Famous Personalities

We could not find much information about famous Maya people. The one name that most books talk about is Quetzalcoatl, as the Aztecs and Toltecs called him. He was called Kukulcan by the Maya and he was the most important personality in Mesoamerican legend.

There is a picture of him carved in to a rock cliff at To lan, or Tula, which was the capital city of an empire north of Mexico City. There is also a date carved in hieroglyph that says A.D. 968. He is also mentioned in stories but after a while the name of this priest-king got mixed up with a god with the same name. It is hard to know what really happened. The stories say that after 22 year as ruler of the Toltecs he left Tollan with priests, chiefs and some of the Toltec people.

A little while afterwards Kukulcan and the Toltecs turned up at Chichen Itza in about A.D.987. It is not known what happened to Kukulcan. Some say he sailed away on a raft made of twisted up snakes and became a god. Others say he died and was buried in Chichen Itza.