16 
overall height, including the building on its summit, is about 
100 feet. The four stairways approach 44 feet in greatest width 
and rise at an angle of 45 degrees. Being a little less steep 
than the slope of the sides of the pyramid, the foot of each 
stairway stands out beyond the pyramid's baseline. The individual 
steps are about 10 inches wide with risers of 11 inches. There 
are 91 of these steps to each stair. Added together they total 
364 (4 x 91); which number, plus one for the upper platform, 
equals 365, the number of days in the solar year. Each face 
of the pyramid, rising in 9 terraced steps, is divided midway 
by its stairway. This results in 18 sections, corresponding to 
the 18 months of the Mayan year. On each pyramid face can be 
counted also 52 "panels,” none too distinctly marked in the 
photographs, which in number equal the number of years in the 
Toltec cycle, or phase of the Mayan civilization at the time. 
How coincidental is the correspondence of the number of these 
panels with the number of weeks in our calendar year? 
Our guide to the ruins, Felipe Castillo, called to our 
attention the fact that the stairways are actually wider at the 
top than at the bottom, a device employed by the Maya architects 
to overcome the otherwise apparent convergence of the sides of 
the stairs in visual perspective had they been built truly 
parallel. This greater width at the top of each staircase is 
not apparent in frontal view. Only in an angle "shot" is it 
apparent (Fig. ). 
