Photo. C. B. Waite
ZAPOTEC
Ruins at Mitla, Oaxaca; partly restored
To return to Oaxaca, the most important group of ruins awaits consideration. These are at Mitla, the sacred Zapotec city, and are distinguished by many peculiarities which render them almost unique. Here the quadrangular arrangement of buildings round courts attains its most definite form. In two cases one of these buildings, on the east side, is a pyramid, and therefore presumably approached, as usual, from the west. The rest consist of long low buildings upon terraces, opening as a rule only upon the court which they surround, though in two cases one such building gives access at the back to another court, entirely enclosed by similar buildings, which has no other entrance (Fig. [34]). The material is rubble, faced with trachyte blocks set in mortar; the wall-surfaces are broken by sunk panels filled with the mosaic geometrical ornament which gives this site a character of its own (Pls. [XIV, 1], and [XV]). Each block constituting the mosaic bears on its face in relief some detail entering into the design, but the blocks are not uniform, and each therefore was cut and fitted to its particular place, a method entailing enormous labour, especially when it is realized that over eighty thousand were employed in the ornamentation of one quadrangle alone. The blocks taper somewhat at the back, so that they were set in the mortar as a tooth in the gum, a feature seen also in Maya buildings. The designs are obviously based on the textile art, and find their closest parallel in some of the coastal buildings of Peru (though similar mosaics have been found at Tlacolula, also in Zapotec territory). Stucco was not used here for moulded ornament, though it was employed for finishing defective points in the facing. Traces of red colour are found on the mosaic panels. The durable yet comparatively soft trachyte found in the neighbouring hills afforded the Zapotec builder far more tractable material than at other sites; the result was that large masses of stone were used in construction, such as lintels from ten to twenty feet long and weighing from ten to fifteen tons, as well as cylindrical pillars used to support the roof in the broader buildings. Indications show that the roof consisted of logs, probably covered with canes supporting a layer of masonry and cement. The quarries of the ancient builders have been discovered in the hills, together with the rude stone picks by means of which they hewed out the blocks, and, as Holmes writes, “the feats of engineering necessary to transport masses of stone many tons in weight down a thousand feet of precipitous mountain-face, accomplished by these stone-age quarry-men, would be regarded as important undertakings, even by our enterprising engineers of to-day.” It is an interesting fact that numbers of stone flakes and cores are found in the mortar of the constructed buildings, and it is possible that these may have been used in the final dressing of the stone on the spot. In one of the buildings a fresco in red and white has been discovered on the cornice. This is in a style rather resembling certain Oaxacan and Cholulan pottery, and bears also an analogy to certain frescoes in British Honduras (compare Figs. [79] and [80]; pp. 335 and 336). Various mythological figures are represented, including Mixcoatl (Fig. [35]) and his double-headed deer, and it would seem probable that they have been added at a date considerably later than the construction of the buildings. Of the use of the buildings Burgoa gives particulars, assigning one group to the king, another to the priests, and so forth. But as he speaks of upper storeys, of which no traces are apparent, his account can hardly be considered sufficiently trustworthy to be given in detail. The same author writes also of extensive subterranean chambers, but with the exception of two cruciform souterrains of comparatively small dimensions, nothing of that nature has yet been discovered.
Fig. 35.—Portion of a fresco at Mitla; figure of the god Mixcoatl.
(After Seler)
The quadrangular grouping of buildings round courts recalls at once the statement of Sahagun respecting the pre-Aztec temples at Tulan. One of these, he writes, was composed of four buildings, that to the east being ornamented with gold, that to the north with red jasper and red shells, that to the west with turquoise, and that to the south with silver and white shells. The other temple was similar, save that the interior decoration of the buildings was of feathers, yellow, red, blue and white respectively. If the tradition is founded on fact, we may safely conclude that the buildings were arranged round a court, and the colours of their ornamentation suggest that this arrangement was connected with the regard paid by the Mexicans generally to the world-directions (see p. 78).
Passing further north, the remains of pyramids and terraces have been found at Placeres del Oro in Guerrero; these are built of natural or roughly-worked boulders, but they have not yet been excavated and it is impossible to say yet what may be their arrangement or what class of buildings they may have supported. The peculiar stone slabs found there (Fig. [16]; p. 107) have been mentioned, which bear a certain resemblance to one found in the neighbourhood of Xochicalco (Fig. [33, a]; p. 176), which itself appears to be related to those from Oaxaca (Fig. [15]; p. 106). The Placeres del Oro slabs, however, are almost more like certain Peruvian work than anything else, and full excavation of this extremely interesting site is highly desirable; it is worthy of note that the latter slabs bear no glyphs. At Pazcuaro in Michoacan we hear of a three-tiered pyramid of flat stones piled together without mortar, the corners being formed of unworked blocks; but in Tarascan territory are found foundation-mounds of a specialized type, consisting of a terrace from the centre of which a spur projects at right angles, terminating in a circular platform. These are known by the name yacata, the term applied locally to Michoacan temples, and photographs seem to show horizontal layers of cement in their construction as in the Tlacolula buildings. On the evidence of manuscripts the temple buildings in this district seem to have been of a tower-like nature. Two varieties are shown, one on a square foundation, the other on a circular ground-plan and sometimes with a peculiar domed roof. Further north still, at La Quemada in Zacatecas, occurs an extremely interesting group of ruins, built along a lofty ridge. These remains, the most northerly yet discovered bearing a distinctly “Mexican” character, cover an extensive area and display considerable complexity. The flanks of the hills forming the ridge are built up steeply with terraced walls, and the summits are artificially levelled and broadened with terraces. The lower works seem to be of a defensive nature, and the more important buildings above consist of an intricate series of foundation-mounds, sunk courts, and occasional pyramids. From the summit radiates a system of stuccoed roads, most of which terminate in small pyramids lower down. The quadrangular arrangement of the more important structures is very noticeable, and one of the larger halls evidently possessed a roof supported on large circular pillars, built, like the walls and terraces, of unsquared stone blocks set in earth mixed with grass. The Spaniards found the ruins uninhabited, and the surrounding agricultural and hunting population of Zacatec stated that the inhabitants had migrated in the direction of Mexico after a drought lasting several years.