Ich Kaan Ti'Ho

Ich Kaan Ti'Ho was the old name of the city archaeologists call Dzibilchaltun, whose name means the place of writing on flat stones, north of Merida in Yucatan. Settled from about 600 BC, it became a regional power of more than 25,000 people between 800 and 1000, before declining around 1100.

Its most sacred building was the Temple of the Seven Dolls, named for seven small clay figures beneath its floor. At the equinoxes the sun rises through its eastern and western doorways; a long white stone road links it to the Great Plaza and Cenote Xlacah. The deep waterhole became a cult place for offerings of vases, carved bones and wood.

The settlement outlived its monuments. After the Spanish conquest a sixteenth-century open chapel was raised among the old stones, where the Maya still lived around the cenote.