At the end of this period Chichen Itza was a model of architecture that was followed for centuries. The full glory of Palenque and Piedras Negras (in the west) may correspond to our Late Gothic and Renaissance (450-600 = European 1250-1400?). In the Baroque or Late period Champutun appears as the centre of style-formation, and now the "Italic" Nahua peoples of the high plateau of Anahuac began to come under the cultural influence. Artistically and spiritually these peoples were mere recipients, but in their political instincts they were far superior to the Maya (about 600-960, = Classical 750-400 = Western 1400-1750?). And now Maya entered on the "Hellenistic" phase. About 960 Uxmal was founded, soon to be a cosmopolis of the first rank, an Alexandria or Baghdad, founded like these on the threshold of the Civilization. With it we find a series of brilliant cities like Labna, Mayapan, Chacmultun, and a revived Chichen Itza. These places mark the culminating point of a grandiose architecture, which thereafter produced no new style, but applies the old motives with taste and discrimination to mighty masses. Politically this is the age of the celebrated League of Mayapan, an alliance of three leading states, which appears to have maintained the position successfully — if somewhat artificially and arbitrarily — in spite of great wars and repeated revolutions (960-1165 = Classical 350-150 = Western 1800-2000).
The end of this period was marked by a great revolution, and with it the definitive intervention of the ("Roman") Nahua powers in the Maya affair. With their aid Hunac Ceel brought about a general overthrow and destroyed Mayapan (about 1190 = Classical 150). The sequel was typical of the history of the over-ripened Civilization in which different peoples contend for military lordship. The great Maya cities sink into the same bland contentment as Roman Athens and Alexandria, but out on the horizon of the Nahua lands was developing the last of these peoples, the Aztecs — young, vigorous, barbaric, and filled with an insatiable will-to-power. In 1325 (= the Age of Augustus) they founded Tenochtitlan, which soon became the paramount and capital city of the whole Mexican world. About 1400 military expansion began on the grand scale. Conquered regions were secured by military colonies and a network of military roads, and a superior diplomacy kept the dependent states in check and separated. Imperial Tenochtitlan grew enormous and housed a cosmopolitan population speaking every tongue of this world-empire.[1] The Nahua provinces were politically and militarily secure, the southward thrust was developing rapidly, and a hand was about to be laid on the Maya states; there is no telling what the course of the next centuries would have been. And suddenly — the end.
- ↑ And was there an element of panem et circenses in the mass-sacrifice of captives? May it be that the acceptance of the Spaniard as the expected manifestation of the god Quetzalcoatl ("redeunt Saturnia regna"), and the serious disputations on matters of religion that took place between Montezuma and the Christians, were presages of the phase which Spengler calls the "Second Religiousness" (see below, p. 310) of the Civilization? — Tr.
