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.
[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.