The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan

by Channing Arnold; Frederick J. Tabor Frost

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.