With the exception of the Snail-shell or Watch-tower, all of the Maya buildings are rectangular. None are lofty, all are massive. Yet in all respects they are excellent in their architecture, of appropriate dimensions, symmetrical, and well constructed. Stones are fitted with infinite pains. Many have even been drilled. It has been shown that sharpened bird bones twirled about on the stone were employed as drills. Stones having drilled holes of six inches or more in depth are not uncommon. Mortar, plaster stucco, and cement were as good as or better than similar materials of the present time and were expertly applied. The use of pigments as understood by these ancient artisans is a lost art and it is doubtful if we have any colors as durable and unfading.
Monolithic columns of great size, chiefly of serpent-head motif, are found everywhere. Built-up columns, both square and round, were used. Inlays, mosaics, and stone screens, bas-reliefs, full reliefs, murals, panels, cornices, balustrades, sills, lintels,—virtually the whole gamut of architectural design and embellishment known to the best of ancient or modern architecture,—were known and used by these builders isolated by two oceans from any foreign influence.
Lintels were made of stone and of sapote, that iron-hard wood of Yucatan which defies the wear and tear of time like the teak of the Orient.
In one respect Mayan architecture might be considered inexpert, from the standpoint of our present knowledge of building construction, and that is their method of roofing their structures and of building arches. Like the old Greeks, they did not know how to build an arch employing a keystone. Only by gradually receding courses of stone did they achieve an arch having a capstone instead of a keystone. The result, in the building of a roof, was a steep-pitched affair, comparatively low at the eaves and high at the peak. The vertical rise from eaves to peak was usually as great as the distance from floor to eaves. Being of stone, this roof was of great weight. Where a considerable expanse of roof was needed, the triple-vaulted arch was used. The Maya arch is not ungraceful, even though it is massive.
In the Nunnery, or La Casa de las Monjas, we see successive stages of building where a part of an edifice is filled in with rock to provide a foundation for a superstructure erected later. This, too, is a very common practice of the old builders and gives the impression that no very well-thought-out plans were employed. I think, however, that none of these buildings was built without a predetermined plan, which was probably drawn out upon some substance in great detail, so that priests and king as well as the builders knew the size and shape and mode of decoration before the building was started. Moreover, people so skilful at drawing and with so considerable a mathematical knowledge might surely have been able to produce in some simple form the plans of these structures. The stones are too well fitted, the dimensions of the buildings too well proportioned, the orientation too accurate to have been the result of chance. Everything bespeaks foreordination, careful planning carried through to completion.
In several of the other ancient cities are found curiously carved stelæ, monolithic slabs of stone resembling the totem-poles of Alaska. These are elaborately sculptured with human figures and glyphs. Many are carved with amazing skill. In his book John L. Stephens describes a number of these stelæ and his descriptions are accompanied by the faithful drawings of Catherwood, made directly from first-hand observation and often with great difficulty. Frequently a small altar is found before these monuments. There is considerable reason to believe, from legend and the ancient Chronicles, that they were the date-records erected every twenty years, and if we could but read the hieroglyphs we might learn the important happenings in each score of years.
From a close study of the architecture of the buildings and their decorations it is clear that there were several stages of culture. Mayan architecture and art followed the rise and fall of the nation, becoming more and more refined up to the golden age represented in the temples of old Chi-chen Itza, gradually deteriorating in the newer temples, improving again under the influence of the Nahuatl conquerors, and sinking into utter desuetude several hundred years before the coming of the Spaniards.
The story of the Mayas furnishes one more epic in the history of the human race; one more cycle of rise and fall; one more meteor flash of brilliancy followed by the darkness of oblivion. There have been in every part of the world similar instances of this groping toward knowledge and culture and their slow achievement, to be followed by decline and savagery, as though the life of a nation were a thing of nature which, like a tree or an animal, flourishes a brief while, then withers and dies.
Is the twentieth century an exception to the age-old rule? Have our ability to commit our knowledge to the printed page and our great advance in the science of transportation set at naught the old rule? Or will our civilization also crumble with the passing of the years?