctantly agreed to work for the American, fearing the wrath of Yum-Chak, from whom the white man was going to take away the treasures, and the end of the dredger's bucket sank into the well and returned filled with … mud and bottom silt. Days passed by, and the search result remained the same. Not wanting to believe in his defeat, Thompson checked the contents of each new bucket himself, rubbing the dirt between his palms, but he was still disappointed. Gradually, the Indians began to grumble: they were tired of doing pointless work, and besides, they continued to be tormented by the fear of Yum-Chak's anger. The American seemed tofell into a trance - all day he stood silently on the well's faj, aloofly watching the bucket of an excavator sink into the water and return, filled with nothing but mud.
And now, when Thompson was about to give the order to stop work, something flashed in the dredger's bucket. In joyful anticipation, the American dipped his hand into the mud and pulled out … a gold disc with a pattern embossed on it. The days of triumph have come! Again and again the ladle plunged into the well and returned, filled with precious objects. These were jade figurines, precious stones, gold dishes and ornaments … But one day the ladle brought terrible booty - its teeth caught on a human skeleton. The Indians were numb with fear: “We took the spoils from Yum-Chak,” they said. "A ferocious god will punish us." With great difficulty, Thompson managed to persuade the "savages" to continue working, but now only skeletons and individual skulls appeared on the surface.
However, Edward Thompson was convinced that there were still jewelry at the bottom of the well. The bucket just can't hook them. Now it was up to two sponge catchers who had come here with the American, but were still idle. Dressed in diving equipment, they plunged into the water. The American believed that sponge catchers, even in pitch darkness, would be able to find precious objects that had escaped the excavator. And he was right. The swimmers rose to the surface with sacks filled with gold figurines, ornamented ceramic bowls, bas-relief shields, discs and obsidian knives with gem-studded handles … After that, Edward Thompson left for the USA, where he sold the found treasures to the Peabory Museum of Harvard University. The money received was enough forso that he can live his whole life comfortably.
But the story of the sacred well did not end there. After all, if sacrifices to Yum-Chaku were brought from about 450 AD. e. for a thousand years, it means that Thompson did not raise from the bottom even a small fraction of the Mayan treasures. Therefore, in 1954, the first well-equipped scientific expedition, organized by the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History, went to the area of the ancient city of Chichen Itza. But upon arriving at the scene, the scientists found that the water in the well turned blood red. The Indians, hired by scientists for ancillary work, immediately left the terrible, in their opinion, place. It turned out that one of the Mayan legends says: if someone encroaches on the treasures of Yum-Chak, the deity turns the water of the well into blood. A person who looks at such water soon dies a painful death. Left without helpers,scientists nevertheless decided to continue researching the sacred well. They knew that the red color of the water is due to the fact that the leaves fallen from the trees just started to rot in it, and this caused the multiplication of microscopic algae. It was these algae that turned the water into "blood". It soon turned out that the technical equipment of the expedition was not adapted to work at great depths, and even in muddy water, with zero visibility.
Only after 14 long years, the expedition, armed with the latest equipment and a special agent that kills microbes that turn water into "blood", returned to the well of the ancient Mayans. A huge caravan of tractors and motor vehicles passed through the jungle of Yucatan, carrying parts of a 25-ton crane, a pontoon and powerful diesel pumps. This time the expedition was a stunning success. Not far from the well, scientists discovered a disguised pantry filled with jade idols and stone figures of the gods. Thanks to powerful pumps that significantly lowered the water level in the well, basalt sculptures of jaguars, according to Mayan legends that served Yum-Chak, many gold items, vases, coral brooches …
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However, the main sensation was the extraction from the bottom of three hundred human skeletons, only five of which turned out to be female, the rest - male and … children! Thus, the legend that 17-year-old girls were brought as a gift to the deity turned out to be untenable. According to researchers, the victims were killed near the well with an obsidian knife and only then thrown into the water. The figures of the gods were washed with the blood of children, which were then also sent to the bottom of the well.
Items found in the sacred well shed light on the history of the Maya Indians. But many pages of this history are still hidden by the darkness of centuries. That is why new expeditions go to the vicinity of Chichen Itza, to the sacred well that hides in its depths the bloody secrets of the ancient Mayan people.
Yuri ZOLOTOV. UFO kaleidoscope number 38 (202)