THE CONSTRUCTION OF MAYA BUILDINGS
Whoever views the pyramids along the Nile is inevitably intrigued as to
how they were built—how the massive stones were transported and placed
in their elevated positions. And likewise at Chi-chen Itza one is bound
to speculate as to how the heavy stone-work was transported from its
quarries, how it was so intricately carved, and by what predetermined
plans it was erected into buildings which have stood for centuries,
defying tropical nature.
I have found the Sacred City an absorbing topic upon which to ponder,
fitting together the known facts and drawing upon imagination to piece
in the gaps, until the mental picture of the building of its ancient
temples is an unbroken fabric. My own visualization of the process
of building a Maya temple is no doubt faulty in many respects, and I
have no wish to precipitate an archæological controversy by claiming
it to be hole-proof; I offer it merely for the sake of the reader who
has not the opportunity to create his own vision of the subject from a
first-hand view of these ancient edifices.
Imagine an army of workers—a hundred, yes, a thousand times as many as
would be employed in the erection of a great modern building,—short,
squat, powerful, sun-browned men, sweating at their task of quarrying
and moving huge stone blocks.
In the quarries the blocks for the monolithic serpent heads, the column
sections, and all the larger pieces used in the building are being
channeled from the solid ledge rock, or from isolated boulders, by
the _pa-tunich_, or quarry master, and his many assistants. The ring
of blows struck with stone or wooden mallets upon chisels tipped with
flint or calcite attests their industry. Some workers do not use the
mallet and chisel, but score the soft limestone ledge with flint-bladed
hatchets, while others ply long wooden poles as wedges and levers. On
the quarry floor the master stone-cutters are squaring and smoothing
the rough blocks and laying against them, from time to time, their
wooden gauges, satisfied only when the stones are smooth and square and
of the right dimensions. Under the finished stones are inserted wooden
rollers and about them are knotted cables made of fiber or of tough
vines, and long lines of men grasp the cables and bend their backs to
the task of hauling the big blocks from the quarry to the building site.
Lines of men like toiling ants carry on their shoulders baskets of
earth and stones. Slowly the terrace or substructure is built up to the
first level, its sides faced with smooth stones, and each side bisected
with a broad stairway. And up to this level is built an inclined
roadway for the workers and their burdens. And slowly, up and up, grows
terrace after terrace, each smaller than the preceding one, and the
pyramid takes shape, leaving a flat stone platform at the top upon
which the temple will be erected. Here the _pol-tunich_, the master
stone-mason, and his artisans are busy in the finishing of the stones
and in their intricate carving. Flint-edged hammers are used to work
the grosser outlines, but the finer details are worked out with more
delicate implements—gouging-tools of flint and calcite and keen-edged
chisels of polished nephrite. Such a chisel Don Eduardo dug up near the
base of one of the temples.
The finished stones, one by one, are dragged up the long inclined
roadway, to the floor-level of the temple, and put into their places
under the direction of the master builder. Stone upon stone, the walls
take shape and the column sections are set in place. Then come the
workers in mortar. Every crevice is filled and the column sections
firmed into place with small stone wedges and thick lime mortar. With
a cement-like plaster of sifted lime and white earth mixed with water
and the juices of the _chi-chibe_ plant, the workmen fill each crack in
the walls and columns and burnish it to stony hardness and exceeding
smoothness.
Next come the sculptors—men of renown, artists famed for their skill,
who spend months and years with knives of obsidian, nephrite and
flint chisels, and tiny cutting-tools of copper and calcite. At last
the stone-and-mortar surfaces are covered with deep-carved masks and
portraits and battle scenes and hieroglyphs and friezes, until scarcely
a square inch of plain surface remains. With pencils of red _chac-ti_
wood and with soft-plumed brushes dipped in brilliant pigments the
carvings are further adorned—various shades of brown, the blue-green
of the sacred quetzal bird, the emerald of the forest, the azure of
the cloudless sky, the ultramarine of the deep sea, the gold of the
noonday sun, the velvet blackness of a cloudy night, twilight purples
in the long shadows of trees reflected in the pool of the Sacred Well,
the gray of aged stone that has battled for countless years with
the elements; vermilion of the turkey-head blossom, the rusty hue of
red-earth dust. From triple-vaulted roof to temple floor the colors are
applied with consummate artistry.
Speaking of the tools used by the sculptors, the finds of Don
Eduardo throw a new light upon this previously puzzling subject.
Many cutting-edges and rejects of flint and calcite have been found.
Some archæologists have stated that chisels of metal were not used,
and probably these were but little employed, yet from the Sacred
Well were raised several small hard copper chisels. There can be no
doubt, to judge from the shape and the marks upon them, that they are
chisels. One of Don Eduardo’s most precious finds is a nephrite chisel
discovered at the base of the Great Pyramid. Concerning it he says:
“While working one day around the base of the Great Pyramid of
El Castillo, taking measurements and digging below the surface
accumulations to get at the base line of the structure, I came upon
a curiously shaped fragment of worked stone—heavy, close-grained,
and dark green in color. Closer inspection showed it to be the edged
portion of a cutting-tool.
“The unbroken tool must have been of the typical celt type, about six
inches long and three inches wide at the cutting-edge, tapering to a
rounded head. The part found was rather less than a half of the whole,
but nevertheless the more interesting and important part because it
contained the polished cutting-edge. It was an unusual find, indeed.
Stone points and cutting-edges of local material, like flint and
calcite, are not uncommonly encountered in favored places after heavy
rains that wash away the earth covering and expose them to view, but
tools fashioned from costly, imported material like nephrite were
rarely used and were not carelessly cast aside when broken, for even
the fragments had their value and could be worked over into smaller
implements or into ornaments.
“The location in which this broken nephrite chisel was found, no less
than the chisel itself, has an antiquarian bearing. Here was not only
an authentic museum piece, but testimony as to its use, for clearly the
chisel was used in making the sculptures of El Castillo and was lost
there in the course of the work.
“Nephrite, or kidney-stone, was used in prehistoric, ancient, mediæval,
and later times as a remedy for kidney diseases. It was taken, of
course, in pulverized form. In prehistoric times nephrite was as
needful to the skilled artisan as tempered tool steel is to the modern
craftsman. Nephrite was found in lands far distant from the Mayas; and
pieces of unworked nephrite were bartered and sold, as was nephrite
dust. This dust packed on a rawhide surface became an effective
abrasive for shaping and polishing the nephrite tool. Nephrite carried
by ancient ways of commerce, by barter and trade and conquest and
plunder, reached the Mayas to a limited extent. I have no doubt its
value to these ancients was greater than that of gold.”
Century after century has passed and the work of these amazing
craftsmen still stands, even to the hair lines of the lintel carvings
and the faint traces of pigment still clinging to the smooth walls. The
epitaph is imperishable, even though the names of the artists, like
their very bones, have vanished.
Those who directed the work of temple-building not only built well,
but had an eye to efficiency, also. No stone was wasted; rejects,
fragments too small for carving or fashioning into building blocks—all
were utilized as filling or ballast for the terraces. The stone chips
from the mason’s hammer and chisel were used as grouting. Even the
stone-dust was collected and sifted and mixed, in the ratio of three to
one, with powdered lime, plant juice, and water, to make mortar. When
the temple was completed to the point where the sculptors and painters
took up their task, the inclined roadway was removed.
Then when the massive temple, smooth-walled and roof-crowned, stood
complete on its serrated pyramid of receding terraces; when the broad
stairways were finished and the undulating stone serpents and the
paneled terrace faces all were perfectly aligned and the whole majestic
structure appeared as frosted silver against the velvet blue of the
sky—then only did the master builder consider his work complete.
With the exception of the Snail-shell or Watch-tower, all of the Maya
buildings are rectangular. None are lofty, all are massive. Yet in
all respects they are excellent in their architecture, of appropriate
dimensions, symmetrical, and well constructed. Stones are fitted with
infinite pains. Many have even been drilled. It has been shown that
sharpened bird bones twirled about on the stone were employed as
drills. Stones having drilled holes of six inches or more in depth are
not uncommon. Mortar, plaster stucco, and cement were as good as or
better than similar materials of the present time and were expertly
applied. The use of pigments as understood by these ancient artisans
is a lost art and it is doubtful if we have any colors as durable and
unfading.
Monolithic columns of great size, chiefly of serpent-head motif, are
found everywhere. Built-up columns, both square and round, were used.
Inlays, mosaics, and stone screens, bas-reliefs, full reliefs, murals,
panels, cornices, balustrades, sills, lintels,—virtually the whole
gamut of architectural design and embellishment known to the best of
ancient or modern architecture,—were known and used by these builders
isolated by two oceans from any foreign influence.
Lintels were made of stone and of sapote, that iron-hard wood of
Yucatan which defies the wear and tear of time like the teak of the
Orient.
In one respect Mayan architecture might be considered inexpert, from
the standpoint of our present knowledge of building construction,
and that is their method of roofing their structures and of building
arches. Like the old Greeks, they did not know how to build an arch
employing a keystone. Only by gradually receding courses of stone
did they achieve an arch having a capstone instead of a keystone.
The result, in the building of a roof, was a steep-pitched affair,
comparatively low at the eaves and high at the peak. The vertical
rise from eaves to peak was usually as great as the distance from
floor to eaves. Being of stone, this roof was of great weight. Where a
considerable expanse of roof was needed, the triple-vaulted arch was
used. The Maya arch is not ungraceful, even though it is massive.
In the Nunnery, or La Casa de las Monjas, we see successive stages of
building where a part of an edifice is filled in with rock to provide
a foundation for a superstructure erected later. This, too, is a very
common practice of the old builders and gives the impression that no
very well-thought-out plans were employed. I think, however, that
none of these buildings was built without a predetermined plan, which
was probably drawn out upon some substance in great detail, so that
priests and king as well as the builders knew the size and shape and
mode of decoration before the building was started. Moreover, people so
skilful at drawing and with so considerable a mathematical knowledge
might surely have been able to produce in some simple form the plans of
these structures. The stones are too well fitted, the dimensions of the
buildings too well proportioned, the orientation too accurate to have
been the result of chance. Everything bespeaks foreordination, careful
planning carried through to completion.
In several of the other ancient cities are found curiously carved
stelæ, monolithic slabs of stone resembling the totem-poles of Alaska.
These are elaborately sculptured with human figures and glyphs. Many
are carved with amazing skill. In his book John L. Stephens describes
a number of these stelæ and his descriptions are accompanied by
the faithful drawings of Catherwood, made directly from first-hand
observation and often with great difficulty. Frequently a small altar
is found before these monuments. There is considerable reason to
believe, from legend and the ancient Chronicles, that they were the
date-records erected every twenty years, and if we could but read the
hieroglyphs we might learn the important happenings in each score of
years.
From a close study of the architecture of the buildings and their
decorations it is clear that there were several stages of culture.
Mayan architecture and art followed the rise and fall of the nation,
becoming more and more refined up to the golden age represented in the
temples of old Chi-chen Itza, gradually deteriorating in the newer
temples, improving again under the influence of the Nahuatl conquerors,
and sinking into utter desuetude several hundred years before the
coming of the Spaniards.
The story of the Mayas furnishes one more epic in the history of the
human race; one more cycle of rise and fall; one more meteor flash
of brilliancy followed by the darkness of oblivion. There have been
in every part of the world similar instances of this groping toward
knowledge and culture and their slow achievement, to be followed by
decline and savagery, as though the life of a nation were a thing of
nature which, like a tree or an animal, flourishes a brief while, then
withers and dies.
Is the twentieth century an exception to the age-old rule? Have our
ability to commit our knowledge to the printed page and our great
advance in the science of transportation set at naught the old rule? Or
will our civilization also crumble with the passing of the years?