ANTIQUITY OF THE MAYA MONUMENTS.
Finally I have to consider the antiquity of the Yucatan monuments. As in the case of all ruined cities and edifices, the questions, when and by whom were they built? are of the most absorbing interest. In Yucatan the latter question presents no difficulties, and the former few, compared with those connected with other American ruins. It was formerly a favorite theory that the great American palaces and temples of ancient times, whose remains have astonished the modern world, were the work of civilized peoples that have become extinct, probably of some old-world people which long centuries ago settled on our coasts and flourished for a long period, but was at last forced to succumb to the native races whose descendants occupied the land at the coming of Europeans in the sixteenth century. The discussion of the origin of the American people and of the American civilization, as well as of the possible agency of old-world elements in the development of the latter, belongs to another part of my work; still it may be appropriately stated here that the theory of extinct civilized races in America, to which our ruined cities may be attributed, rests upon only the very vaguest and most unsubstantial foundation, while so far as the Yucatan cities are concerned it rests on no foundation at all.
The traditional history of the peninsula, which will be given in the following volume, represents Yucatan as constituting the mighty Maya empire, whose rulers, secular and religious, reared magnificent cities, palaces, and temples, and which flourished in great, if not its greatest, power down to within a little more than a century of the Spaniards' coming. Then the empire was more or less broken up by civil wars, an era of dissension and comparative weakness ensued, some of the great cities were abandoned in ruins, but the edifices of most, and especially the temples, were still occupied by the disunited factions of the original empire. In this condition the Spaniards found and conquered the Maya people. They found the immense stone pyramids and buildings of most of the cities still used by the natives for religious services, although not for dwellings, as they had probably never been so used even by their builders. The conquerors established their own towns generally in the immediate vicinity of the aboriginal cities, procuring all the building material they needed from the native structures, destroying so far as possible all the idols, altars, and other paraphernalia of the Maya worship, and forcing the discontinuance of all ceremonies in honor of the heathen gods. A few cities escaped the damning blight of European towns in their vicinity, and kept up their rites in secret for some years later; such were Uxmal, Tuloom, and probably others of the best preserved ruins. All the early voyagers, conquistadores, and writers speak of the wonderful stone edifices found by them in the country, partly abandoned and partly occupied by the natives. To suppose that the buildings they saw and described were not identical with the ruins that have been described in these pages, that every trace of the former has disappeared, and that the latter entirely escaped the notice of the early visitors to Yucatan, is too absurd to deserve a moment's consideration. That the Mayas were found worshiping in the temples of an extinct race is a position almost equally untenable. The Spaniards forced the Mayas to accept a new faith, utterly crushed out their ancient spirit by a long course of oppression, and then together with other Europeans resorted to the theory of an extinct old-world race to account for the wonderful structures which the ancestors of the degraded Mayas could not have reared. The Mayas are not, however, the only illustrations of a deteriorated race to be seen in Yucatan, as will be understood by comparing the present Spanish population of the peninsula with the proud Castilian conquerors of the sixteenth century.
Mr Stephens, to whom many of the Spanish and Maya documents relating to Yucatan history were unknown, sought carefully for proofs in support of his belief that the cities were constructed by "the same races who inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or by some not very distant progenitors." He was entirely successful in establishing the truth of his position, which rested on the statements of the historians with whose works he was acquainted, and on the following points, many of them discovered by himself, and whose only weakness is the fact that they were not really needed to justify his conclusions. 1st. The Maya arch in the foundations of the Franciscan convent at Mérida, built in 1547, with the historical statement that Mérida was built on the mounds of ancient Tihoo. 2d. The traditional destruction of Mayapan in 1420. 3d. The custom of the Spaniards to locate their towns near those of the natives, together with the almost uniform location of the ruins, near the modern towns. 4th. The skeletons and skulls dug up at Ticul were pronounced by Dr Morton to belong to the universal American type. 5th. Sr Peon's deed to the Uxmal estate, dated in 1673, states that the natives still worshiped in the stone buildings; that a native then claimed the estate as having belonged to his ancestors; that at that time there were doors in the ruins which were opened and shut; and that water was then drawn from the aguadas. 6th. The sword in the hands of the kneeling sculptured figure at Kabah, which has already been mentioned as almost identical with an aboriginal Maya weapon. 7th. A map dated 1557 was found at Mani, on which Uxmal is designated by a different character from all the other surrounding towns, being the only one that is not surmounted by a cross. 8th. With the map was found a document in the Maya language, also dated 1557, announcing the arrival of certain officials with interpreters at, and their departure from, Uxmal. Now there never was a Spanish town of Uxmal, and the hacienda was not established until one hundred and forty-five years later. 9th. The gymnasiums at Chichen and Uxmal, agreeing with those traditionally described in connection with certain aboriginal games of ball. 10th. Many scattered resemblances to Aztec relics and customs. 11th. The European penknife discovered in a grave with aboriginal relics at Kantunile. 12th. The comparatively fresh appearance of the altars and other relics at Tuloom.[V-109]
It may then be accepted as a fact susceptible of no doubt that the Yucatan structures were built by the Mayas, the direct ancestors of the people found in the peninsula at the conquest and of the present native population. Respecting their age we only know the date of their abandonment—that is the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nothing in the ruins themselves gives any clue to the date of their construction, and this is not the place to discuss the few vague historical traditions bearing on the subject. The data on which different writers have based their speculations, and claimed for these monuments greater or less antiquity are the following. 1st. The immense trees that are found growing on the ruins, and the accumulation of soil and vegetable matter on the roofs and terrace platforms; but to persons acquainted with the rapid growth of trees in tropical countries, these constitute no evidence of antiquity. 2d. The ignorance of the natives respecting the builders of the monuments; the investigations of Indian character in the preceding volumes of this work, however, show conclusively enough that two generations, to say nothing of three centuries, are amply sufficient to blot from the native mind everything definite concerning the past. 3d. Comparisons of the Yucatan ruins with different old-world remains; the argument being that if an American monument is more dilapidated than an Egyptian one, it must be older. 4th. And on the other hand, against a great antiquity, the destructiveness of the tropical vegetation and tropical rains. 5th. The softness of the building material. 6th. The perfect preservation in many places of wood and paint. 7th. The rapid decay of the ruins between the periods of the earliest and latest visits.
It will be at once noted that the preceding points all bear on the date of abandonment and not at all on the date of construction. Explorers may marvel, according to the view they take of the matter, either that the buildings have resisted for three or four hundred years the destructive agencies to which they have been exposed; or, that three or four short centuries have wrought so great ravages in structures so strongly built; still the fact remains that the buildings were abandoned three or four hundred years ago. M. Waldeck's theory, by which he computes the antiquity of some of the ruins by certain stones peculiarly placed in the walls, or by the small houses—calli, or house, being one of the signs of the Aztec calendar—over the doorways of the Nunnery at Uxmal, like Mr Jones' argument that the structures must have been reared before the invention of the arch, is mere idle speculation, utterly unfounded in fact or probability. The history of the Mayas indicates the building of some of the cities at various dates from the third to the tenth centuries. As I have said before, there is nothing in the buildings to indicate the date of their erection,—that they were or were not standing at the commencement of the Christian Era. We may see how, abandoned and uncared for, they have resisted the ravages of the elements for three or four centuries. How many centuries they may have stood guarded and kept in repair by the builders and their descendants we can only conjecture.[V-110]
CHAPTER VI.
ANTIQUITIES OF TABASCO AND CHIAPAS, RUINS OF PALENQUE.
Geographical Limits—Physical Geography—No Relics in Tabasco—Ruins of Palenque—Exploration and Bibliography—Name; Nachan, Culhuacan, Otolum, Xibalba—Extent, Location, and Plan—The Palace—The Pyramidal Structure—Walls, Corridors, and Courts—Stucco Bas-Reliefs—Tower—Interior Buildings—Sculptured Tablet—Subterranean Galleries—Temple of the Three Tablets—Temple of the Beau Relief—Temple of the Cross—Statue—Temple of the Sun—Miscellaneous Ruins and Relics—Ruins of Ococingo—Winged Globe—Wooden Lintel—Terraced Pyramid—Miscellaneous Ruins of Chiapas—Custepeques, Xiquipilas, Laguna Mora, Copanabastla, and Zitalá—Huehuetan—San Cristóval—Remains on the Usumacinta—Comparison between Palenque and the Cities of Yucatan—Antiquity of Palenque—Conclusion.
NO RELICS IN TABASCO.