Note Back to Main Text — Chapter I · ANCIENT AMERICA.

These edifices are not so durably constructed as those which in Europe have stood for more than a thousand years. They do not indicate a high civilization on the part of their builders. They are probably not older than the twelfth century. They do not, as Mr. Andrew Lang says, "throw Mycenæ into the shade, and rival the remains of Cambodia."[150] In pictures they may seem to do so, but M. de Charnay, after close and repeated examination of these buildings, assures us that as structures they "cannot be compared with those at Cambodia, which belong to nearly the same period, the twelfth century, and which, notwithstanding their greater and more resisting proportions, are found in the same dilapidated condition."[151] It seems to me that if Mr. Lang had spoken of the Yucatan ruins as rivalling the remains of Mycenæ, instead of "throwing them into the shade," he would have come nearer the mark. The builders of Uxmal, like those of Mycenæ, did not understand the principle of the arch, but were feeling their way toward it.[152] And here again we are brought back, as seems to happen whatever road we follow, to the middle status of barbarism. The Yucatan architecture shows the marks of its origin in the adobe and rubble-stone work of the New Mexico pueblos. The inside of the wall "is a rude mixture of friable mortar and small irregular stones," and under the pelting tropical rains the dislocation of the outer facing is presently effected. The large blocks, cut with flint chisels, are of a soft stone that is soon damaged by weather; and the cornices and lintels are beams of a very hard wood, yet not so hard but that insects bore into it. From such considerations it is justly inferred that the highest probable antiquity for most of the ruins in Yucatan or Central America is the twelfth or thirteenth century of our era.[153] Some, perhaps, may be no older than the ancient city of Mexico, built A. D. 1325.