By around 900 CE, most of the great southern cities had been reduced to small populations or were entirely abandoned.

In the northern lowlands, including the Yucatán Peninsula where Chichén Itzá is located, conditions were different.

The northern lowlands have access to cenote water that the southern lowlands lack — a crucial difference in a region where water management was essential to large population support.

The northern lowlands also had different trade connections, including direct access to the Gulf of Mexico coast and its maritime trade routes, and a somewhat different agricultural ecology.

As the southern cities declined, Chichén Itzá emerged as one of the dominant political and religious centers of the northern lowlands.