Featured Image Credit: TikTok/@angelalopeze
Topics: World News, TikTok
Emma Guinness
It's an unspoken rule that tourists should be respectful when visiting sites of historical and cultural importance.
However, people can and often do overstep the mark, and one woman learned this hard way that this can have serious consequences when she climbed a Mayan pyramid:
In now viral footage posted on TikTok, the woman could be seen climbing the ancient structure - known as the Castillo de Kukulcán, one of the new seven wonders of the modern world - despite being booed by onlookers.
While this should have been a sign to stop what she was doing immediately, she did not and brazenly continued to pose at the top of the pyramid located in Chichén Itzá, southeastern Mexico, and even stopped to dance.
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By the time she reached the bottom, an angry mob was waiting for her and were calling for her 'sacrifice' as a punishment.
As reported by the Merco Press, the crowd was chanting 'jail, jail, jail', 'lock her up' and 'sacrifice, sacrifice', 'because this woman does not respect the rules'.
This wasn't just any mob, either, and the video briefly takes the sheer size of it into account. To put it into context, there have been popular rock concerts with fewer people in attendance.
The woman is then sprayed with water as she tries to leave the historic site as the boos continue.
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Climbing of the pyramid has been banned since 2008 by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
In a bid to deter people from doing so, there is also a fine that ranges from $2,558 to $5,115 USD, which is calculated based on the amount of damage caused to the pyramid.
While the woman's ethnicity is not known, the crowd added in their chants 'if she is from abroad, she should leave Mexico'.
Needless to say, social media commentators had a lot to say about the woman's actions, with one writing: "Please tell me she is not an American."
"Imagine someone from Mexico doing anything anywhere near this disrespectful to an American monument," speculated a second. "Every media outlet would be running the video continuously for weeks. But when Americans do it to a Mexican monument, it's not news."
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"The crowd yelling 'jail, jail, jail!' makes me feel better about society seeing these acts as egregious rather than applaudable," added a third.
A fourth, meanwhile, said that the woman got off lightly compared to what the Myan people allegedly used to do to their enemies.
"The Mayans used to cut the heads of their enemies and roll them down those same pyramids," they wrote. "I'd say they're being nice."
In case it wasn't already obvious, tourists are banned from climbing these structures so that they can be preserved for future generations to enjoy.