The plan we give is, unfortunately, very incorrect, but such as it is it will enable the reader to follow out our description of the ruins. To the north-west is a three-storeyed pyramid like those at Palenque, built with large blocks laid together without mortar, about 40 feet high, crowned by a small structure whose roof has crumbled away but whose walls are still standing. We recognise the same style of structure we observed at Tula and Teotihuacan, a style we shall meet again both in Yucatan and in the district of the Lacandones. It may be stated that pyramids with esplanades, both here and at Palenque, although built with large stones, are smaller than those of the monuments in other places, and if the blocks were laid in mortar it has crumbled away like the cement which formed the outer surface.
SMALL PYRAMID OF AKÉ.
The dimensions of this structure are so diminutive that it cannot have been anything but a temple, forming part of the next monument which it commands. The latter from its rectangular arrangement recalls to mind the so-called fortresses at Tula and Teotihuacan, which were in reality tlachtli, “tennis-courts.”
The third monument has given rise to many conjectures; it is a large pyramid with an immense staircase, presenting a new and extraordinary feature, entirely different from all we have seen in Yucatan. Was this a specimen of a different civilisation, or simply a particular building which belonged to an earlier epoch?—were the questions which presented themselves to my somewhat bewildered imagination. This strange monument is surmounted by thirty-six pillars (only twenty-nine are still standing) each 4 feet square, and from 14 to 16 feet high. These pillars are arranged in three parallel rows 10 feet apart from north to south, and 15 from east to west; whilst the esplanade supporting them is 212 feet long by 46 feet wide, rounded off at the extremities like the Hunpitoc pyramid at Izamal looking north-south. Each pillar is composed of ten square stones 3 ft. 10 in. on one side, varying in thickness from 1 ft. 3 in. to 1 ft. 6 in. A gigantic staircase with steps some 4 ft. 7 in. to 6 ft. 7 in. long and about 1 ft. to 1 ft. 6 in. thick, leads to the summit.
It was urged that all these monuments had been constructed with uncemented stones, as neither cement nor mortar were found at Aké. This, however, is an error, for I observed that the builders used stones cut on the side facing the outer surface of the pillars, leaving the inner sides uncut; and as they did not perfectly fit one into another, but left cavities sometimes 3 inches deep, they were filled up with fragments of stone rubble which I found, and the whole was no doubt smoothed and polished over with mortar or cement.[113]
GREAT PYRAMID AND GALLERY OF AKÉ.
But what was this singular structure intended for? If for a covered gallery, the wood or thatch roof has long since disappeared and left no trace. Could it have been a commemorative monument? We know not, save that it is the only monument of the kind in Yucatan, and that its dimensions are far from colossal. Not that theories are wanting; some writers have gone so far as to imagine this monument to have been erected to commemorate periods or reigns, and each block to represent either a ahau-katun, “twenty-four years,” or a century, katun, “fifty-two years.” Now, as there are thirty-six pillars having each ten stones, this monument would be, by the first computation, 8,640 years old, and by the second, 18,720. It is clear that were this the case the first stone would have disappeared long before the last one had been placed, and that the earlier would have looked older than the later ones, whereas the same air of decay is observable in all. It is more simple and consistent to suppose this monument to have been a thatched gallery which was used for games, meetings, or public ceremonies. Its central position as regards other monuments would seem to bear me out. Is a ruin to be interesting only in ratio of its obscurity and antiquity?
