EL CARACOL
Isla Cozumel
This has got to be
one of the coolest inventions I have ever heard of. But let me digress. When I
first came to Cozumel in 1992, the group I was with, all rented mopeds for
Christmas Day since the dive boats don't go out, for the holiday is very big on
the island. You can ride around the entire island in half a day even on these
little mopeds. Down at the south end of the island there was a sandy road that
went back up the coast along the water to a lighthouse. On the way in were these
little ruins. They were grown over by the jungle and looked 'buggy'. No other
ruins were around it and it seemed insignificant. We never stopped. Now that the
place is a park, they have cleaned it up and this is what it is.
The Mayans built it in the 12th century, made from coral stone carved into
blocks. The bottom section is no more than 5-6 feet high and the openings were
small doors on all four sides. A person had to crawl in and only the priests
could do so. They would remain in a prone position while in the little room and
pray. The top was flat and on that was the smaller room which really wasn't a
room. Just shaped like one. It also had 1 window on each of the 4 sides. There
were 4 shield-like stones, I would say they looked like upside down crusader
shields, that were positioned about a foot and a half away from and directly in
front of the windows. If you look closely at this picture, you can see the
remaining stubble of the one out to the left.
On top of the 2nd smaller room is this mortar dome, and in the dome are 4
rows of holes that go straight up to the top and line up with the windows in the
little room. These holes are actually little conch shells with the ends cut off,
imbedded in the mortar. It looks like the suckers on the arms of an octopus. Now
on top of this dome, they put a large king conch shell, again with the front end
cut off and placed facing down. They used dugout canoes to get around the island
and when weather was normal, nothing would happen. But if the wind started to
pick up and I mean really pick up, like being pushed by an incoming hurricane,
the wind would create a back draft of sorts behind these little shields and air
would be forced up through the dome, creating a very loud sound similar to a
trumpet note. With this structure, the Mayans had one of the first hurricane
early warning systems.
Here's how I saw it:
EC1
EC2
EC3
EC4
EC5
EC6
EC7
EC8
EC9
EC10
OF THE MOUNTAINS
John B Caddell
Copyright 2001