It is eighteen feet beneath the surface, and from it have been produced pottery of a type different from any hitherto found in Mexico, an entire goldsmith's outfit with patterns and molds for the making of ornaments of gold and silver, pendants and rings and beads of jade, copper knives which cut like steel, skulls containing teeth whose cavities are filled with cement and turquoise, the cylinders just mentioned, and many other objects.
These things were found in an immense basin containing the ruins of a city some ten miles long by three or four wide. Its houses were of laid stone, cemented with a white cement, unlike the black cement of Mitla or the gray composition of Palenque. The rooms were of uniform height—nine feet; the floors of tile—or, rather, of small squares of cement, colored and traced in beautiful patterns; the walls ornamented with frescoes and friezes showing a remarkable development of the color art. Paints used on these buildings, though evidently of vegetable composition and more than 3000 years old, are fresh and do not fade when exposed to light.
The skulls and arrowheads found in the soil above are similar to those found in other parts, and relate to peoples having no connexion with the occupants of this ancient city. Does not this prove that so-called "primitive man" was merely odd tribes of lowly nomads or settlers, belonging to fallen remnants of earlier civilizations; whereas many anthropologists seem to try to make out that they represent an earlier stage in evolution? This ancient city flourished long before the owners of the skulls and arrow-heads. All through the period of Aztec civilization it lay buried and unsuspected by the Aztecs.
Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept.
PYRAMID, AND BUILDING COMMONLY CALLED "THE CASTLE"—CHICHÉN ITZÁ, YUCATAN
(Photograph by A. P. Maudslay)
ANOTHER VIEW OF CHICHÉN ITZÁ
THE SO-CALLED "TEMPLE OF THE TIGERS," AND "THE CASTLE"