It is a statement about human persistence.

Despite the catastrophic demographic collapse of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, despite the centuries of colonial rule and the suppression of Maya cultural and religious practices, despite the continuing economic and social marginalization of many Maya communities in the present day, the people are still there.

Their genomes carry the ancestry of the ancient city.

Their cultural traditions draw, in various ways, on the deep history of Maya civilization.

Chichén Itzá attracts more than a million visitors a year.