Another common method of ceramic decoration taken over was that of negative painting similar to the process used with cloth in making batik designs. This process still exists in Central America as regards gourd dishes although discontinued on pottery. Negative painting appears to be an ancient process of exceedingly wide distribution. It is especially common in Jalisco and Michoacan, the Valley of Toluca, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia, and sometimes occurs in Yucatan and Peru. The design was painted in wax or some other soluble or combustible paint, then the entire surface was covered with a permanent paint. When the pot was burned the design came out in the natural color of the clay against a black, or sometimes a red field. The design was often made two layers deep by applying simple masses of red over the sizing before the impermanent paint of the design proper was put on. In the northwestern region of central Mexico now under consideration the negative painting technique is associated with conventionalized designs representing turtles ([Fig. 60]). Another ware with designs in white is concerned with derivatives of the turtle motive. Then there are the remarkable copper bells in the form of turtles made by coiling, that have been found in nearby Michoacan.
[Plate XXXV.]
Stone Slab from an Ancient Sepulcher in the State of Guerrero. The face at the top apparently represents a monkey, but serpents have been introduced between the eyes and the eyebrows. The other highly conventionalized faces are probably those of serpents.
Fig. 61. Jaguar Head on Disk-Shaped Stone. Salvador.
It is difficult to place time limits for the artistic styles that once existed in this northwestern region. The archaic culture seems to have lasted longer here than farther south; next followed the northern flow of Toltecan culture which later receded and finally came a rather thin layer of Chichimecan or Aztecan culture. We may tentatively conclude that the forgotten cities of the Zacatecan subculture flourished after 1000 A. D. The question should be settled because of its connection with the dating of Pueblo ruins farther north.
Santa Lucia Cozumalhualpa.
The zonal distribution of rain forests in southern Mexico and Central America is especially important, as has been pointed out, in connection with the spread of Mayan-type civilizations. The Olmeca and Totonacs who were among the first to feel the cultural effects of the Mayan ascendency occupied lands of heavy precipitation. The Zapotecan and Mixtecan areas were partly wet and partly dry. The Toltecs seem originally to have been desert dwellers but they extended their conquests over tribes living in the humid tropics and made much of cacao, rubber, copal, etc., obtained by trade and tribute from such subject peoples.
Along the Pacific coast below the Isthmus of Tehuantepec lies a rain belt containing ruined cities which flourished between 1000 to 1300 A. D., or on the historical level of the Toltec expansion. The sculptural art at these sites resembles the works attributed to the Olmecs in Tabasco and Vera Cruz on the one hand and to the works of the Chorotega of lower Central America on the other. One such ruin is Quiengola near the modern city of Tehuantepec, another occupies a ridge above Tonalá and there is a cluster of sites in the environs of Santa Lucia Cozumalhualpa in southern Guatemala, extending into western Salvador.