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[Illustration: El Castillo--a pyramid temple at Muyil]
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
GREEN GOLD OF YUCATAN
SILVER CITIES OF YUCATAN
SILVER CITIES OF YUCATAN
BY GREGORY MASON
_With a Preface by DR. HERBERT J. SPINDEN_
_Assistant Curator of Mexican Archæology and Ethnology,
Peabody Museum of Harvard. Illustrated with Drawings
by Dr. Spinden and with Photographs_
WITH 32 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK--LONDON
1927
Copyright, 1927
by Gregory Mason
[Illustration: Publisher’s Colophon]
Made in the United States of America
Dedicated TO
HERBERT JOSEPH SPINDEN, LUDLOW GRISCOM, FRANCIS WHITING
AND TO THE MEMORY OF OGDEN TREVOR McCLURG
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
My thanks are due first of all to the _New York Times_, which financed
the Mason-Spinden Expedition; then to the Mexican Government, which
permitted the Expedition to enter territory where foreigners are not
commonly welcomed; third, to Mr. George Palmer Putnam, the United Fruit
Company and the Chicle Development Company for advice in organization
and--in the case of the last two,--for the use of invaluable facilities
in the field. Finally, I am again indebted to the _New York Times_--and
to _World’s Work_ and _Motor Boating_--for permission to use here in
revised form certain material which has already been printed in the
pages of those journals.
GREGORY MASON.
PREFACE
Eastern Yucatan is a coast of adventure where the trade winds of
the tropics pile surf on coral reefs and where white temples of the
ancient Mayas serve as landmarks for ships that wisely stand off. There
is memorable beauty in the outer islands with slender palms leaning
out from dunes of wave-broken coral. The shore line of the mainland
appears low and monotonous but on closer inspection vast shallow bays
are revealed with mangrove mazes which once offered hidden harbors to
the buccaneers. The level unbroken forests of the Mexican territory of
Quintana Roo are guarded by vigilant Mayas who still cherish in these
wilds crumbling buildings of their ancestors. For generations these
Indians have fought to stave off modern commercial civilization that
on the raw edges of its expanding front shows anything but a pleasing
parade of virtues.
There is glamour and mystery enough in a quest of ancient cities in
Central America, yet the finest part of the adventure is intellectual
rather than physical. The thrill of breaking through the frontiers of
history into an unknown age is much deeper and more satisfying than
that of merely entering closed territory at a slight risk of life and
limb. After all, the chances of violent death are probably greater in
modern cities than in the most backward lands. Eastern Yucatan will
remain in my memory, not as a region where thorns scratch, insects
bite, and boats capsize, but as a region where crumbling temples bear
the unmistakable stamp of one of the New World’s greatest personalities.
Quetzalcoatl, emperor of the Toltecs, and conqueror of the
Mayas--priest, scientist and architect in one commanding
individual--was a contemporary of Henry II and Richard the Lion
Hearted. He died in far off days before a reluctant King John signed
the Magna Charta of English liberties. His holdings in Mexico and
Central America were several times more extensive than the holdings of
those puissant monarchs of the Angevin line in France and the British
Isles, his philosophy of life was richer and his contributions to the
general history of civilization were greater than theirs. Old stone
walls in eastern Yucatan are mute evidence of the commerce, religion
and art that Quetzalcoatl built up as the expression of his practical
and ideal State. He encouraged trade that reached from Colombia to
New Mexico, he preached a faith of abnegation and high ethics which
later led speculative churchmen to identify him with St. Thomas, and
in sculpture and architecture he formed a new and vital compound of
the previous achievements of two distinct peoples, the Toltecs of the
arid Mexican highlands and the Mayas of the humid lowlands. We can
restate three of Quetzalcoatl’s personal triumphs in astronomical
science corresponding to the years 1168, 1195 and 1208. We know that he
conquered the great city of Chichen Itza in 1191 and erected therein
a lofty temple which still bears his name and a round tower which is
still an instrument for exact observation of the sun and moon. We know
that Quetzalcoatl set up a benign system of local self government among
conquered tribes of Guatemala which made those peoples relate his
praises in song and story. We know that after his death he was made a
god because during his life he had been “a great republican.”
The archæology of eastern Yucatan belongs for the most part to the
three centuries which intervened between the reign of Quetzalcoatl and
the coming of the Spaniards. The buildings of Chichen Itza are copied
at Paalmul and Muyil, settlements which pretty clearly grew up along
one of the important trade routes from Chichen Itza to the far south.
To be sure there are some vestiges in the region of the much older
First Empire of the Mayas, several monuments having been discovered in
recent years which bear dates in the fourth and fifth centuries after
Christ. But the cultural facts of the splendid First Empire are already
known from a score of magnificent ruins on the plains of Peten, and in
the valleys of the Usumacinta and Motagua rivers. Science was really in
greater need of evidence on the last phases of Mayan civilization and
this evidence we found in the territory we visited.
There is a more tragic story not without interest to the student of
the rise and fall of civilizations, namely, the narrative of a clash
between two races, the American Indian and the white man of Europe.
In eastern Yucatan the unequal contest of brown breasts against
bullets has waged since 1519. Some persons may see in the broken men
who survive in little independent communities of rebellious Mayas
only degradation and inferiority. Yet over and over again the Spanish
colonists, for all their coercive engines, were driven out of this
territory which was the first part of Mexico on which they set foot.
The terrible War of the Castes devastated Yucatan some eighty years
ago, one of the causes, according to a scholarly work recently
published in Merida, being the exportation of Maya Indians to Cuba as
slaves. The eastern portion of the peninsula has not been reconquered
since that time. One encounters in the darkening forest Christian
churches which are no less ruinous than the more ancient temples of the
Indians. It seems that Father Time is impartial when the figures of
European saints and the grotesque faces of pagan gods fall beneath the
weight of his hand.
Although the _Indios sublevados_ of Quintana Roo have managed to
maintain their independent status their numbers have pitifully
diminished. Under President Díaz a vigorous campaign was waged against
them for twenty years but the recalcitrant natives allowed the Mexican
generals to hold precariously only the town of Santa Cruz and a
few lines of communication. Then, as political strife developed in
the Mexican capital itself, the garrisons were withdrawn. In 1918,
the aboriginal population found a still more deadly enemy in the
world epidemic of influenza. Recently American silver has been more
successful over this renegade people than Mexican lead. The insistent
demand for chewing gum among the children and salesladies of the United
States has brought about a benevolent penetration into Quintana Roo of
hand mirrors, glass pearls and alcohol flavored with anis seeds.
When offered the opportunity of joining with Mr. Gregory Mason and
several others in an exploring expedition to Cozumel Island and the
adjacent mainland, I gladly accepted, first because the region was
difficult of access and offered great promise of finding unknown
ruins of the ancient civilization, secondly, because the narrative
of adventures and discoveries would direct public attention to the
grandiose archæology of the Mayas. I shall let Mr. Mason tell what we
found.
In preparing the book that is before us--which is directed to the
general public whose support archæology needs--Mr. Mason has had the
coöperation and good wishes of his fellow adventurers.
HERBERT J. SPINDEN.
PEABODY MUSEUM,
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.,
January 27, 1927.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--THE FIRST FAMILIES OF AMERICA 3
II.--WE HEAR OF A RUINED CITY 22
III.--RARE BIRDS 46
IV.--AND COMMON CROCODILES 65
V.--LOST IN “DELIRIUM TREMENS” 91
VI.--A SHRINE OF ANCIENT FISHERMEN 127
VII.--THE FACES OF OLD GODS 152
VIII.---A LOST TRADE ROUTE 165
IX.--THE CITY OF THE DAWN 199
X.--THE GREEKS OF THE WEST 217
XI.--SECRET SHRINES BY LOST LAGOONS 245
XII.--NATIVE WOMEN 270
XIII.--THE TEMPLES OF TABI AND THE HILL OF OKOP 286
XIV.--THE FIRST AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE 314
XV.--WHAT FORBIDDEN CITIES MAY TELL 328
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
EL CASTILLO--A PYRAMID TEMPLE AT MUYIL _Frontispiece_
MAP SHOWING THE ROUTE OF THE EXPEDITION AND THE NEW
ARCHÆOLOGICAL SITES DISCOVERED 16
A GOOD SEA AND MUD BOAT WAS THE _H. S. Albert_ 28
A RARE MOMENT WHEN BOTH SPINDEN AND MASON WERE SILENT 32
GRISCOM’S FORTUNE AT ASCENSION BAY 102
SOME OF THE DRUNKEN MAYAS OF SANTA CRUZ DE BRAVO 132
WE HUNG MCCLURG’S SHARK FROM OUR BOW--A WARNING TO HIS KIND 146
SPINDEN AND MASON BEFORE REMAINS OF A FISHERMAN’S SHRINE 150
WE FIND AN OUTPOST OF THE COMMERCIAL CITY OF MUYIL 160
FROM THIS HIGH BUILDING CANOES APPROACHING MUYIL WERE SIGHTED
BEFORE THEY COULD SEE THE CITY 166
VIGIA DEL LAGO (“THE WATCH ON THE LAKE”) 184
THE CHIEF TEMPLE OF TULUM 206
THE EAR-RINGED CHIEF OF THE TULUM INDIANS, “GENERAL” PAULINO
CAAMAL 210
TULUM’S TEMPLE OF THE FRESCOES 214
BEHIND THIS TEMPLE TO SOME GOD OF MAYA SAILORS WE FOUND THE
WALLED TOWN OF XKARET 224
MCCLURG TOOK THE FIRST MOTOR BOAT INTO XKARET HARBOR 228
THIS “LIGHTHOUSE-TEMPLE” IS THE “BROKEN PYRAMID” WHICH GIVES
THE RUINS BEHIND IT THE NAME PAALMUL 236
ON AN ALTAR IN THE UPPER STORY OF THIS BUILDING AT PAALMUL
WE FOUND THE FRAGMENTS OF A TERRA COTTA GOD 238
FRONT VIEW OF ROUND BUILDING AT PAALMUL WHICH WAS PERHAPS
AN ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY 242
BACK VIEW OF ROUND PAALMUL “OBSERVATORY” 248
THIS BUILDING ON THE HARBOR OF CHAKALAL CONTAINS MURALS OF
A STYLE NEVER FOUND BEFORE IN EAST-COAST ART 252
WALL PAINTINGS FOUND IN A TEMPLE AT CHAKALAL 256
THE LABORERS WHO BUILT THE STONE TEMPLES PROBABLY LIVED IN
HUTS LIKE THESE OF THE MODERN INDIANS OF ACOMAL 260
TEMPLE FOUND AT ACOMAL WITH CURIOUS PINEAPPLE SHAPED OBJECT
ON OUTDOOR ALTAR BEFORE IT 268
MCCLURG, SPINDEN, MASON, WHITING, GRISCOM 272
THOUGH COZUMEL ISLAND IS SMALL, SPINDEN FOUND RUINS THE
THICK BUSH HAD HIDDEN FROM PREVIOUS EXPLORERS 276
THE “LIGHTHOUSE-TEMPLE” ON COZUMEL ISLAND 280
BUILDINGS AT ACOMAL SHOWED AN INTERESTING USE OF STUCCO FACES 284
A LUCKY HALT FOR LUNCH LED TO THE DISCOVERY OF OKOP 298
THE GREAT MOMENT WHEN SPINDEN REACHED THE TOP OF A PYRAMID
AT OKOP 300
WE FOUND MAGNIFICENT SPANISH CHURCHES DESERTED TO THE HOT,
SILENT BUSH 304
THE AUTHOR WAS GLAD TO REACH “CIVILIZATION” AT CHICHEN ITZA 308
SMALL WOODEN CROSSES PUT BY MODERN INDIANS ON ALTARS OF
ANCIENT TEMPLES 332
Silver Cities of Yucatan
CHAPTER I
THE FIRST FAMILIES OF AMERICA
Deep in the thick jungles of Central America are dozens of splendid
stone cities, abandoned centuries ago. Of the mysterious race which
built them there remain only a few thousand Indians, ignorant of their
glorious past.
The lovely architecture of these desolate palaces, the faded paintings
on crumbling temple walls, the grace and symmetry of sculpture found
on monuments buried under the matted undergrowth of who knows how many
years, all stamp the builders of these cities as the creators of the
highest civilization that flourished in the New World before the coming
of Europeans. “New World?” Outstanding facts in the history of these
first Americans have now been traced back to the ancient days when
Thales was founding Greek philosophy.
Whence came these people, whom we call the Mayas? What was the
catastrophe that wiped out their civilization so suddenly that no
tradition of them has been found among the Indians who today inhabit
their territory? When we enter their deserted cities we feel the
poignantly tantalizing quality of the mystery that surrounds a
magnificent ship discovered in mid-ocean with sails set, gear in order
and not a soul on board.
Why was this great ship, bearing no outward sign of wreck or
misfortune, so abruptly abandoned? Why were these temples, palaces
and astronomical observatories of cunningly carved white limestone
suddenly left to the bats, the lizards and the sinister little owls
the later Indians called “moan birds” and associated with death? It is
conceivable that any race might forget its humble beginnings in the
dawn of history. But how came legend to be so silent about the collapse
of a cultivated nation, some of whose greatest cities were inhabited
as late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of the Christian
era--perhaps later? One reiterates the query, one gropes for an answer,
till the imagination aches.
The expedition which Dr. Herbert J. Spinden of the Peabody Museum of
Harvard and I are leading through Eastern Yucatan will diligently
seek data to piece out the dim record of these vanished builders. At
present the earliest date in that record is August 6, 613 B.C. Harvard
has just announced Spinden’s proof that that was when these ancient
Americans began to give each day its consecutive number and to keep a
close tabulation of celestial events.
We should be particularly pleased to throw light on the abrupt downfall
and disappearance of this mysterious people. Human interest, after all,
is the fundamental appeal in this riddle, and one cannot stop wondering
what became of the sailors who abandoned a full-rigged, seaworthy ship
in mid-journey.
The information the world now has is subject to revision in the light
of future discoveries, and even in its entirety is sufficient merely
to whet the appetite to know more. There is no more fascinating hobby
for the layman of a romantic and imaginative turn than to follow the
attempts of scientists to find a satisfactory answer to this conundrum.
And if he has been lucky, as I have, and has once seen a white temple
rising through the green of tropical foliage, or has stood on an old
pyramid awed by the silence of a whole city silver in the moonlight...!
What puzzle can compete for fascination with inscrutable hieroglyphs
which contain now only secrets, although carved to proclaim facts?
It was a widespread civilization as well as a high one, for it left
the ornate façades of its urban centers over what is today British
Honduras, Southeastern Mexico, two-thirds of Guatemala and part of
“Spanish Honduras.” To this oldest American civilization archæologists
have agreed to give the name Maya (pronounce the first three letters
like the pronoun my). This is a name of uncertain origin, connected
with a late Yucatan capital called Mayapan. It has been extended to
cover a great nation which once numbered many millions.
It seems fair to give the Mayas the palm for culture existing in
the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans. Of course, the
over-advertised Aztecs never reached the level of the Mayas. A
comparison with the Incas presents some difficulties, but as Dr.
Spinden points out, “The Peruvians had no system of hieroglyphic
writing and no carefully elaborated calendar.” They were thus unable to
conserve intellectual gains. But the Mayas had a well developed system
of hieroglyphs, mostly ideographic, that is, consisting of abbreviated
pictures of the thing intended or of an object associated with it.
Understanding of this writing was probably confined to an educated
minority, mainly the priests, who probably formed the ruling caste.
We are able to read some 30 per cent of their hieroglyphs, but our
knowledge is confined chiefly to numerals, astronomical symbols and
signs for natural phenomena.
Their calendar is now an open book and can be proved more accurate
than the Julian Calendar of the Spanish conquerors--the same calendar
that Greece and Russia abandoned only a few years ago. Moreover, the
extraordinary astronomical science of the Mayas seems to have been
built up without telescopes. Astronomical sighting lines marked with
monuments were used to measure the true length of the year.
Of the Maya proficiency in painting, Spinden says, “In foreshortening
they greatly excelled the Egyptians and Assyrians.”
One of the most interesting things about these first Americans is that
they were very religious. All their arts seem to have sprung from the
religious impulse or to have been developed in interpreting it. Their
gods and culture heroes had the physical attributes of reptiles, birds
or lower mammals, although they were often somewhat partly humanized,
like the beast gods of Egypt.
Archæology really is not dry and dull. It is fascinating, intensely
exciting. But, alas, the real romance of the search for knowledge about
the first families of America, the Mayas, is often neglected by laymen
in their eagerness to embrace flimsy myths and hifalutin fancies.
These fancies are mostly concerned with the assumption that the
wonderful antiquities of the New World were the work of emigrants
from Egypt, Burma, China or some other part of the Old World, real or
imaginary. The emotional associations with the Old World which the
Bible has given us are a factor in our predilection for attributing the
origin of everything to the other hemisphere.
Thus, even to this day bobs up Lord Kingsborough’s thin theory that the
stone ruins in Central America were the handiwork of the Lost Tribes
of Israel. However, the most persistent of all the myths is that the
people we call Mayas were a colony of the lost continent of Atlantis,
which Plato said Egyptian priests had told Solon had sunk beneath the
western ocean in prehistoric times.
Of this long-lived theory one can only say that not a particle of proof
has been offered. Indeed for the Atlantis myth itself, irrespective of
alleged American connections, about the most that a careful critic can
say is expressed by the Encyclopædia Britannica as follows:
“It is impossible to decide how far this legend is due to Plato’s
invention, and how far it is based on facts of which no record remains.”
Most attempts to link up this extinct Central American culture with Old
World origins are based on fortuitous traces of slight similarities in
customs. But it should be remembered that two peoples, occupying wide
apart portions of the globe, under similar conditions of living will be
likely to develop similar institutions. If the climate is hot and there
is straw, straw hats are apt to be devised by both nations.
Because some stone figurines found in Yucatan have teeth filed in
a manner still practised by certain tribes of Africa, it has been
suggested that the stone cities of Central America were built by
negroes.
Some of the earliest explorers were entirely misled by the huge
noses jutting from “mask panels” which adorn the façades of many a
limestone temple. Failing to recognize the other features in the highly
conventionalized faces containing these noses, these early explorers
dubbed the stone snouts “elephant trunks.” As there are no elephants in
the Americas, this mistake in identification led to the wild conjecture
that these temples must have been built by emigrants from a country of
elephants, that is, India or Africa!
Pretty certainly the truth is that these snouts belonged to Kukulcan,
the Feathered Serpent, whose nose was commonly elongated in
conventionalized Maya art.
Some of the modern natives of Yucatan, who are called the Maya
Indians, although their degree of relationship to the Great Builders
is uncertain, wear at various times a short apron from waist to knees
and a sort of towel wound around the head, with the ends hanging down
the back. Garments similar to these may be found in bas-reliefs from
Egypt, a fact which has been the basis for many a vigorous smoking-room
argument that the ruins of Yucatan must have been built by Egyptians.
It is astonishing how little proof satisfies the amateur scientist.
There are among the Mayas, as there are among many other Indian tribes
of Mexico, a good many persons with long, narrow eyes like the eyes
of Orientals. This fact and the fact that some Chinese laundrymen in
Merida learn Maya more easily than they learn Spanish has convinced not
a few theorists that the stone palaces in the jungle were constructed
by Chinese.
In China I met an apparently reliable American who said he had found
a reference in early Chinese history to a voyage made by a Chinese
missionary three or four centuries after Christ. This earnest preacher
of Buddhism seemed to have crossed the Pacific, coasted along what is
now California and the west coast of America until he reached Central
America. There, according to my friend’s translation of Chinese
history, he remained several years.
But if such a voyage was made by a Buddhist missionary he was too late
to found civilization in Central America. And it is just as likely that
careless early voyagers were blown from the so-called New World to the
Old, as vice versa.
It is surprising how many men seem to resent letting America have an
early history of her own. A refreshing exception to monotonous dreams
of Old World origins for the Mayas was provided by that indefatigable,
though over-imaginative, French-American, Le Plongeon. This gentleman,
whose active work in the field was as valuable as his subsequent
theorizing was useless, presented the world with the creed that
Central America had been the cradle of the human race, and that the
civilization of Europe, Asia, and Africa had been founded by emigrants
from the isthmus between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
Charmed by his originality, if nothing more, many of our fathers in the
age of the bicycle flocked to the support of this garrulous Gaul.
The leading archæologists of the world are agreed that the Mayas were
an indigenous American race, that their early leaders neither sailed
to Yucatan from China nor walked there from Atlantis across a “land
bridge” of which there is no trace. Of course, we may some day learn
that man originated in one definite, small area of the globe. But
apart from such possible common origin of all races in the very remote
past the Mayas can be confidently assigned beginnings in the western
hemisphere. It is believed by the experts that this race started on the
highlands of Mexico. Up there are archæological remains three thousand
years old. There, too, are traces of legends about a great tribe which
emigrated from the shadow of Popocatepetl to Central America. And
similarities in religion, art and social organization all strengthen
the link between that advanced culture which flourished in Middle
America and the lesser civilizations which belonged to the so-called
Nahua stock of upland Mexico--which included the Aztecs, whose fame is
relatively greater than their accomplishments warranted.
The oldest inscribed date of the Mayas yet found corresponds to 98
B.C. in our count. Between that first date in stone and the putting
into operation of the Venus calendar which Spinden has recently proved
was done in the sixth century B.C. there is a mysterious gap of more
than four hundred years. Before history was written on stone there
was almost certainly an earlier civilization, when records were put
down on skin and wood. And it is quite possible that stone monuments
considerably older than any now known will be found. The most ardent
skeptic of the great antiquity of Maya culture would have a hard time
proving that before the oldest known city was built other cities had
not crumbled away.
Remember, these temples are all built of limestone, a soft, friable
material quick to disintegrate before the unchecked vegetable growth
of the tropics. But somewhere, under favorable conditions, a very old
stone relic may have escaped destruction.
This is the sort of reflection which makes us chew our nails in
impatience as our schooner, the _H.S. Albert_, fights a head wind in
the shallow waters off British Honduras. Our course will be generally
northward as we retrace the track of the clumsy high-pooped vessels
of the first Spanish Discoverers in the effort to find a ruined city
unknown to archæology.
Columbus, on his fourth and last voyage, in 1502, just missed becoming
the discoverer of Yucatan when he failed to follow a canoe believed to
have been filled with Yucatecans, which he met off the coast of what is
now Honduras.
In 1517, another Spaniard, Cordoba, touched the east coast of Yucatan,
near Cape Catoche and Mujeres Island, and saw “a large town standing
back from the coast about two leagues.” Juan de Grijalva a year later
sailed from Cuba to the Island of Cozumel. After claiming that land
for his sovereign with the usual blithe arrogance of his age, Grijalva
crossed to the visible eastern shore of Yucatan, where his historian
describes sighting “three large towns separated from each other by
about two miles.”
Perhaps unfortunately for present knowledge, Grijalva decided not to
land.
Then, in 1519, came Cortez, who stopped in Yucatan only long enough to
pick up the shipwrecked Spanish priest, Jeronimo de Aguilar, before
proceeding along the coast to Vera Cruz, whence he marched inland.
The discovery of great wealth in upland Mexico, and later in Peru,
turned the attentions of the Spanish conquistadores from Yucatan, where
little gold was to be had. The conquest of the hot lowlands, inhabited
by the valiant Indians, was long delayed. The natives have never
given up the struggle for independence and in the eastern part of the
Yucatan peninsula, called Quintana Roo, they have retained a practical
independence.
Some of the priests, and especially Landa, the second Bishop of
Yucatan, left accounts of the old Indian life, but their writings were
locked up in archives and escaped attention.
The first real awakening of outside curiosity toward the mysterious
stone cities in Yucatan and Guatemala came with the reports from the
American explorer, John L. Stephens, and his companion, the English
artist, Francis Catherwood. Between 1839 and 1842 these two men visited
and, with admirable exactitude, described “forty-four ruined cities or
places in which remains or vestiges of ancient populations were found.”
Nearly all our present information has been gained since Stephens’s
time, that is, within the last ninety years. And most of our
knowledge of the glyphs has been hammered out within the past thirty
years by arduous study of the inscriptions on monuments and of the
texts of three Maya books, or “codices,” as the experts call them,
which fortunately escaped the Spanish zeal for destroying what were
considered “writings of the devil.”
No Rosetta Stone has been discovered to make the decipherment easier by
permitting comparison of the hieroglyphs with another language. Nor is
it likely that such an aid to interpretation will be found, although it
is quite possible that more codices will be discovered.
Hunting for ruined cities in the unmapped jungle is somewhat like
hunting for a needle in a haystack. The chances of success are
increased because of the fact that the country was more thickly
populated than most countries of our modern world. The civilization of
the Mayas was built up on an abundant reservoir of man power supported
by the fertile vegetable growth of the tropics. Our admiration for them
must increase when we reflect that their magnificent temples of worship
were probably made with man power alone, man power wielding tools of
stone.
Within a hundred years or so after the birth of Christ the Mayas were
building these splendid stone cities in territory now included in
the southern parts of the Mexican States of Chiapas and Tabasco, and
in Guatemala and along the western edge of Honduras. In this region
are the lofty temples and broad plazas of Copan, Tikal and Palenque.
This period is comparable to the classic period in Greek art, and is
noted for the best sculpture the Mayas ever produced. We call it their
“Age of Sculpture.” The last date which has been found in this area
corresponds to 630 A.D.
In other words, these magnificent cities of what scientists call the
“First Empire” of the Mayas were abandoned about the beginning of our
seventh century. The cause of their abandonment has been the source of
many an archæological controversy.
[Illustration: The heavy black line shows the route of the
Mason-Spinden Expedition and the black stars mark the new archæological
sites which the Expedition discovered.]
By the year 1000 A.D., however, the Mayas had found themselves again.
Then there began their renaissance, their “second blooming.” This
occurred in Yucatan and Quintana Roo. Here appeared new cities
of stone, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Mayapan, Labna, Zayil, and dozens
of others. In this period perhaps the painting and certainly the
sculpture of the Mayas never reached quite the high level of that
earlier blooming in the southern area, but the architecture was the
finest the race ever produced. Hence this age is called the “Age of
Architecture.” It is also called the “Period of the League of Mayapan”
as distinguished from that earlier “First Empire.” We do not know
much about the details of Maya political structure. But apparently
government followed the opposite course of that it has taken in
our United States and tended to become less and less centralized.
The Mayas were ruled by Priest-Kings, for religion and government
went hand in hand. And toward the last days of the Mayas individual
sacerdotal monarchs took more and more independence upon themselves.
Each city-state was nearly sufficient unto itself. But the religion and
the racial stock and the language of the various groups was the same
and they maintained alliances for the purpose of common defence. For a
very rough illustration of the relations between these city-states of
Yucatan we may look at the famous Hanseatic League of European cities,
although the ties between the old Central American towns were much
closer.
The leaders in this era of flourishing city-states were the great
cities of Uxmal, Chichen Itza and Mayapan. Jealousy between the last
two ushered in the civil wars which hastened the end of this Maya
renaissance. Some commentators imply that a woman was the cause of the
war which Hunnac Ceel, monarch of Mayapan, waged upon Chac Xib Chac,
ruler of the “City of the Itzas at the Mouth of the Well”--as Chichen
Itza means in English. At any rate Mayapan sought the aid of the
Toltecs, who were just giving way to the Aztecs in the highlands around
where now stands Mexico City.
The calling in of outside mercenaries was a step fatal to Maya
civilization. The Toltecs found that even though their culture had had
its day they could fight better than the Mayas, and they soon over-ran
northern Yucatan as the Romans over-ran Greece.
Things seem to have gone from bad to worse until many Maya nobles
banded together about the middle of the fifteenth century and sacked
Mayapan, whose ruler apparently had been oppressing other cities with
the aid of his Toltec allies. When the Spaniards came in 1517 they
found a weakened and degenerate people occupying the seats of former
splendor.
I am reciting Maya history with a positiveness perhaps not entirely
warranted, yet there can be little doubt that civil dissensions
were a contributing cause of the abrupt breakdown of civilization in
Yucatan. But why is it that more traditions have not been left, that
more details of the debacle are not known? The Spaniards are strangely
silent about the Maya hieroglyphs. Did they come in contact with no
natives who could read them?
The puzzle implicit in these and similar questions, the enigma
presented by the swift and silent disappearance of the flower of Maya
culture, has convinced scientists that civil war was not the only
and perhaps not the chief cause of the vanishing of that great early
American civilization. Other causes suggested, by men whose word
carries weight, are climatic change in Central America, exhaustion
of the soil and the outbreak of epidemics, especially Yellow Fever.
Spinden believes that this disease which the ancients called “Black
Vomit” may have been a large factor both in the abandonment of the
cities of the “First Empire” and in the final breakdown of civilization
in Northern Yucatan.
Life in ancient Yucatan was a matter of delicate articulation as in
our own city civilization of today. Suppose, for example, shortage of
food and water made it necessary to evacuate New York almost over night
and set up a new city in a rural district. A million persons might
conceivably die in the transfer. And if meanwhile yellow fever or
smallpox broke out....
To me the final, abrupt collapse of this great civilization just before
the Spaniards arrived is the most fascinating part of the whole Maya
riddle. Isn’t the mystery which enshrouds the ruins more poignant than
it would be if they were ten times older?
Spinden and I have chosen the eastern part of the Yucatan Peninsula as
the field for this expedition partly because it is one of the least
known sections of the whole Maya area, but partly, too, because it was
here that Europeans first came to grips with the broken remnants of the
first families of America.
It is said that when one sense is crippled the others become sharper.
Perhaps it is due to their inability to make much of the hieroglyphs
that scientists have been able to put together so much information
about the Mayas from the evidence of sculpture and architecture. The
discovery of a ruined city may mean much more to us than a mere count
of so many buildings added to the list of those already known. It may
give us important information about the nature of the people who built
it, the sort of lives they led, the activities which interested them.
And if we can only get some light on the connection between the modern
natives and the dead builders ... find some survival of an ancient
custom....
Just now a modern Indian is crossing our bow in a fishing boat
propelled by a gasoline engine. It seems a far cry from this Indian
with his noisy, smelly motor to the brown skinned warriors who stood
up against Spanish cannon with flint tipped spears and shields of
tortoiseshell!
[Illustration]