Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept.
face of stela P: copan
From Maudslay's Archaeologia
COPAN, AND ITS POSITION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:
by William E. Gates
NO place among all the sites of ancient ruins on the continent of America, arouses a livelier interest in both the observer and the student, than does Copan. Other remains, in Peru, and even in Mexico, are of vaster bulk; but the ensemble of Copan produces upon the mind an effect comparable in Egypt only by that of Thebes. And this evidence grows and is supported at every step by the evidence of such researches and excavations as it has been so far possible to carry on.
All would seem to indicate a gradual addition of new features accompanied by abandonment of older parts. It can readily be seen how a process of this kind carried on for centuries, without any well designed plan to adhere to or any definite idea to carry out, would result in a great complex mass of structures like that of Copan to puzzle and perplex the explorer.
There are other evidences that point to several successive periods of occupation. The river front presents what looks like at least three great strata, divided by floors or pavements of mortar cement. If these floors mark the various levels corresponding to different epochs in the history of the city, the question of the age of the ruins becomes still more complicated; for between each successive period of occupancy there is the period of silence, the length of which can only be inferred from the thickness of the superimposed stratum.—Dr. Geo. B. Gordon, Exploration of Copan, (in Peabody Museum Memoirs).
The ruins of Copan lie on the level plain of a beautiful valley, a mile and a half wide by seven or eight miles long, in Honduras, some twelve miles east of the Guatemala boundary. The site thus marks the eastern limit of the region covered by the ancient Maya remains and inscriptions, as Palenque about marks its western edge, a short distance beyond the Guatemala line, in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The valley of Copan is watered by a swift river which enters and leaves by a gorge, washing the eastern side of the ruins. The force of the annual freshets each year carries away more of this river wall, and by its washings has shown that the entire elevation of 120 feet is of historical or artificial growth, showing the stratification of occupancy mentioned by Dr. Gordon, and yielding fragments of pottery and obsidian down to the water level.
As can be seen by the plan, the ruins form a composite whole, some 2300 by 1400 feet, and the historical development of the site is shown by three independent pieces of evidence. Of these the most striking at first sight is the very apparent growth of the ground plan, pointing to successive additions and enlargements of an original nucleus, just as we see at Thebes. The second evidence is that of excavation, which proves beyond all question, even by the little so far done, that new structures and temples were built upon or into the old. And this evidence is corroborated by the dates on some of the monuments.
The striking unity of the whole group of structures at Copan is therefore a composite unity, the result of long-continued occupation. Structures and temples were built and used; life flowed on around them, and after lapses of time whose length we have no means whatever (save in one case) of even estimating, other buildings were added, and the earlier ones built over, or even covered up by the new. People do not build temples and tear them down to build new ones the next year; nor on the other hand do alien peoples and civilizations expand by a harmonious enlargement the works of those they supersede, but rather change, destroy, or build their own.