House of the Chultun

What's the biggest challenge when you're building a city on a peninsula with no rivers or lakes? Water. The Yucatan's porous limestone simply swallows rainfall, leaving the surface bone-dry. So the Maya got creative—they carved their own water supply right into the bedrock.

Beneath your feet, carved deep into the limestone, lies an ingenious underground chamber that once stored precious rainwater for the community above. "Chultun" is the ancient Maya word for "cistern" or "water deposit," and it gives this building its name. Using nothing but stone tools, Maya engineers carved bottle-shaped cisterns into the soft rock, then carefully lined them with plaster to prevent seepage. These underground reservoirs collected rainwater during the wet season, providing a reliable water supply during the dry months.