The Caracol aka The Observatory (photo by Ed Dawson)
An intriguing structure at Chichen Itza is the Caracol of Chichen Itza, also known simply as The Observatory. However, that is where most similarities the Caracol has to present day observatories end. The building consists of a cylindrical tower resting on a two terraced platform, with a spiral snail shell like staircase within. Having fallen into ruin, the cylindrical tower now resembles an observatory dome as you can see below, and this is what led Augustus Le Plongeon to assume in 1875 that the tower functioned as an observatory. An absence of artefacts serving astronomical or calculative purposes casts doubt on the structure's functionas an observatory. Absence of evidence, however, is not evidence for absence. Advocator of extraterrestrial influence Zecharia Sitchin, for his part, states cheerfully in The Lost Realms(1990) that the Caracol has "frustrated sucessive researchers who had tried, in vain, to find in its orientations and aperture viewlines to the solstices or equinoxes." Some of these "sucessive researchers" include Oliver Ricketson, Karl Ruppert, Anthony F.Aveni, Sharon Gibbs and Horst Hartung, who have over the years carried out painstaking surveying with varying levels of success. The only direct alignment in the structure is where the northeast-southwest orientations of the platform are aligned with the summer solstice sunrise and the winter solstice sunset.
In 1925, Ricketson proposed alignments of window views with the equinox sunset, the southernmost moon setting and the cardinal direction of south. When Ruppert repeated Ricketson's measurements 5 years later, he came up with a different set of results that cast doubt on the accuracy of Ricketson's theories. Aveni, Hartung and Gibbs published their report in 1975, threw out the moon alignment theory and brought in Venus, arguing that the extremes of Venus fit the moonset alignments proposed by Ricketson. Window alignments with the solstice sunset, the Pleiades and Canopus have also been brought up as possibilities.
Ambiguity for the measurements stems from both the ruined and reconstructed state of the structure. Despite this, a convincing argument for the Caracol functioning as an observatory was put forth by Dr E.C Krupp, who pointed out the physical practicalities of the site - the high raised platform would lift an observer above the canopy layer of the jungle and allow him a clear view of the skies, while the steps up the platform, unlike the steep raised ones found at other ceremonial pyramids and temples, are low and easy to climb for everyday purposes (Krupp, 1983). Who knows?
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