The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan

by Channing Arnold; Frederick J. Tabor Frost

FOOTNOTES:

[12] The argument of localisation is not upset by the existence of ruins in Peru. Native traditions claim no great age for the things there, which are acknowledged to be of a very crude type. Garcillaso de Vega (Comentarios reales de los Incas) says that, according to Indian tradition, the first Inca King, Manco Capac, established his empire only four centuries before the Conquest. The Peruvian ruins probably date from the later years of the fifteenth century.

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[CHAPTER XVII]
THE AGE OF THE RUINS

The very natural temptation to assign a romantically great age to the ruins of Central America has proved too much for most writers and students of the subject. We, too, would like to think that these Mayan buildings rival in antiquity those of Egypt; but we have been unable to blind ourselves to certain facts, which are as commonplace as they are convincing. The proper way to judge the age of a building is not to stand in front of it in an attitude of reverence like a pre-Raphaelite before an Old Master, but to look at it with the critical eye of a mason, if you can. If you are not a mason, or know nothing about masonry, then you should take an expert with you. If the many students of Mayan edifices had taken the trouble to put them to this very simple test, noting how they were built, and then making due allowance for the friability of the material and so on, we should have heard less of the fairy tales which have gained undeserved currency in past years.

If the theory which we have put forward in our last chapter is as sound as we believe it to be, it would seem satisfactorily to fix a maximum date for Central American buildings. But we cannot too emphatically point out that our view as to the age of the ruins has not been evolved to suit our theory as to who were America's first architects, but is based upon entirely practical tests which are by their nature final.

We have imagined that the architects reached the coast of Central America at about 13° north latitude. It is probable that they would not begin to build directly they landed, but would first look for a suitable site on which they might found a settlement. They possibly numbered two or three hundred; more than this is most unlikely. In such small numbers they could not possess themselves of any likely spot irrespective of the American tribes already inhabiting the country. The chance is that it was some little while before they finally founded a city. But somewhere within reasonable distance of the portion of the coast where they would be most likely to land, we ought to find ruins having all the chief characteristics of their architecture, with figures for the most part typical of their race in face and feature, in costume and ornament, and such ruins should be very distinctly differentiated from those deeper in the country, and erected after the invaders had been some time in contact with the natives, whose own mode of living and disposition would modify the orientalism of the designs.

And this is precisely what we do find. We find that Copan is well within 150 miles of the site of their probable landing. Here, as we pointed out on p. 268, are carvings so strikingly Oriental that one cannot doubt their origin. The faces of the figures on the stelae are the faces one can see to-day in Cambodia and Siam. The dress, the ornamentation, the turban-shaped headdress (found on no other carvings but these) are all purely ancient Indo-Chinese. Couple all this with the fact that nowhere else have the counterparts of the peculiar monuments of Copan been found in Central America except at Quirigua, which, but a few miles distant, was probably almost synchronous in its building, and it must be admitted that there is much in our suggestion; and that here we are able to locate one of their earliest, if not actually their earliest, settlement.

The traditions of the Mayans all agree that Copan was built by the Itzas, the tribe inhabiting Chichen, who had temporarily migrated thence. If this tradition is true, then why do we not find the same characteristic monuments in both places? As far as architectural ornamentation and monuments are concerned, no two sets of ruins could be further apart. At Copan we find a uniform type in costume and feature. There is not a single sign of a warrior or the feathered headdress common in all the monuments of Yucatan. The battle scenes characteristic of Mayan carvings are entirely lacking. But what of Chichen? In all the carvings there you do not find one that resembles in the least those at Copan. The features are the features of another race; and there is not a suggestion of the Copan headdress, but all the figures wear the befeathered American-Indian type. The scenes in the bas-reliefs and paintings invariably depict warriors in battle array.

STELAE AT COPAN, GUATEMALA.

In regard to the monuments themselves, a peculiar feature of the ruins of Angkor are the gigantic heads without bodies which stand in the woods, and which have their counterparts in the heads found at Copan, one of which, according to Stephens, measures about six feet in height. The carvings at Copan reached a height of elaboration and nicety of execution such as has obviously never been reached elsewhere in Central America. Wonderful as the carvings at Chichen, and Palenque even, are, they are not nearly so artistically wonderful as those at Copan. Yet if we are to believe tradition, Chichen of to-day was built on the return of the Itzas after they had founded Copan. To our mind the only way to explain the peculiar and intricate art of Copan is to assume that it was the first settlement or one of the first settlements of the invading builders, and thus that it is where we have their art in its purest and most unadulterated form. There is sound reason to think that most of the carvings in the ruins of Central America were done by the hands of American Indians. There is no room for such a belief as to Copan and Quirigua. No American Indians could have carved the stelae there, if their general work is to be taken as a standard of the excellence they attained. No; the invaders carved and built Copan themselves, and probably they were watched at their work by the neighbouring Indians who crowded in to see the new wonder and learn the art.

What the shapes of the buildings at Copan and Quirigua were it is impossible to say. But the ground plan of the former at least can be fairly accurately traced, and it affords valuable evidence of our theory. According to Stephens, the main ruins consist of an oblong enclosure 624 feet long and some 500 feet broad. The river wall of sixty to ninety feet in height is of cut stones. The other three sides of this enclosure consist of ranges of steps and pyramidal structures. Near the south-west corner he found a recess once occupied by a colossal figure and beyond traces of a principal gateway, while other gateways existed on the other sides. Of the Buddhist ruins of Brambanan, Java, Crawfurd (Hist. Indian Archipelago, p. 196) writes: "They occupy an area, which is an oblong square, of 600 English feet long and 550 broad. They consist of four rows of small temples, enclosing in the centre a greater one, whose height is 60 feet. The temples are pyramidal buildings, all of the same character, covered by a profusion of sculpture and consisting of large blocks of hewn stone. To the whole group of temples there are four entrances facing the cardinal points of the compass, and each guarded by two gigantic figures." Such an identity of ground plan is surely most suggestive.

It is but in perfect consonance with the age which we have assigned to Copan and Quirigua that their edifices should have fallen to pieces. That they had fallen at the time of the Conquest is clear from the letter of Diego Garcia de Palacio, a member of the Audiencia de Guatemala, addressed to Philip II. of Spain on March 8, 1576. It runs: "On the road to the city of San Pedro, in the first town within the province of Honduras, called Copan, are certain ruins and vestiges of a great population and of superb edifices of splendour as it would appear they never could have been built by the natives of that province." From this it would seem that not a building was intact at Copan in the sixteenth century. Today the remains are crumbling heaps of pyramids and terraces overgrown by luxuriant vegetation. All that remains intact are the monolithic stelae and altars which will last for ever, though their carvings will yield to time.

Wherever other cities have been spoken of by historians, they lead us to infer that at the time of the Conquest the buildings were still intact. It is a truism to say that the most recently built are the best preserved; but students of Mayan archæology have betrayed an extraordinary gift for overlooking the obvious. Chichen, for instance, is still in a good state of preservation, perhaps the best of all Yucatecan cities, for the simple reason that it was one of the most recently built, and for no other reason whatever. Mr. A. P. Maudslay, who has spent more time than any one else on a study of Copan and Quirigua, assigns to them the position of the earliest of all ruined cities of Central America. This judgment he no doubt based upon their decayed condition. But neither Mr. Maudslay nor any one else has explained why the art of carving had reached such a high stage at such an early date; and all have overlooked, or shut their eyes to, the undoubted fact that the carvings of the finest of the well-preserved cities, such as Chichen, are in merit behind and not in advance of those of Copan and Quirigua. To us it appears there is but one explanation of this fact, and that is the one which we have suggested.

For these reasons we venture to urge that Copan and Quirigua were practically contemporaneous with the advent of the builders from Indo-China and Java, namely, some time during the eighth century. How the art of building spread from Copan and Quirigua it is of course impossible to say. It can never be known whether the Eastern immigrants, after building these two cities and possibly others undiscovered near at hand, advanced further into the country, teaching the natives their arts and crafts, and perhaps indoctrinating them with some of their religious tenets and ritual; or whether they were visited by interested Mayan chiefs who learnt something of building on the spot. Possibly, too, they may have been attacked and some of them captured and taken captive to Mayan cities, and forced to superintend building operations there. But it is most probable that they did advance further into the country. Once they had learnt something of the language, there would be few or no difficulties for them in making friends with the Mayan peoples around.

If our theory is right, we ought to find a chain of towns marking their progress, or the progress of their art, over the country. This is just what we do find in the group of ruins on the Usumacinta River of which we have already given a short account. The first of these is the city of Piedras Negras, the nearest large city to Copan. Here the characteristic Orientalism is already on the wane. The carvings of the buildings are not so strikingly characteristic of the East as are those at Copan. These have given place to carvings more in keeping with native ideas. It is no longer the city of the "builders," but a city the building of which is superintended by them. Yet one would expect some Oriental features to creep in; and this expectation is fulfilled. The figure found there by Herr Teobert Maler, and already mentioned by us on p. 271, is as near a replica of the Buddhist statues of the East as one could expect a people to remember after they had spent several years in a new country. Its costume, its posture, its features, and its whole attitude take one to the East. Indeed the only way of explaining the statue is to believe that its sculptors came from Buddhist lands. Close at hand, at the neighbouring ruins of Yaxchilan, is the structure which we have described on p. 272, and which in the same way can only be explained by looking towards the East for its artificers. This tower with the great staring face built into it is almost a replica of the towers of Angkor, solid pieces of masonry with faces carved upon them. The only difference between them and that of Yaxchilan is that they are cut from solid stone while that of the latter is stucco. Whether it is carved in stone under the stucco we cannot say. We believe that this monument found at Yaxchilan is the only one of its kind so far discovered in Central America.

Following the imaginary line of advance of the Eastern builders, we find the proofs of our theory accumulating. At Menché we have another city, to which M. Charnay attempted to give the name of "Lorillard." Here he and Mr. Maudslay (who was the discoverer of the place) appear to have found little which could be regarded as a trace of the Copan builders. Possibly the explanation is that, not attempting to trace the building civilisation from Copan as a starting place, they overlooked much valuable evidence; or possibly Menché was built at a much later date when the Oriental ideas had almost entirely vanished in favour of native design.

But at Palenque, the next big city, we again find traces of the East. While the smaller buildings are strikingly like those in ruins at Préa-Khane and elsewhere in Cambodia, the so-called "Palace" has often been said, as we mentioned in our last chapter, to be almost a replica in arrangement and design of Boro Budor. It may very well be that some of the very men who had assisted in the earlier building operations of Boro Budor were the architects of the building at Palenque. Such differences as occur between the two are easily explained. In the seventh century the statues of Buddha which now adorn the terraces of this Javanese Mecca did not exist. Only the roughest plan of the present Boro Budor was laid down and worked on in those early days, and thus the Palenque Palace is a reproduction of what Boro Budor was centuries before its final completion.

But even with these distinctions the two ruins are closely akin. The two-storeyed tower on the roof of Boro Budor has its exact counterpart in the Palenque tower save that the former has a dome-shaped roof while the latter is flat. But it may not always have been so. In describing it, we called attention to the curious fact that the tower has a stairway which ends abruptly against this flat roof. Is it not possible that the stairway once led into a dome-shaped roof which either fell or was actually demolished and replaced by the flat one, which renders the stairway so futile?[13] At Palenque, too, we first find what looks like a reproduction of the "lion seat" which is so characteristic of many of the early Buddhist statues. In one of the temples at Palenque is the carving of a couch which is almost a replica of those found in Buddhist temples. Another noteworthy feature is the ornamental disc or amulet hanging on the breast of the deity which would appear to be exactly like that on the ancient Buddhist figures and the priestly badge of office worn in Siam and Burma to-day. It is a curious fact that according to P. Schellhas (Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 28: Washington, 1904) this badge never figures in the Mexican manuscripts, and thus may be presumed to have never been adopted by the Aztecs but to have been in vogue only among the Mayans who came into direct contact with the Oriental invaders.

Probably Piedras Negras, Yaxchilan and Palenque represent, together with some undiscovered ruins, a period of about half a century immediately succeeding the founding of Copan and Quirigua. During this period it may be taken for granted that many of the older immigrants had died and the remnant would be old men. It is very doubtful if in half a century the strangers would have penetrated far into Yucatan or reached the plateau of Mexico. Their activities would have been centred around the Palenque district, and the decayed condition of this latter city and the neighbouring ruins of Yaxchilan and Piedras Negras would without doubt seem to definitely place them in this period. Palenque, we would suggest, was the last large city built or designed by these peoples.

Thus far we have the most marked traces of Orientalism. Copan was probably an exact counterpart of the early cities of Cambodia and Ceylon, as Palenque would seem to be a replica of seventh-century Boro Budor. With the practical extinction of the foreign builders the art would take upon itself, in the matter of decoration, a purely native character. Many ornamental ideas would, however, recommend themselves to the caciques, as, for instance, the lion seat, which, changed to represent the Central American jaguar, an animal probably held in veneration, would figure in the carvings. It is easy to imagine how the building art spread from Palenque. There would probably be two lines of advance: one through Chiapas into the Zapotec country and so on to the tableland of Mexico; and one up to Honduras and so to Yucatan. By the ninth century it would have reached Chichen Itza on the one hand and possibly spread as far north as the city of Tula in Mexico.

From the earliest times Chichen must have been one of the most populous centres in Yucatan. The water problem is even to-day the greatest social and economic factor in the Peninsula; and the existence of two huge natural reservoirs such as the cenotes at Chichen must have meant an importance for the spot from the remotest times. When building was introduced into the country the cacique of Chichen probably ranked high among the chiefs, and he would be sure to hear early of the marvellous buildings of stone that were being erected at Copan. Probably he might make a journey thither, while the builders of Copan were still living. Possibly he might invite some of them to Chichen to instruct his people in the art.

Be this as it may, there would seem to be at least two distinct ages represented in the ruins of Chichen. The buildings still standing belong to a later period than those which crowned the now ruined mounds to the east and the southeast of the Castillo. These latter represent the old Chichen, built probably within a century of the arrival of the builders. They show signs of having gone to pieces through natural decay rather than having been demolished by man, as in war. On excavation of the mounds, the walls and pillars of these buildings prove to be in fair preservation. With scarcely an exception, it would seem that the fall of the roof has been the real cause of the destruction of each edifice. The roofs in Mayan buildings are always the weakest spot. Buildings which have been destroyed by a conquering people generally bear ample traces of such destruction. In the same way, buildings which have fallen through a natural process of decay demonstrate this fact by the state of their ruin. The buildings that stood on the mounds at Chichen have fallen before the hand of Time. If a conquering tribe had taken Chichen from the Itzas they would not have destroyed their buildings, but would have used them as did the Spaniards under Montejo. It was no case of modern artillery, when the buildings would naturally fall or be damaged in the conflict. The most destructive weapon the Indians had was the spear of hardened wood or tipped with flint, and to attempt to destroy buildings as solid as those of Chichen with such implements would be about as great a task as an attempt to cut a full-sized croquet lawn with a pair of nail scissors. For these reasons we venture to date the oldest buildings at Chichen about the ninth century, and we believe that our estimate would be corroborated by any expert architect.

The later buildings are of far more recent date; but perhaps here it would be well to describe the mode of building and thus explain our reasons for modernising Chichen. To be technical, the first part to examine in a building is its foundations. The ruins of Yucatan appear to lack nothing of solidity in this matter. Usually they are founded on truncated pyramids which when intact would appear to be cut from solid rock. They are however not built, like the pyramids of Egypt, of solid blocks of stone, but are simply faced with stone slabs only a few inches thick. Beneath these the pyramid is formed of loose building rubble and earth. The Chichen Castillo is a good example of Mayan building methods. The limestone slabs forming the face of the pyramid are less than a foot thick. Beneath them is loose rubble. Thus should one of these facing slabs work out of place, when the wet season came the rain would get in behind the slabs and quickly move the ones below out of their positions. The earth and rubble would be washed away in the wet season and crumbled away in the hot season, until in a few years there would be a perfect avalanche of these slabs from the top, falling, for lack of support, like a pack of cards. The stairway at the Castillo is formed of blocks of stone let but a short way into the pyramids. The consequence is that not one of the four stairways as built by the Indians could be ascended to-day unless you were an Alpine climber willing to risk broken limbs.

All the other buildings at Chichen illustrate the same careless methods of construction.

The Nunnery was built, as we have stated on page 101, at different periods or else the original design was added to. On the north side is a hole that has been made in the structure by a former owner of the Chichen hacienda. This hole shows that the building is of the same material as the Castillo, but built in a different way. Being perpendicular it was impossible to face it, as was the Castillo, after the rubble had been put in position. The walls must have been built first and the inside filled in afterwards. That this was the case is shown by the fact that the wall is separate and not faced on to the rubble in any way. The fallen south-west corner in like manner shows how the addition to the building was made. A wall was built out the desired distance from the main structure and the space between the two filled up with rubble and earth. It will be obvious to every reader that this mode of building was a weak one. The heavy weight of loose rubble and earth enclosed in a wall between two and three feet thick was not a very substantial foundation for a heavy building. Naturally the tendency would be for the walls to bulge and crack, spelling ruin to the whole building.

But now let us turn from the foundations to the buildings themselves. Mr. Henry C. Mercer, in his book Hill Caves of Yucatan (Philadelphia, 1896), is very outspoken on this subject. On p. 95 he says, "The more we examined the walls the more we wondered not so much at their antiquity as at the fact that they had not already crumbled to the ground.... A facing of blocks shaped like the letter V pushed mosaic-fashion into a central pudding-like concrete of stone and mortar was a weak form of construction. Neither were the face stones interlocked systematically so as to bind the joints. Everything was slipping out of place. No wonder there were fresh cracks in the walls, that whole façades tumbled, and that overseers (of haciendas) had spoken of structures that had lost their identity in twenty years." Mr. Mercer is right. When one considers the hopelessly slipshod manner of their building, one is obliged to admit that the wonder is that all the Mayan palaces and temples have not already crumbled to the ground.

There was only one method of building in Yucatan, and it is difficult to say how this was carried out. The walls average about two feet three inches in thickness and were made up as follows. Ten inches of stone on the outside, about seven to eight on the inside, and the space intervening between these two surfaces is filled with a mixture of mortar and rubble. The outer surface wall was generally formed of solid square or oblong stones of various sizes. No care was taken to "bind" them one with the other as in the Egyptian and modern buildings. We often noticed the joins of the stones coming directly one above the other for as many as three or four layers, the result generally being a large gaping crack where the wall had bulged at this weak spot.

Another weak point in these outer walls is the fact that the crevices between the two layers of stone are often filled up with stone chips. As often as not these were wedge-shaped and had been driven into the mortar between the layer and then smoothed off level with the face of the building. As the mortar dried and the building "settled," these chip wedges tended to loosen, and after a series of rainy seasons ended by falling out altogether. Some of the better-placed ones are still in position, though these may have been added only a few years before the coming of the Spaniards, and, as the buildings had then quite "settled," have retained their position to the present day. But such a method is obviously a weak spot in building.

Weaker still is the method employed in the building of the inner wall. Most of the stones are pyramidal or V-shaped, as Mr. Mercer calls them. They are in fact wedge-shaped pieces of stone as seen in the cut on p. 264, embedded in the mortar and rubble of the interior of the wall, the thick end of the wedge forming a flat surface for the wall. Here again, as the wall subsided after the building was finished, these were pushed out of place or loosened by the weight above them. Once this took place there was no hope for any building. A block that had been pushed out generally meant the loosening of the stones around, and in time the whole façade would fall. But often over the face of the stones was put a thick layer of plaster which is in many cases still in position, speaking well for its durability. This plaster, as often as not two or three inches thick, kept the stone in position. The same slipshod methods are seen in the ornamentation of the building. The small colonnade at Labna is an example in point. The columns were not embedded in the wall at the top or bottom, but, half rounded, were stuck on to this concrete interior without the least solid stone masonry as support.

The common type of roof is flat, the only exceptions being those which have superstructures rising in the centre or front for purely ornamental purpose. The cut on p. 264 gives a section in which the roof is portrayed. The outer wall is carried up with its usual average thickness to the top of the building. The interior is the regular type of arch, also shown in the illustration, formed by blocks of stones placed one above the other in such a way as to appear like about ten inverted steps. To add a better finish to the interior after these were in position, they were trimmed off evenly, making a flat sloping surface which was afterwards plastered and painted. The arch did not come to a point. Instead, across its top a slab was laid, as our illustration shows. Between the outer side of this arch and the inner side of the perpendicular outer wall of the building the space was filled up with the same concrete rubble as was used between the walls, making a level roof which in some cities we found had been cemented over. The result of this weight of loose stone pressing on the sides of the arch was that as soon as the inner wall of the arch became weak the whole roof fell in and filled up the building. This is what has happened in the ruins of old Chichen. The walls are found amid the débris of fallen roofs. This is what is happening to-day in the other buildings in Chichen and elsewhere in the Peninsula; and this is what will happen until all these ancient structures have become roofless ruins. And that time is not far off. Old Chichen has fallen. The Chichen standing to-day is fast falling to pieces. Uxmal has no great lease of life before it, and the buildings of Labna, Kabah, and Sayil are tottering.

Lastly, we would say something of the building of doorways in these cities. The lintels of the doors are almost invariably formed of the wood of the Central American sapota tree (Achras sapota). The wood is very hard, durable, and heavy, and in a dry climate would last practically for ever. But the climate of Yucatan can scarcely be termed dry; for the wet season averages five months. Despite this fact we find those sapota beams at Chichen, which have not been exposed to the weather, in fairly good preservation. The decay of one which was exposed has caused the falling of a room in the Castillo on the north side; and this has also taken place in the room on the west side of the House of Tigers. Possibly this was the cause of the falling of the front of the temple at the north end of the Tennis Court. Chichen stands on high ground compared with Uxmal, where scarcely a lintel can be found in position to-day, though Uxmal is not older than Chichen. At Labna and Kabah again are lintels still in good preservation, owing to those cities being built on the sierras. This question of the condition of the lintels, even in the most favourable situations, is very suggestive in regard to the dates to be assigned to the majority of the ruins. If the thousand odd years ascribed to them by enthusiasts really represented their age, there would not be a single lintel found anywhere.

When to the slipshod methods of building one must add the fact that the climate is a trying one for any style of architecture and that the friability of the limestone used is excessive, one realises that no very great date can be assigned to the ruins still standing. To date even approximately each city is almost impossible. The ruins of many of them point to several dates for each. Some buildings are intact; others are falling; while some are mere crumbling heaps. No doubt none of the larger cities were built all at once. They represented years of labour. For example the Palace at Sayil might have taken a score of years. In most cities the first building attempted was probably a temple. Possibly a century might have elapsed before a second temple or a palace was put up, and thus to-day you naturally have mere heaps of stone close to buildings still intact.

In most places we were able to determine the relative ages of the buildings. On many sites there were traces of the earliest erections marked by fallen mounds. There was often a middle period between these and that represented by the buildings still standing. At Chichen there were, as we have said, two distinct periods, but these were obviously far apart in date. Those of the first period were probably in building within a century of the arrival of the foreign architects; and fell probably at or about the time the second set of buildings were put up. Structures built in the manner of those standing at Chichen to-day could not by any possibility remain intact in a climate like Yucatan's, if indeed anywhere, for a period longer than about six hundred years. Thus, if they were built about the eighth or ninth century they would be far advanced in ruin at the Conquest.

After a most careful survey, we think that the ruins of Chichen standing to-day were built at or about the fall of Mayapan (1426 or 1462). There was no doubt a great recrudescence of building throughout Yucatan after this event. History affords many examples of the fact that a great victory is celebrated by the conquerors, on their return to their centres, setting up temples and palaces commemorative of their success. The dissensions and intrigues leading up to the overthrow of the powerful cacique of Mayapan had probably for some years before that event checked building enterprise throughout the Peninsula. At the conclusion of the war an impulse to city-beautifying was experienced. Probably the next greatest chief of Yucatan, after the vanquished lord of Mayapan, was the cacique of the Itzas of Chichen, and on the success of the confederation, of which it may be presumed he was an important member, he built himself a new city on the site of his already decaying one. At about the same time the group of cities of the south, Uxmal, Kabah, Labna and Sayil, were restored or rebuilt. The building zeal during the century previous to the Conquest seems to have reached a high pitch. The outlying ruins in Yucatan such as El Meco, Tuloom, those on Isla de Mujeres, and those which we discovered on the islands of Cozumel and Cancun, represented an outer ring of Mayan civilisation. Their builders had evidently never learnt the art of the finest carving. The ruins are peculiarly devoid of ornamentation, and the whole style is uncouth and suggests crudity. In a like manner a rough knowledge of building spread far into the south. Thus to-day, between big ruined centres such as Copan, Piedras Negras, and Palenque, we find smaller towns some of the buildings of which are still intact.

What happened in Mexico? The knowledge of building had spread over the whole of the plateau within the few centuries succeeding the founding of Copan. There would only be the one period, the one wave of building which would wash into Mexico before news of the wonderful art reached the ears of the ever-warlike Aztecs, to whom such accounts would suggest much wealth and a country worth pillaging. They may have found the wealth of Mexico in its then undeveloped state disappointing, but they evidently quickly grasped the advantage stone houses had over skin wigwams always needing repair and always draughty. Conquering the Mayans and christening them Toltecs, they set them to work to build cities. Aztec deities were, for the most part, substituted for the Mayan gods. Such blood-loving gods as Huitzilopochtli, in whose honour the historians assert tens of thousands of human beings were sacrificed, were purely of Aztec origin. The serpent-worship so dear to the Aztecs' forefathers, the Shoshonees, was much more in evidence than it had ever been among the Mayans. Very speedily the influence of the warlike Aztecs spread over the country southward until, as some historians say, they reached Mayapan in Yucatan. Certainty they must have reached Honduras, where Dr. Gann, British Commissioner at Corosal, told us he had found distinct traces of Aztec culture. But this was at a period not many years before the coming of the Spaniards. It may even have been so late that Cortes, who was destined to be the conqueror of these conquering upstarts, the Aztecs, had already heard of wonderful Yucatan, which had been termed "Isla Rica," and which, a few years later, formed the stepping-stone to his complete, if inglorious, conquest of Mexico.

Summarising, then, the arguments of this chapter, we would venture to say that the building civilisation of Central America flourished between the eighth century and the coming of the Spaniards in 1517. The sequence of cities, as near as can be judged, would be as follows:

1. Copan and Quirigua, the first, or among the first, erected during the eighth century.

2. Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan, with possibly some undiscovered, follow closely in date.

3. The ruins of Palenque, probably contemporaneous with the last-mentioned groups, was a city from the earliest building period, but its palace was restored or rebuilt at a much later date.

4. The mounds of fallen débris found throughout Yucatan represent the first buildings in that country, and date from about the ninth to the eleventh century.

5. Those buildings that have more recently fallen represent the middle age of the building civilisation, dating from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries.

6. Those buildings standing to-day belong to the latter day period, and date from the beginning of the fifteenth century until the coming of the Spaniards in 1517.