Mexican Archæology/Introduction
Mexican Archæology
INTRODUCTION
ANCIENT Mexico, the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, built upon an island situated in a great highland lake, the scene of the almost incredible exploits of Cortes, has long been familiar as a name to the western world, chiefly owing to the wonderful account compiled by Prescott. The story of the fall of Aztec civilization before the Spanish invaders has deservedly won a great hold upon popular imagination, for every page is redolent of romance, and indeed few, if any, writers of fiction have conceived a tale so full of incident, or have brought their heroes to victory in the face of greater odds. Moreover, the existence of Aztec civilization, an organized empire with cities built of stone and rich in gold and gems, burst upon the Old World as a thing almost beyond belief.
The purpose of the present work is to afford some connected account of this pre-Spanish culture, and to correlate the accounts of eyewitnesses and early visitors with the material remains which the investigations of later times have revealed. But in order to obtain a proper view of Mexican culture it is necessary to transcend the limits of Mexico itself. In the country to the south and east, in Guatemala and northern Honduras, are the remains of ruined buildings which are, both architecturally and artistically, superior to those of Mexico proper, and which had been deserted before the coming of the Spaniards. These were the work of the Maya, a people whose name is far less familiar to the general public than that of the Aztec, but who, as I hope to show, evolved a culture of their own when the Aztec were yet primitive nomadic hunters, and who furnished the latter people with the materials for that civilization which so astonished the followers of Cortes.
The actual area with which this book deals is, roughly, that portion of Mexico which lies between the tropic of Cancer and the northern strip of Honduras. It is divided naturally into two portions, a northern and western, and a southern and eastern, by the depression which cuts across the isthmus of Tehuantepec. The natural division corresponds very conveniently with the archæological; to the north and west lies the seat of Mexican culture, to the south and east, of the Mayan; but it must be remembered that the Maya-speaking people extended at the conquest practically throughout Vera Cruz, though they had by that time fallen under Aztec influence. I propose therefore to divide this book into two corresponding sections, dealing first with the "Mexican" area, and later with the "Mayan." Both from the chronological and cultural points of view the Mayan area should come first, but, as will appear later, we are dependent to so great an extent upon our knowledge of Mexican civilization for our interpretation of Mayan archaeology, that it will be more convenient to give the Mexican priority.
The main geographical features of the Maya country are given at the commencement of the section dealing with its archaeology. The region immediately under consideration is shaped rather like an inverted pear, and consists in the main of a plateau bordered by two converging chains of lofty mountains, which are skirted exteriorly by a strip of low-lying coast. The uniformity of the plateau is broken in many places by steep ravines, or barrancas, formed by the slow action of rivers, and by occasional highland lakes, such as Chapala, Pazcuaro and Mexico. Much of the ground is volcanic, and the names of the volcanoes Popocatepetl and Iztacciuatl in Mexico province, and of Orizaba on the Puebla-Vera Cruz border, are familiar to everyone. The Mexican valley forms the apex of the triangular plateau, and the natural route thence to the south lies via Tehuacan and Teotitlan del Camino, a fact which should be kept in mind in studying the tribal migrations. The height of the mountain-chains and their proximity to the coast explain the fact that there are but few important rivers in Mexico; most of the streams on the plateau drain into land-locked basins, and practically the only rivers which pierce the mountain barrier are the Panuco on the east, and the Lerma and Rio de las Balsas on the west. Climate and vegetation are dependent upon elevation; the coast is tropical, but the elevation is so abrupt that the traveller passes with remarkable rapidity from palms, bananas, coconuts and rubber, according to locality, to slopes clad with fir and oak and plains of wheat and maize. In the same way, table-lands rise in successive terraces from Tehuantepec through Oaxaca and Puebla to Mexico which has an elevation of nearly 7500 feet above the sea-level, and enjoys a more temperate climate than New York or Chicago fourteen to sixteen hundred miles further north. The country is conveniently divided into three zones, according to its elevation; the so-called "tierra caliente" (hot country) runs from the sea-level to 3000 feet, the "tierra templada" (temperate country) from 3000 to 6000 feet, and the "tierra fria" (cold country) thence to the 9000 foot level. The most important vegetable product from the economic point of view was maize, which constituted the chief food of the natives. The varieties and development of the maize-plant as we know it imply centuries of settled life and patient cultivation, and it is an interesting fact that for years the identity of the wild plant from which it was produced remained a mystery. Other plants of economic importance were cacao, vanilla, tobacco and cotton, grown in the hot regions, and the agave or Mexican aloe which flourishes also in the higher country. The fauna includes jaguar ("tiger"), puma ("lion"), ocelot, deer, peccary, alligator, rattle-snake, turkey, humming-bird and the quetzal, the beautiful plumes of the latter being one of the most highly-prized articles of adornment. The distribution of these animals is not however constant throughout the whole area, but many of them are confined to the warmer countries. Little more need be said, for the purposes of this book, of the physical nature of the country, save that the rain-fall is not excessive, being heaviest upon the Atlantic slope; and that, while the land appears to be rising gradually on the Pacific side, much has been lost to the Atlantic on the east. With these few words of introduction an attempt will now be made to describe the inhabitants of the country and the culture which they built up before they came in contact with the Old World at the beginning of the sixteenth century.[1]
- ↑ A word of explanation should be said concerning the Mexican language. Like other American tongues its structure is such that long compound words and names are built up of significant elements, many of them being thus equivalent to a whole sentence. The practice is not unknown in this country, for is not "Obadiah Bindtheir-kings-in-chains-and-their-nobles-in-links-of-iron" familiar to every reader of Macaulay? At the same time it adds considerable difficulty to the study of Mexican archæology. As regards pronunciation, the chief points to be noted are as follows: X is always pronounced as SH and J as H; C is always hard except before E and I; CH is sounded as the CH in CHILD; Z as in ZEBRA.
In Maya we find a happy tendency to monosyllables. X again is pronounced as SH; but C is always hard.