American history, we must consider the actual state of New Spain (that
is, the region from the Rio Grande to Panama, approximately) at the
time of the Discovery. The Aztecs were in possession of the valley
of Mexico, with an elaborate civilization, fairly comparable if not
superior to that of Europe at the same time; but their history only
goes back a few hundred years, for they were merely a warlike nation
who had come in, probably from the north, and were about comparable
to the Manchus in China, or the Goths in Rome. They settled upon and
appropriated _some_ (a very small part) of the civilization before
them. Around them were various semi-independent peoples whom they had
neither destroyed nor entirely subdued, and among whom they had only
a primacy of force. To the southwest of Mexico the ancient Zapotec
kingdom still existed, a link with the past, towards its end, but
still owing nothing to the Aztecs. In Yucatan and Central America were
the fragments of the Mayan peoples, broken up into half a dozen main
language stocks, and a score of separate dialects. Between the Mayas
and those of Mexico there was some intercourse and a little borrowing,
with some very ancient traditions probably in common. In culture and
mythology, as to which we have limited material for comparison, and in
language, as to which we have ample material, they were about as much
alike, or as closely related, as the ancient Germans to the ancient
Romans. Both were Americans, as the others were Aryans, with a common
inheritance of tradition, mythology, and language type; no more.
Beyond all possible dispute, the Mayas were indefinitely the older
people. The Aztecs had but a picture or rebus writing, and there is
no evidence they ever had more than this. There are slight traces of
writing akin to the Maya, among the Zapotecs. But the Mayas had a
complete system of genuine hieroglyphic writing, certainly not derived
from the Aztec picture-writing, but dissimilar from this in every way,
with monuments antedating the period of Aztec history, on which the
hieroglyphic forms are fully developed and perfect. The civilization,
monuments, and hieroglyphs of Copan, Palenque, and of Tikal in southern
Yucatan, are Mayan; but they are not the Mayan of the time of the
Discovery.
The period immediately preceding the entry of the Spaniards is a
historical period. We have various chronicles written by native hands,
princes, priests or recorders, giving us some of the early cosmic
traditions, brought down into contemporary times. We have these in Maya
for Yucatan, and in Quiché-Cakchiquel for Guatemala. In each case the
period of definable history goes back several centuries, but throws
no light on the earlier period. In 1500 the triple Quiché kingdom
was still a powerful and civilized nation; and if we know less of it
than we do of the Aztec it is only because it was more quickly wiped
out, because Lake Tezcoco and not Lake Atitlán became the seat of
the Spanish capital, and because no efforts were made at the time to
preserve the Mayan knowledge and traditions, as was done by a few in
Mexico.
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. THE HIEROGLYPHIC
STAIRWAY: COPAN (AFTER EXCAVATION, SHOWING ONE-SIXTH OF ORIGINAL
HEIGHT) From Peabody Museum _Memoirs_]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. COPAN: GENERAL PLAN
From Maudslay's _Archaeologia_]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. STELA H: COPAN From
Maudslay's _Archaeologia_]
In northern Yucatan the capital of the last Mayan confederacy, Mayapán,
had been destroyed in the middle of the 15th century; Chichén Itzá
lasted as a city practically up to that time; and on the island of
Tayasal in Lake Petén, southern Yucatan, there was a powerful and
flourishing Itzá nation down to 1697. Of the architecture, manner of
life, house furnishings, etc. of the different living Maya centers we
have reasonably full descriptions left by different Spanish writers
of the time. And they do not correspond in the smallest degree, to
the monuments and buildings we have left at Copan and other ancient,
abandoned sites. We are only able to trace a continuation of the type,
and to know that the same hieroglyphic writing we find on the carved
monuments of the older places, continued to be used until the Conquest.
So that after sifting the various descriptions, we find that even the
powerful cities of Tayasal and Utatlán, the Quiché capital, were but
villages in comparison. The nearest link is Chichén Itzá, which seems
to have been the last really great Maya city. Its architectural remains
are indeed in size and extent comparable with the older sites; but in
style and in the life of the people displayed by the carved and painted
scenes, it is like comparing the Egypt of the Ptolemies with that of
Ramessu and Hatshepsu. But Chichén Itzá itself was abandoned as the
capital at least a century before the coming of the Spaniards.
And to quote from the description of Mr. A. P. Maudslay, from whose
great work most of our illustrations are taken, after saying: "I fear
that this slight description of Chichén must wholly fail to convey to
my readers the sensation of a ghostly grandeur and magnificence which
becomes almost oppressive to one who wanders day after day amongst the
ruined buildings"; and then after noting various differences between
the ruins of Chichén and those of Copan and Quiriguá, he adds:
the absence of sculptured stelae, the scarcity of hieroglyphic
inscriptions, and, most important of all, the fact that every man
is shown as a warrior with atlatl and spears in his hand; the only
representation of a woman depicts her watching a battle from the roof
of a house in a beleaguered town, whereas at Copan and Quirigua there
are no representations of weapons of war, and at Copan a woman was
deemed worthy of a fine statue in the Great Plaza [see illustration,
Stela P]. I am inclined to think that it must have been the stress of
war that drove the peaceable inhabitants of the fertile valleys of the
Motagua and Usumacinta and the highlands of the Vera Cruz [Copan],
to the less hospitable plains of Yucatan, where, having learnt the
arts of war, they re-established their power. Then again they passed
through evil times: intertribal feuds and Nahua invasions may account
for the destruction and abandonment of their great cities, such as
Chichén Itzá and Mayapán, ...
So much for the Maya civilization in the 15th century, and its then
centers and capitals. But of Copan, Palenque, Tikal, and Quiriguá, we
have not the slightest trace as living cities. Cortes visited Tayasal
on his way to Honduras; Alvarado overran and conquered the Quiché
kingdoms; but no one even mentioned the existence of any of these older
places. Not a tradition about any of them has ever been discovered
among the living natives at any time; for all we can see they were
_then_ buried, in ruins, in the forests, and forgotten.
In 1576 Diego García de Palacio, Judge of the Royal Audiencia, made a
report to King Philip II of his travels, by royal order, in what is now
eastern Guatemala and western Honduras. He reached Copan, and describes
"ruins and vestiges of a great civilization and of superb edifices,
of such skill and splendor that it appears that they could never have
been built by the natives of that province." He sought, but could
find no tradition of their history, save that a great lord had come
there in time past, built the monuments and gone away, leaving them
deserted. This, in the face of what we see on the site, means exactly
nothing. Palacio's original manuscript, which is still in existence,
was forgotten, only to be later discovered, and printed first in 1860.
For 259 years Copan was again forgotten, until visited in 1835 by John
L. Stephens. Palenque for its part remained entirely unknown until
about the middle of the 18th century. For what we know of real value
concerning these ruins we are indebted to the works of Stephens, to the
archaeological survey and excavations carried on by Mr. A. P. Maudslay,
by the Peabody Museum of Cambridge, and to a few less extended visits
by other explorers. In 1891, by the enlightened zeal of President
Bográn of Honduras, the Peabody Museum acquired the official care of
the Copan ruins for a period of years.
As seen upon the plan, Copan consists of a group of pyramids, on
the summit of each of which probably once stood a small temple; of
terraces and walls; and finally of sculptured pillars or stelae, each
of which has or had before it a low, so-called altar. Nearly all
of these stelae bear on one face a human figure surrounded by most
elaborate symbolism of dress, ornament, and other figures. The faces
are dignified and for the most part not grotesque. Above the head is
usually a triple overshadowing. The main symbolism is worked out in
bird and serpent motifs, and into the dress at different parts of the
body, notably the chest, are worked medallions of faces, as if to
symbolize different human centers of consciousness in the body. The
sides and back of all are covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, whose
general characteristic it is to begin with a date, which is followed by
the indication of intervals which reach to other dates throughout the
whole inscription. This statement holds good for practically all Mayan
monumental inscriptions, on stelae or otherwise. And these dates, or
most of them, are all we can yet read of these writings. We can, that
is, read them in their own terms, but without being definitely able to
translate them into our chronology.
The first and greatest work done by the Peabody Museum was in the
excavation and partial restoration of the Hieroglyphic Stairway.
This stairway is on the west side of mound 26, almost in the center
of the plan. It is 26 feet wide, with a three foot carved balustrade
on each side. The risers of the steps are carved with a hieroglyphic
inscription; at the base is an altar, and the ascent is, or was, broken
by seated figures. But fifteen steps are left in place, although an
approximate restoration was made by Dr. Gordon of the position of what
were probably the upper rows. Originally they must have numbered about
ninety, to the top of a pyramid as many feet high; but a landslip at
some time, probably since Palacio's time, carried the upper rows down
and on over the lower ones, which remained buried until Maudslay's
first visit. Palacio mentioned a great flight of steps descending to
the river, which the river may have destroyed.
In front of the Stairway stands Stelae M, of which Dr. Gordon closes
by saying: "It would seem to have stood in front of the older edifice,
that served at last as a foundation for the Hieroglyphic Stairway with
its temple, for centuries before the latter was built." And what now is
the chronological evidence on these monuments?
Without going into what would be long details to set forth even what
is known of the very elaborate Maya methods of time reckoning, it is
enough to say that these sculptured dates regularly specify a certain
day (indicated by the combination of twenty names with thirteen
numbers), and hence recurring only once in 260 days, falling on a
certain day of a certain month, in a certain year expressed by _four
numbers in vigesimal_ (instead of decimal) _progression_, so that the
successive figures stand for 1, 20, 400, and 8000 years, instead of
as with us, 1, 10, 100, 1000. It is a moot point whether the dates
include the next stage, of 160,000 years, in the reckoning, or not.
And it may be stated by the way, that though the Mayas knew and used
the ordinary solar year, their long chronological count was kept in
terms of 360 days, the same as we find in co-ordinate use in ancient
India, and perhaps significantly identical with the perfect circle of
360 degrees. Whatever the fact, however, as to these higher periods,
it is established that nearly all the Maya inscription dates occur
within the ninth 400 of the current 8000-year cycle; that is, they are
dated between about 3200 and 3600 years after the initial date of that
particular period. It is not possible for us to consider these dates
other than as the contemporary dates of the monuments themselves; and
the great number of them, all over the Maya territory, slightly varying
for different sites, points most clearly to a special "building" period
of about that extent.
A very few monumental dates go much back of this period. The initial
dates of the Temples of the Sun and of the Foliated Cross at Palenque
both fall in the 765th year of the same current 8000-year cycle, and
that of the Temple of the Cross about five years before that great
cycle began. But as these inscriptions then go on to cover long
successions of years, _these_ earlier dates are probably historical,
but not contemporary. On the other hand, a very few dates come on into
the tenth 400; and the only large stela bearing so late a date is at
Chichén Itzá, the last great Maya city, so far as our history goes. An
analysis of the groupings of these dates on the various monuments of
the different sites, and their mutual comparison, gives a good deal of
basis to check future historical researches, and at Copan it gives us
one definite confirmation, already referred to, of the evidence which
the structures themselves afford of successive separated "building"
periods, with continued intervening use. Of four consecutive and
deciphered dates on the fifteen lower steps of the Stairway, still in
position, at Copan, the second and third are respectively 48 and 74
years, and the last, at the lower right hand of our illustration, is
937 years, 44 days _later than the first_. We can hardly regard this
date as a future or prophetic one; it must be, like similar final
dates of long inscriptions at Palenque, the contemporary date of the
structure. All the other dates at Copan, those as initial dates on
stelae, fall within the "building" era of the ninth 400, which we have
mentioned as common to nearly all the inscriptions--except one, Stela
C, in the middle of the north part of the Great Plaza, whose date is
apparently almost contemporary with this final date of the stairway.
And these two dates are 730 years later than any other stela date at
Copan. Of Stela C, Dr. Gordon says:
The two monuments [the Stela and the Stairway] have certain technical
affinities in the carving, as though they might have been the work of
the same master.
In short, while we are still far from the end, the story of the
monuments and their dates alike so far is that there was a great
building period among the most ancient known Maya cities, in what we
know as the ninth period, about date 3400 of the current cycle; that
Copan shared in this; that then such building ceased, so far as dated
monuments go, at Copan for some 730 years. That then the Stairway was
rebuilt over a former pyramid, and Stela C erected; that this latter
period was a few hundred years later than one Stela we find at Chichén
Itzá; that after that silence fell, oblivion for all the southern
sites, and internal strife, warfare, and disintegration for the last
great Itzá city; then its abandonment; and then finally, on new sites,
local dynastic histories, _each silent as to these earlier places_,
yet embracing several hundred years of history, and carrying on even
into Spanish times what were still then powerful and, as things went,
civilized kingdoms. But they were not Copan.
SCIENTIFIC BREVITIES: by the Busy Bee
Egyptian mummies have been put to a use for which they were probably
never intended--the manufacture of a particular fine brown pigment. The
body, being preserved in the finest bitumen, has assumed an appearance
like leather; and it has been found that this mixture of bitumen and
leather, when ground down, makes a brown pigment prized by portrait
painters for the representation of brown hair.
* * * * *
THE SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN is responsible for the statement that the power
which drives the mechanism of a watch is equivalent to only four times
that used in a flea's jump; or, in mathematical language, a watch
is a four-flea-power motor. One horse-power would suffice to drive
270,000,000 watches, whence we infer that one horse is equivalent to
more than a billion fleas! We suggest the dividing of the horse-power
unit into convenient sub-multiples, such as the dog-power or the
mouse-power, instead of using the names of people, like Watt and Joule.
* * * * *
MEDIEVAL churches took whole reigns to build, and some of the monuments
left to us from antiquity may have taken centuries. Structures designed
for more immediate and less enduring purposes can be rushed up in a
very business-like way. In fact the stately pile can be reared by
gasoline jacks. Reference is had to the description and pictures of a
church which was built in this way. It is of concrete; the molds are
laid horizontally upon the jacks, and the walls cast each in one solid
piece. Then the motors are started and the structure rears itself into
place.
* * * * *
EVIDENCE as to the persistency of life is afforded by some experiments
in which fish were frozen up in their water, and the block of ice then
cooled down to 20° C. below the freezing point; after thawing, the fish
came to life and swam about as usual. Yet, if the frozen block were
broken, the fish would break up into little pieces along with the ice.
Frogs can be frozen down to 28° C. below the freezing point and still
revive; while snails will resist 120° C. From this it may be inferred
that life can be preserved throughout long periods of glaciation.
* * * * *
IT is reported that the farmers in the province of Skåne, Sweden,
have organized to build a central station to furnish their farms with
electric current, which will be used both for mechanical power and for
lighting; and that in another part of the country the farmers have
formed a company to purchase power from a power station and distribute
it to the farms.
* * * * *
AT a meeting of the Selborne Society (for Natural History) England, it
was suggested that a sanctuary for wild birds should be provided and a
tract of wild country acquired and set aside for the preservation of
birds likely to become exterminated, such as the chough, the raven, the
buzzard, the peregrine, and the kite. If the Government did not see its
way to undertake the work, it might give a grant as the nucleus for an
appeal for subscriptions. The United States, Switzerland, and Austria
already provide such sanctuaries.
* * * * *
BY looking at one object too hard we may so bedazzle ourselves that
we can see nothing else. This remark is suggested by the views of a
botanist who appears to regard the colors and scents of flowers as
being designed entirely and solely for the benefit of insects, in order
that the insects may pollenize the flowers. We dare say that object
forms part of the plan; but we surmise it does not form the whole
plan. Birds carry seeds, but that is not the sole object and purpose
of a bird's existence. Besides, the idea that insects and flowers were
created for each other reminds one of the old story of the posts that
held up the wires and the wires that held up the posts.
* * * * *
THE Swiss correspondent of the London _Morning Post_ said recently
that the glaciers in the Rhône district of Switzerland are in retreat,
some of them to an extent "which may almost be described as alarming."
The Arolla glacier has receded 85ft. in the past twelve months; the
Aletsch, the longest in the Alps, 65ft.; the Gorner, 58; the Zinal,
51; while the Turtmann, in the Zermatt range, and the Zanfleuren or
Sanetsch have retreated nearly 46ft. each. Within the last ten years
the Zigiornuovo glacier has shrunk by 904ft., the Zanfleuren by 718,
the Aletsch by 459, the Zinal by 378, and the Gorner by nearly 190.
Other glaciers were observed, and all showed more or less shrinkage;
but, as for the small Mont Bouvin glacier, in the space of four years
it has entirely "disappeared from sight"--a cautious expression. These
changes may of course be part of a periodic variation.
* * * * *
THE encroachment of the sea on the east coast of England is such that
at Pakefield, near Lowestoft, a row of cottages has been brought to the
edge of the cliff. In one of these cottages live an old couple, who
own the house, but are now forced to move, as the cliff edge is only a
few feet from the front door. The woman was born in the cottage and
remembers when it was a good walk to reach the cliff. Old fishermen
in Pakefield are now catching fish where as boys they gathered
blackberries.
Such rapid encroachments of the sea on some shores, accompanied by
recession of the sea on others, alone suffice to account for great
changes in the course of ages. These changes include tilting of the
strata and change of the configuration of the shores. Judging by
general analogy, one would infer that geological changes are of various
speeds, some very gradual, others more rapid, just like the work of
running water, which goes on all the time and yet may accomplish more
during a single flood than during several ordinary years. There is room
for both the "catastrophists" and the advocates of slow and gradual
movement.
* * * * *
THAT the presence of comets causes or indicates hot weather is an
item of ancient belief, and theorists may choose between rejecting
or explaining it. There is a well-known story of a philosopher, who,
desirous of proving that his philosophy could, if need be, be turned
to material profit, bought up some vineyards in view of a prospective
comet, thus reaping the harvest of a good season. The phrase "comet
vintage", as applying to wine, is also well known. A recent theory,
as announced in the papers, attributes the great heat of the summer
of 1911 to the presence of a comet in the solar system, the head of
the comet being supposed to act like a lens and to concentrate the
solar power. Whether or not this lens plays any tricks with optics,
we are not told. As science progresses, more attention is paid to the
influence of electric and magnetic conditions upon the weather; while
recent discoveries provide us with an ample machinery of rays and
emanations to act as go-betweens from celestial bodies to the earth.
This is the Dog that worried the Cat
That killed the Rat
That ate the Malt
That lay in the House that Jack built.
So says an ancient poem, and it reminds us of the "balance of nature"
which people are always upsetting. If we kill the Dog there will be too
many cats and they will have to supplement their rat-diet with birds.
If we kill the Cat, the Rat will eat all the Malt; and if we kill the
Rat, we starve the Cat. So with agriculture; one scarcely knows what to
kill or what to spare. We are told now that we must avoid deep plowing,
or we shall kill the Spider which worries the Grub which eats the
Crop that Jack sowed. This spider is the aerial spider, a small but
very numerous creature who--doesn't fly, but uses a filament of web as
an aeroplane. A writer in _The Technical World Magazine_ has studied
their habits. Their webs are seen during the warm autumn days floating
in countless numbers through the air; but even these are but a small
fraction of the real number; for what we see are merely the ones who
have made failures and got their aeroplanes caught on something. It is
estimated that on cultivated grass-land there are enormous numbers of
these spiders per square foot.
* * * * *