Mayans and Their Water Management

The Mayan culture was established in the jungle of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, extending to Guatemala, Belize, and part of Honduras and El Salvador. In the Mayan worldview, water appears as a central forming element of the Universe and as the Earth’s soul, being a sacred life-giving element. God Chaac, creator of lightning, rain and water, carried an axe with which he broke jugs releasing water to make it fall. According to Mayan stories, Chaac inhabited caves and sinkholes (known locally as cenotes, from the Mayan word ts’ono’ot), places that were considered the entrance to the underworld or world of the dead. Due to the karst soil, widely predominant in the Yucatan Peninsula, the region does not have surface runoffs, such as rivers or lakes, being the underground flows and cenotes (considered sacred places for the birth of life because they contained virgin water) the main sources of water supply. In addition to cenotes, in relation to water management among the Mayans, evidence has been found of the development of hydraulic systems to face scarcity in the dry season, which included canals, dams, and irregular cisterns called chulub tun, where they caught and stored rainwater for later use.