The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 4, Antiquities / The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 4

by Hubert Howe Bancroft

Wood was employed by the Maya builders only for lintels, for timbers of unknown use stretched across the rooms from side to side of the ceilings, in one case at Chichen for beams to support the regular stone arches of the roof, and, at Tuloom only, for the support of a flat cement roof. The only wood mentioned is the zapote, native to some parts of the peninsula, extremely hard and heavy, but not resinous or particularly well fitted to resist decay or the ravages of worms. It seems remarkable that any portion of this woodwork should have survived even their three or four centuries of unquestioned age;—and, indeed, few or none of the lintels of outer doorways exposed to the weather have remained unbroken.

Having fixed upon a site for a proposed edifice, the Maya builder invariably erected an artificial elevation on which it might rest. And this peculiarity is observed, not only in Yucatan, but, as we shall see in many other portions of the Pacific States, no less universally in regions where natural hills abound than on level plains. In several places, however, the artificial structure rests on a natural hill of slight elevation, as at Chack and Zayi; in other cases advantage is taken of a small hill to save labor in the accumulation of material, as at Uxmal; and in one instance at Chichen the appearance of a mound is gained by excavating the surrounding earth. Buildings resting on the natural surface of the earth are unknown, as are also subterranean apartments or galleries of artificial construction, excepting only the reported catacombs under the city of Campeche. The bases of the foundation structures, or pyramids, are usually rectangular, the largest dimensions being fifteen hundred feet square at Zayi, while many have sides of three to eight hundred feet. They diminish in size towards the summit, from twenty to fifty feet high in the case of the larger mounds, and from sixty to ninety feet in some of the smaller ones. Most of the larger mounds have two or more terrace-platforms on their slope. The mass of the mound is composed of rough stones and fragments generally in mortar, making a coarse concrete; the outer surface is faced with hewn stones, not generally laid so as to form steps, as seems to have been the case at Copan, but so as to present a smooth surface on the slope. It is uncertain whether some of the larger terrace-platforms were paved with regular blocks or not. The corners are often rounded. Sculptured decorations occur in a few instances, as on the Pyramid at Uxmal; and at Izamal a row of faces in stucco adorn the base. A stairway always occupies the centre of one side, often of more than one side. Some of these stairways are over a hundred feet wide, and their steps are rarely arranged with any reference to convenience in mounting. Balustrades remain on some stairways, ornamented in a few instances by sculptured monsters' heads. There is nothing to show that the surface of the slopes or the steps were covered with cement. The supporting stone structure of one building at Chichen and also of one at Tuloom has perpendicular instead of sloping sides. All the pyramids are truncated, none forming a point at the top, although there is one or more in every group of ruins whose summit platform presents no traces of ever having supported buildings of any kind. Interior galleries were explored in a mound at Maxcanú, and chambers in the body of that at Izamal were reported; others are solid so far as known, except that a few small chambers have been mentioned with a vertical entrance at the top, which may have been cisterns.

The edifices supported by the mounds are built either on the summit platform, or in receding ranges, one above another, on the slope. In the latter case these receding ranges form the nearest approach on the part of the Mayas to buildings of several stories, except in one instance at Tuloom, where one room is directly over another. In one building at Kabah the outer wall rises from the foot of the mound, and the inner from the summit. One building usually occupies the summit; but in several cases four of them enclose an interior courtyard. The buildings are long, low, and narrow. Thirty-one feet is the greatest height, thirty-nine the greatest width, and three hundred and twenty-two the greatest length. The roofs are flat and, like the floors, covered with cement. The walls are, in proportion to the dimensions of the buildings, very thick, usually from three to six feet, but sometimes nine feet. Like the pyramids, the buildings consist of a mass of concrete, stones and mortar, faced with hewn blocks of nearly cubical form, and of varying dimensions rarely exceeding eighteen inches, but found at Sijoh and Aké as large as three by six and seven feet. Only one building has been noted whose exterior walls are not perpendicular, but the corners are in most cases rounded.

The interior has generally two, often one, and rarely four parallel ranges of rooms, while in a few of the smaller buildings an uninterrupted corridor extends the whole length. Neither rooms nor corridors ever exceed twenty feet in width or height, while the ordinary width is eight to ten feet and the height fifteen to eighteen feet. Sixty feet is the greatest length noted. The walls of each room rise perpendicularly for one half their height, and then approach each other, by the stone blocks overlapping horizontally, to within about one foot, the intervening space being covered with a layer of wide flat stones, and the projecting corners being beveled off to form a straight, or rarely a curved, surface. In a few instances, as at Nohcacab, the sides of the ceiling form an acute angle at the top; and once, at Uxmal, the overlapping stones are inclined instead of lying horizontally, forming a slight, but the nearest, Maya approach to the true arch. This is the only kind of ceiling found in Yucatan, except one at Tuloom which is flat and supported by timbers stretched across from wall to wall. I have followed Stephens and applied the name of 'triangular arch' to this structure of overlapping stones, although the term may by a strict interpretation be liable to some criticism.[V-104]

The tops of the few gateways discovered are constructed by means of the same arch as that employed in the ceilings. One solitary arch unconnected with any other structure has been noted at Kabah; and in the Castle at Chichen two interior arches rest on beams supported by stone columns instead of the usual perpendicular walls. In some of the buildings at Kabah and Chichen the floor of the inner range of rooms is higher than that of the outer, being reached by stone steps. Small round timbers extend from side to side of the ceiling in nearly all rooms, and at Tuloom stone benches are found along the sides and ends.

Rarely do more than two rooms communicate with each other. The doorways are on an average perhaps four feet wide and eight feet high, with square tops formed by zapote beams or stone lintels, which rest on stone jambs composed of two or three pieces, or are built into the regular wall of the building. At Chacchob a doorway is reported wider at the top than at the bottom. Many exterior doorways are wide and divided into two or more entrances by stone pillars supporting the lintels. Stone rings, or hooks, replaced at Tuloom by shells, near the top on the inside, and in a few cases at both top and bottom, are the only traces of the means by which the entrances were originally closed. Wooden lintels are almost exclusively employed at Uxmal, but elsewhere stone is more common; a few both of wood and stone are covered with carved devices, as are also some of the door-posts. Besides the doorways the rooms have no openings whatever, no chimneys, windows, or ventilators being found, if we except the oblong openings in the rear wall of the Castle at Tuloom.[V-105]

Respecting the rooms, aside from their decoration, nothing remains to be noticed except the casas cerradas, or rooms filled with solid masonry, and the interior stairways of unexplained construction at Labphak. Exterior stairways supported by a half arch lead up to the top of such of the buildings as have more than one story, and also to the summit of the few mounds that have perpendicular sides; in one case the entrance to the courtyard is by stairways leading over the roof of one of the enclosing edifices. The only important exceptions to the usual type of Yucatan buildings are the circular structures with conical roofs, at Chichen and Mayapan, and the gigantic walls composing the so-called gymnasiums at Chichen and Uxmal.

It will be noticed that the strength of these structures depended to a great extent on the excellence of the mortar by which the blocks were united, since the latter are not usually laid so as to break joints, although carefully placed so that the plummet line applied to such walls as are uninjured, rarely detects any departure from perfect regularity. A Maya custom of inserting projecting stones, or katunes, in the walls of their buildings as a record of time and in commemoration of great events is spoken of by many authors; and by certain stones which he identifies with the katunes, M. Waldeck computes the age of some of the ruins, but I am unable to tell which are the stones meant, unless they be those already mentioned as elephants' trunks.