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Updated: June 9, 2025
The motley crew of half-drunk officials, miserably dressed, degraded, poor, in this scene of past magnificence, called up thoughts of the contrast between the government of old Mitla and the present, of past magnificence and modern squalor. Having accomplished all we wished at Mitla, we again struck eastward toward the land of the Mixes.
In spite of the assertions of many to the contrary, there is little doubt left in the minds of students that the Indian races which have peopled Mexico were of Mongolian stock. Many words in some dialects are easily understood by Chinese immigrants. A secretary of the Japanese legation here was able recently to decipher old Mixtec inscriptions found in the ruins of Mitla.
The Aztecs, who figure so largely in the history of the exploration and conquest of Mexico, were merely a warlike tribe which had been fortunate in the inheritance of a relatively high civilization from the past. So, too, the civilization found by the Spaniards at places such as Mitla, in the extreme south of Mexico, could not compare with that of which evidence is found in the ruins.
Some of these Guatemala structures show a quite extraordinary resemblance to those at Angkor in Cambodia. Mitla and Palenque are in Mexico and are equally remarkable. The latter is still difficult to get to.
At last! cried out all of them, while hastily calling officers of the building to them they rapidly explained my singular announcement. It seemed to run like fire through the throngs. A great crowd was soon pressing in upon us on every side, while the Martian ejaculation 'Hi mitla' rang in all directions. I was astounded.
While they worked, I tried vainly to frame some theory which would explain the startling facts we had so suddenly discovered. Mitla, I knew, was south of the city of Oaxaca, and there, in its ruined palaces, was the crowning achievement of the old Zapotec kings. No ruins in America were more elaborately ornamented or richer in lore for the archeologist.
I have quoted what Charnay says of it in his description of Mitla. At Palenque, as at Mitla, the oldest work is the most artistic and admirable. Over this feature of the monuments, and the manifest signs of their difference in age, the attention of investigators has lingered in speculation.
From front to back of this hall extended many rows of stone pillars like the single row found in the great chamber among the ruins of Mitla and by these were upheld the huge slabs of stone of which the roof was made. Far away from where we stood, down at the end of a long vista of pillars, was a stone altar on which was carved in stone a colossal figure of the god Chac-Mool.
Northrop had given him and glanced quickly over one after another of the letters. "Ah!" he exclaimed, fairly devouring one dated at Mitla. "Listen it tells about Northrop's work and goes on: "'I have been much interested in a cavern, or subterraneo, here, in the shape of a cross, each arm of which extends for some twelve feet underground.
The sides are covered with inscriptions similar in appearance to those at Copan. Some of the other standing obelisks are higher than this. It seems reasonable to infer that the structures at Quirigua were more ancient than those at Copan. The ruins called Mitla are in the Mexican State of Oxaca, about twelve leagues east from the city of Oxaca.
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