The Toltec branch of the Pacific, although influenced by their surroundings, had preserved the traditions of Anahuac, and reproduced the buildings and the same mode of living suggested by the resemblance of their present to that of their former homes. But these two branches met for the first time at Copan, shown in the mixture of the two different styles, where the palaces and temples seem to us Guatemalto-Toltec, whilst the idols are Tzendal-Toltec, and the stone bas-reliefs of our temples are replaced here and at Quirigua by enormous monoliths of 12 to 20 feet high by 4 wide and 3 feet thick.
At Kabah, which we think coeval with Copan, we noticed the exaggerated ornamentation which marks two different epochs; the same thing happened here, and is a new instance of a general tendency, which may almost be called a law; nor is it necessary to be an archæologist to affirm of these monuments, that they are not the beginning but the end of an art, for here we see monoliths loaded with all the ornaments and architectural designs which at an earlier epoch had spread over idols, bas-reliefs, and palaces.
The inscriptions not only retain the ancient characters, in which faces and human figures were intermingled, but they sometimes entirely consist of human figures grouped in the most violent postures. This is not all: the same idol personifies several deities, shown in the first we reproduce, where the great central figure, having a woman’s head, emerges from a dragon’s jaw, recalling Quetzalcoatl; whilst the band which surrounds his loins consists of human figures, ranged over a wreath of maize, showing the attributes of the Tlaloc at Palenque, and also of Chalchiuhtlicue and Centeotl, the Mexican Ceres.
MONOLITH IDOL OF COPAN (FROM STEPHENS).
The decorative designs of these monuments show at a glance their correlation with the bas-reliefs and monuments introduced earlier in this work. They generally consist of volutes, and the head of a small monster offered by one of the figures to a symbolic bird, as in the cross at Palenque, and a similar figure in the Temple of the Sun; some of the details belong to Lorillard, whilst others are like the wood bas-reliefs at Tikal.
GUATEMALTO-TOLTEC ALTAR OF COPAN (STEPHENS).
