Part 10 (1/2)
(After Nebel.)]
Above these bas-reliefs is a frieze between three and four feet high, with another sculptured panel repeated eight times on each side of the pyramid. This remarkable sculpture represents a man sitting barefoot and crosslegged. On his head is a kind of crown or helmet, with a plume of feathers; and from the front of this helmet there protrudes a serpent, just where in the Egyptian sculptures the royal basilisk is fixed on the crowns of kings and queens. The eyes of this personage are protected by round plates with holes in the middle, held on by a strap round the head, like the coloured gla.s.ses used in the United States to keep off the glare of the sun, and known as ”goggles.” In front of this figure are sculptured a rabbit and some unintelligible ornaments or weapons. ”Rabbit” may have been his name.
The frieze is surmounted by a cornice; and above the cornice of the second storey enough remains to show that it was covered with reliefs, in the same way as the first There were five storeys originally: the others have only been destroyed about a century. The former proprietor of the hacienda of Temisco pulled down the upper storeys, and carried away the blocks of stone to build walls and dams with.
The perfect execution of the details in the bas-reliefs and the accuracy with which they are repeated show clearly that it was not so much want of skill as the necessity of keeping to the conventional mode of representing objects that has given so grotesque a character to the Mexican scriptures. Certain figures became a.s.sociated with religion and astrology in Mexico, as in many other countries; and the sculptor, though his facility in details shows that he could have made far better figures if he had had a chance, never had the opportunity, for he was not allowed to depart from the original rude type of the sacred object.
Humboldt remarks that the same undeviating reproduction of fixed models is as striking in the Mexican sculptures done since the Conquest. The clumsy outlines of the rude figures of saints brought from Europe in the 16th century were adopted as models by the native sculptors, and have lasted without change to this day.
It is evident that Xochicalco answered several purposes. It was a fortified hill of great strength, also a sacred shrine, and a burial-place for men of note, whose bodies, no doubt, still lie under the ruined cairns near the pyramid. The magnitude of the ditch and the terraces, as well as the great size of the blocks of stone brought up the hill without the aid of beasts of burden, indicate a large population and a despotic government. The beauty of the masonry and sculpture show that the people who erected this monument had made no small progress in the arts. We must remember, too, that they had no iron, but laboriously cut and polished the hardest granite and porphyry with instruments of stone and bronze; we can hardly tell how.
The resemblances which people find between a.s.syrian and Egyptian sculptures and the American monuments are of little value, and do not seem sufficient to ground any argument upon. When slightly civilized races copy men, trees, and animals in their rude way, it would be hard if there were not some resemblance among the figures they produce. With reference to their ornamentation, it is true that what is called the ”key-border” is quite common in Mexico and Yucatan, and that on this very pyramid the panels are divided by a twisted border, which would not be noticed as peculiar in a ”renaissance” building. But the model of this border may have been suggested--on either side of the globe--by creepers twined together in the forest, or by a cord doubled and twisted, such as is represented in one of the commonest Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The cornice which finishes the first storey of the pyramid is a familiar pattern, but nothing can be concluded from these simple geometrical designs, which might be invented over and over again by different races when they began to find pleasure in tracing ornamental devices upon their buildings. Upon the tattooed skins of savages such designs may be seen, and the patterns were certainly in use among them before they had any intercourse with white men. This is the view Humboldt takes of these coincidences. That both the Egyptian king and the Mexican chief should wear a helmet with a serpent standing out from it just above the forehead, is somewhat extraordinary.
Now, who built Xochicalco? Writers on Mexico are quite ready with their answer. They tell us that, according to the Mexican tradition, the country was formerly inhabited by another race, who were called _Tolteca_, or, as we say, _Toltecs_, from the name of their city, _Tollan_, ”the Reed-swamp;” and that they were of the same race as the Aztecs, as shown by the names of their cities and their kings being Aztec words; that they were a highly civilized people, and brought into the country the arts of sculpture, hieroglyphic painting, great improvements in agriculture, many of the peculiar religious rites since practised by other nations who settled after them in Mexico, and the famous astronomical calendar, of which I shall speak afterwards. The particular Toltec king to whom the Mexican historians ascribe the building of Xochicalco was called Nauhyotl, that is to say, ”Four Bells,” and died A.D. 945.
We are further told that just about the time of our Norman Conquest, the Toltecs were driven out from the Mexican plateau by famine and pestilence, and migrated again southward. Only a few families remained, and from them the Aztecs, Chichemecs, and other barbarous tribes by whom the country was re-peopled, derived that knowledge of the arts and sciences upon which their own civilization was founded. It was by this Toltec nation--say the Mexican writers--that the monuments of Xochichalco, Teotihuacan, and Cholula were built. In their architecture the Aztecs did little more than copy the works left by their predecessors; and, to this day, the Mexican Indians call a builder a _toltecatl_ or _Toltec_.
If we consider this circ.u.mstantial account to be anything but a mere tissue of fables, the question naturally arises--what became of the remains of the Toltecs when they left the high plains of Mexico? A theory has been propounded to answer this question, that they settled in Chiapas and Yucatan, and built Palenque, Copan, and Uxmal, and the other cities, the ruins of which lie imbedded in the tropical forest.
At the time that Prescott wrote his History of the Conquest, such a theory was quite tenable; but the new historic matter lately made known by the Abbe Bra.s.seur de Bourbourg has given a different aspect to the question. Without attempting to maintain the credibility of this writer's history as a whole, I cannot but think that he has given us satisfactory grounds for believing that the ruined cities of Central America were built by a race which flourished long before the Toltecs; that they were already declining in power and civilization in the seventh century, when the Toltecs began to flourish in Mexico; and that the present Mayas of Yucatan are their degenerate descendants.
What I have seen of Central American and Mexican antiquities, and of drawings of them in books, tends to support the Abbe Bra.s.seur de Bourbourg's view of the history of these countries. Traces of communication between the two peoples are to be found in abundance, but nothing to warrant our holding that either people took its civilization bodily from the other. My excuse for entering into these details must be that some of the facts I have to offer are new.
A bas-relief at Kabah, described in Mr. Stephens' account of his second journey, bears considerable resemblance to that on the so-called ”sacrificial stone” of Mexico; and the warrior has the characteristic Mexican _maquahuitl_, or ”Hand-wood,” a mace set with rows of obsidian teeth.
A curious ornament is met with in the Central American sculptures, representing a serpent with a man's face looking out from between its distended jaws; and we find a similar design in the Aztec picture-writings, sculptures, and pottery.
A remarkable peculiarity in the Aztec picture-writings is that the personages represented often have one or more figures of tongues suspended in mid-air near their mouths, indicating that they are speaking, or that they are persons in authority. Such tongues are to be seen on the Yucatan sculptures.
One of the panels on the Pyramid of Xochicalco seems to have a bearing upon this subject, I mean that of the cross-legged chief, of which I have just spoken.
In the first place, sitting cross-legged is not an Aztec custom. I do not think we ever saw an Indian in Mexico sitting cross-legged. In the picture-writings of the Aztecs, the men sit doubled up, with their chins almost touching their knees; while the women have their legs tucked under them, and their feet sticking out on the left side. On the other hand, this att.i.tude is quite characteristic of the Yucatan sculptures. At Copan there is an altar, with sixteen chiefs sitting cross-legged round it; and, moreover, one of them has a head-dress very much like that of the Xochicalco chief (except that it has no serpent), and others are more or less similar; while I do not recollect anything like it in the Mexican picture-writings. The curious perforated eye-plates of the Xochicalco chief, which he wore--apparently--to keep arrows and javelins out of his eyes, are part of the equipment of the Aztec warrior in the picture-writings, while Palenque and Copan seemed to afford no instance of them; so that in two peculiarities the remarkable sculpture before us seems to belong rather to Yucatan than to Mexico, and in one to Mexico rather than to Yucatan.
It is not even possible in all cases to distinguish Central American sculptures from those of Mexican origin. Among the numerous stone figures in Mr. Christy's museum, some are unmistakably of Central American origin, and some as certainly Mexican; but beside these, there are many which both their owner and myself, though we had handled hundreds of such things, were obliged to leave on the debatable ground between the two cla.s.ses.
So much for the resemblances. But the differences are of much greater weight. The pear-shaped heads of most of the Central American figures, whose peculiar configuration is only approached by the wildest caricatures of Louis Philippe, are perfectly distinctive. So are the hieroglyphics arranged in squares, found on the sculptures of Central America and in the Dresden Codex. So is the general character of the architecture and sculpture, as any one may see at a glance.
It is quite true that the so-called Aztec Astronomical Calendar was in use in Central America, and that many of the religious observances in both countries, such as the method of sacrificing the human victims, and the practice of the wors.h.i.+ppers drawing blood from themselves in honour of the G.o.ds, are identical. But there were several ways in which this might have been brought about, and it is no real proof that the civilization of either country was an offshoot from that of the other.
To consider it as such would be like arguing that the negroes of Cuba and the Indians of Yucatan had derived their civilization one from the other, because both peoples are Roman Catholics, and use the same almanac. On the whole I am disposed to conclude that the civilizations of Mexico and Central America were originally independent, but that they came much into contact, and thus modified one another to no small extent.
At the risk of being prosy, I will mention the _a priori_ grounds upon which we may argue that the civilization of Central America did not grow up there, but was brought ready-made by a people who emigrated there from some other country. There is a theory afloat, that it is only in temperate climates that barbarous nations make much progress in civilizing themselves. In tropical countries the intensity of the heat makes man little disposed for exertion, and the luxuriance of the vegetation supplies him with the little he requires. In such climates--say the advocates of this theory--man acknowledges the supremacy of nature over himself, and gives up the attempt to shape her to his own purposes; and thus, in these countries, the inhabitants go on from generation to generation, lazily enjoying their existence, making no effort, and indeed feeling no desire to raise themselves in the social scale. Upon this theory, therefore, when we find a high civilization in hot countries, as in the plains of India, we have to account for it by supposing an immigration of races bringing their civilization with them from more temperate climates. This theory of civilization favours the idea of the Central American cities having been built by a people from Mexico. The climate of the Mexican highlands, which may be taken in a rough way to correspond with that of North Italy, is well suited to a nation's development. But the cities of Yucatan and Chiapas, though geographically not far removed from the Mexican plateau, are brought by their small elevation above the sea into a very different climate. They are in the land of tropical heat and the rankest vegetation, in the midst of dense forests where pestilential fevers and overwhelming la.s.situde make it almost impossible for Europeans to live, and where the Indians who still inhabit the neighbourhood of the ruined cities are the merest savages sunk in the lowest depths of lazy ignorance.
If this climate-theory of progress have any truth in it, no barbarous tribe could have raised itself in such a country to the social state which is indicated by the ruins of such temples and cities. They must have been settlers from some more temperate region.
While wandering about the hill of Xochicalco we came upon a spot that strongly excited our curiosity. It was simply a small paved oval s.p.a.ce with a little altar at one end, and, lying round about it, some fragments of what seemed to have been a hideous grotesque idol of baked clay. Perhaps it was a shrine dedicated to one of the inferior deities, such as often surrounded the greater temples; for, in Mexico, astronomy, astrology, and religion had become mixed up together, as they have been in other quarters of the globe, and even the astronomical signs of days and months had temples of their own.
Xochicalco means ”In the House of Flowers.” The word ”flower,”--_xochitl_,--is often a part of the names of Mexican places and people, such as the lake of Xochimilco--”In the Flower-plantation.”