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.