[1021] Bancroft’s numerous references make a foot-note (iv. 530). He adds a plan from Almaraz, and says that the description of Linares (Soc. Mex. Geog. Boletin, 30, i. 103) is mainly drawn from Almaraz. It is believed, but not absolutely proven, that the mounds were natural ones, artificially shaped (Bandelier, 44). The extent of the ruins is very great, and it is a current belief that the city in its prime must have been very large. The whole region is exceptionally rich in fragmentary and small relics, like pottery, obsidian implements, and terra-cotta heads. Cf. for these last, Lond. Geog. Soc. Journal, vii. 10; Thompson’s Mexico, 140; Nebel, Viaje; Mayer’s Mexico as it was, 227 (as cited in Bancroft, iv. 542); and later publications like T. U. Brocklehurst’s Mexico to-day (Lond., 1883), and Zelia Nuttall’s “Terra Cotta Heads from Teotihuacan,” in the Amer. Journal of Archæology (June and Sept. 1886), ii. 157, 318.
Bancroft judges that the ruins date back to the sixth century, and says that these mounds served for models of the Aztec teocallis. On the commission already referred to was Antonio García y Cubas, who conducted some personal explorations, and in describing these in a separate publication, Ensayo de un Estudio Comparativo entre las Pirámides Egípcias y Mexicanas (Mexico, 1871), he points out certain analogies of the American and Egyptian structures, which will be found in epitome in Bancroft (iv. 543). In discussing the monoliths of the ruins, Amos W. Butler (Amer. Antiquarian, May, 1885), in a paper on “The Sacrificial Stone of San Juan Teotihuacan,” advanced some views that are controverted by W. H. Holmes in the Amer. Journal of Archæology (i. 361), from whose foot-notes a good bibliography of the subject can be derived. Bandelier (Archæol. Tour, 42) thinks that because no specific mention is made of them in Mexican tradition, it is safe to infer that these monuments antedate the Mexicans, and were in ruins at the time of the Conquest.
[1022] The early writers make little mention of the place except as one of the halting-places of the Aztec migration. Torquemada has something to say (quoted in Soc. Mex. Geog. Bol., 2º, iii. 278, with the earliest of the modern accounts by Manuel Gutierrez, in 1805). Capt. G. F. Lyon (Journal of a residence and tour in Mexico, London, 1828) visited the ruins in 1828. Pedro Rivera in 1830 described them in Márcos de Esparza’s Informe presentado al Gobierno (Zacatecas, 1830,—also in Museo Méxicano, i. 185, 1843). The plan in Nebel’s Viaje (copied in Bancroft, iv. 582) was made for Governor García, by Berghes, a German engineer, in 1831, who at the time was accompanied by J. Burkart (Aufenthalt und Reisen in Mexico, Stuttgart, 1836), who gives a plan of fewer details. Bancroft (iv. 579) thinks Nebel’s views of the ruins the only ones ever published, and he enumerates various second-hand writers (iv. 579).
Cf. Fegeux, “Les ruines de la Quemada,” in the Revue d’Ethnologie, i. 119. The noticeable features of these ruins are their massiveness and height of walls, their absence of decoration and carved idols, and the lack of pottery and the smaller relics. Their history, notwithstanding much search, is a blank.
[1023] Cf. Bandelier, p. 320.
[1024] Bandelier, p. 276.
[1025] Ramirez, ed. 1867.
[1026] His brief account is copied by Mendieta and Torquemada, and is cited in Bandelier, p. 324.
[1027] Geog. Descripcion, ii. cited in Bandelier, 324. Cf. Soc. Mex. Geog. Boletin, vii. 170.
[1028] Bandelier says (p. 279) that he saw them in the library of the Institute of Oaxaca, and that, though admirable, they have a certain tendency to over-restoration,—the besetting sin of all explorers who make drawings.