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VOL. XXV, No. 6

WASHINGTON

JUNE, 1914

THE

NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC
MAGAZINE

THE HOME OF A FORGOTTEN RACE Mysterious Chichen Itza, in Yucatan, Mexico

T

BY EDWARD H. THOMPSON

FORMERLY U. S. CONSUL AT MÉRIDA, YUCATAN

HE ruined group of Chichen Itza, on the Peninsula of Yucatan, Mexico, covers a space of fully 3 square miles. Over all this wide territory are scattered carved and squared stones in countless thousands, and fallen columns by the hundreds, while the formless remains and outlined walls of huge structures fallen into ruin are seen on every side.

Seven massive structures of carved stone and adamantine mortar still tower erect and almost habitable. Their façades, though gray and haggard with age and seamed by time, sustain the claim that Chichen Itza, in the Americas, is one of the world's greatest monuments of antiquity.

The heart of most of the cities of antiquity was a castle or temple; in this great American monument the heart was a castle and a temple-both in one.

As this is a popular descriptive article rather than a technical one, I shall try to restrain my always present desire and inject only enough figures to give adequate conceptions of size and distance.

A terrace as broad and level as a plain is raised 10 feet or more above the surrounding surface, built up with rubble and finished with a lime cement—hard, white, and durable. On this man-made plain was built, among other structures, a pyramid of nine terraces (see page

586), each faced with inlaid paneled stonework and well finished.

On each of the four inclined faces of this pyramid a stairway was built III feet long and 28.7 feet wide, with 104 steps rising from the base-level up to the crowning platform.

Each of the four angles of the pyramid is formed by the undulating body of a great stone serpent. Descending from the crowning platform, each undulation of the body marks a gradient, a terrace plane, while on each side of the northern stairway a serpent head, with wide-open jaws, carved from a single mass of limestone, rests on the plane beneath. A strong man cannot hope to lift the smallest stone that goes into the making of this serpent body.

THE CASTLE TEMPLE

All this is simply of the base, the preparation for and the leading up to the building proper, the Castle Temple (see page 586). This temple is not large, measured by the standards of the present day, or even by that of those ancient builders. Like the heart of the human body, it was not large but important.

Built on the level platform that crowned. the pyramid, it is itself only 43 feet by 29 feet, with a narrow level space around it on the platform's outer edge barely wide enough for two to walk abreast in safety.

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THE HOME OF A FORGOTTEN RACE

On the north, facing a few degrees east of north, is the Ceremonial Stairway, with its two great serpent heads leading up the pyramid to the entrance. of the sanctuary.

Thick stone pillars, fashioned always in the conventionalized serpent form, sustain the carved and paneled façade above the entrance to the outer corridor and inner chamber, the sanctuary of the temple. In the semi-gloom of this sanctuary are two square pillars of stone, each supporting massive twin beams of thick sapote wood richly carved. These in their turn help to support the strange triple-vaulted roof of the chamber (see page 588). Sapote wood, like the East Indian teak, is as strong and almost as durable as stone.

Wooden beams, stone pillars, and entrance posts are all carved in low relief (see page 589). Symbols and human figures, some in mask and bearded, and all clothed in ornate regalia, with strange weapons and the flowing plumes of the quetzal, cover their paneled surfaces.

The symbol of the feathered serpent the body of the rattlesnake, covered with the plumage of the quetzal bird-was to this old civilization what the Cross was to the Christian and the Crescent to the Saracen.

Under this symbol the culture hero Kuk-ul-can (Feathered Serpent) of Yucatan, Quetzacoatl of the Aztecs and earlier people, was first reverenced, then deified and worshipped.

Most of the carvings on stone surface were painted, but the wooden lintels. carved or plain, were apparently dull finished in their own natural color—a rich red brown.

On the south, east, and west a single high-vaulted but narrow chamber was formed [-shaped, with sapote lintels and carved doorways facing each of the stairways.

Large serpent masks, each flanked by sunken paneled squares, are the only ornaments of these three façades, and, except that on the western façade, are placed directly over the entrances. The mask of this western façade is several feet to the south of the entrance.

This was not a random work, neither

587

did the conformation of the structure make this lack of symmetry a necessary fault.

Is it true that the ancient builders of the East were wont to leave one stone missing or one carving misplaced in an otherwise perfect work because only the Supreme One should produce perfection?

On the roof are ornaments of carved stone cut in curious angles and placed like battlements. These probably served as shelters to the fighting men and protection to the priestly watchers of the stars and planets as they traced the celestial orbits and read the omens thus revealed.

THE HOUR OF SUNRISE

The writer stood upon the roof of this temple one morning last December just as the first rays of the sun reddened the distant horizon. The morning stillness was profound. The noises of the night had ceased and those of the day were not yet begun. All the sky above and the earth below seemed to be breathlessly waiting for something just waiting. Then the great round sun came up flaming splendidly, and instantly the whole world sang and hummed. The birds in the trees and the insects on the ground sang in a grand Te Deum.

Nature herself taught primal man to be a sun-worshipper, and man in his heart of hearts still follows the ancient teachings.

A gentle breeze sprang up, and then he seemed to be upon a sea-bound rocky promontory, high above all things. The calm sea surface stretched away to where the sky-line met it, and there they fused into an opalescent something, seemingly born of the union of a rainbow with the white sea-foam.

The sun rose higher and the sea of mist dissolved into nothingness. In its place was an ocean of verdure, with a foam of bright blue flowers, the bloom of the jungle morning glory. As he descended the steps worn by the sandal tread of a thousand years, he thought: "Can this world show a more beautiful sight?"

From the northern edge of the level terrace at the base of the temple pyra

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