Vestiges of the Mayas / or, Facts Tending to Prove That Communications and Intimate Relations Must Have Existed, in Very Remote Times, Between the Inhabitants of Mayab and Those of Asia and Africa

by Augustus Le Plongeon

URUKH.

The first king of the Chaldees was a great architect. To him are ascribed the most archaic monuments of the plains of Lower Mesopotamia. He is said to have conceived the plans of the Babylonian Temple. He constructed his edifices of mud and bricks, with rectangular bases, their angles fronting the cardinal points; receding stages, exterior staircases, with shrines crowning the whole structure. In this description of the primitive constructions of the Chaldeans, no one can fail to recognize the Maya mode of building, and we see them not only in Yucatan, but throughout Central America, Peru, even Hindoostan. The very name Urkuh seems composed of two Maya words Huk, to make everything, and Luk, mud; he who makes everything of mud; so significative of his building propensities and of the materials used by him.