Recent excavations at the ancient Mayan city of Kabah in the Puuc Hills of Yucatan have yielded fascinating evidence relating to daily life at the royal court. Archaeologists working in a sector of the archaeological site where the rulers and the nobility once resided have found the royal kitchen. They identified it as such due to the presence of soot from cooking fires, traces of food, more than 30,000 dishes and fragments of pottery, knives, scrapers and metates or grinding stones used for corn, all of which are over 1,000 years old.
Kabah is the second largest city on the Puuc Route, a chain of archaeological sites headed by Uxmal and also including Sayil, Labna and Xlapak. Uxmal and the Puuc Route are on the World Heritage Site list. Kabah reached its peak between AD 750-950 AD and is famous for the Codz Poop or the Palace of the Masks, a name that does justice to its magnificent façade consisting of 250 masks depicting Chaac, the Mayan rain god.
