United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The use of stone of the size required, overmatched their ability in stone masonry, as a rule. It cannot, therefore, be said that the post and lintel of stone became a principle of construction in their architecture. As the Mayas, who constructed these edifices, were in the Middle Status of barbarism, it was not to have been expected that their architecture would reach the scientific stage.

At present I am trying to follow the footprints of the Mayas.

It would seem probable that the Mayas did not receive their civilization from the inhabitants of the Asiatic peninsulas, for the religious lores and customs they have in common are too few to justify this assertion.

Yet the signs of the zodiac in Mediterranean lands and in pre-Columbian America from Peru to southern Mexico are almost identical. Here is a list showing the Latin and English names of the constellations and their equivalents in the calendars of the Peruvians, Mexicans, and Mayas. *

Carchemish would then be cah-chemul, the city of navigators, of merchants. KATISH, their sacred city, would be the city where sacrifices are offered. CAH, city, and TICH, a ceremony practiced by the ancient Mayas, and still performed by their descendants all through Central America.

Evidence has elsewhere been adduced of the existence of the organization into gentes among the Mayas, with descent in the male line, from which it may be inferred that the occupation of these houses was on the basis of gentile kinship among the families in each, the fathers and their children belonging to the same gens, and the wives and mothers to other gentes.

Their cacique said to him, “Conèx cotoch,” meaningCome to our town.” The Spaniard, supposing he had mentioned the name of the place, immediately named the projecting point of landCape Cotoche,” and it is called so still. At that time the country was occupied by the people still known as Mayas.

I am not ready to say whether it is or it is not; but this I can assert, that, in many parts, it tallies marvelously with that of the culture hero of the Mayas. It will be said, no doubt, that this remarkable similarity is a mere coincidence. But how are we to dispose of so many coincidences? What conclusion, if any, are we to draw from this concourse of so many strange similes?

The same is true of the Mayas of Central America, whose ruined temples are still to be traced in the tangled forests of Yucatan and Guatemala.

Most remarkable of all is the condition of Yucatan and Guatemala. In northern Yucatan the Spaniards found a race of mild, decadent Mayas living among the relics of former grandeur. Although they used the old temples as shrines, they knew little of those who had built these temples and showed still less capacity to imitate the ancient architects.