Silver Cities of Yucatan
9781613109373
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Eastern Yucatan is a coast of adventure where the trade winds of the tropics pile surf on coral reefs and where white temples of the ancient Mayas serve as landmarks for ships that wisely stand off. There is memorable beauty in the outer islands with slender palms leaning out from dunes of wave-broken coral. The shore line of the mainland appears low and monotonous but on closer inspection vast shallow bays are revealed with mangrove mazes which once offered hidden harbors to the buccaneers. The level unbroken forests of the Mexican territory of Quintana Roo are guarded by vigilant Mayas who still cherish in these wilds crumbling buildings of their ancestors. For generations these Indians have fought to stave off modern commercial civilization that on the raw edges of its expanding front shows anything but a pleasing parade of virtues. There is glamour and mystery enough in a quest of ancient cities in Central America, yet the finest part of the adventure is intellectual rather than physical. The thrill of breaking through the frontiers of history into an unknown age is much deeper and more satisfying than that of merely entering closed territory at a slight risk of life and limb. After all, the chances of violent death are probably greater in modern cities than in the most backward lands. Eastern Yucatan will remain in my memory, not as a region where thorns scratch, insects bite, and boats capsize, but as a region where crumbling temples bear the unmistakable stamp of one of the New World’s greatest personalities. Quetzalcoatl, emperor of the Toltecs, and conqueror of the Mayas—priest, scientist and architect in one commanding individual—was a contemporary of Henry II and Richard the Lion Hearted. He died in far off days before a reluctant King John signed the Magna Charta of English liberties. His holdings in Mexico and Central America were several times more extensive than the holdings of those puissant monarchs of the Angevin line in France and the British Isles, his philosophy of life was richer and his contributions to the general history of civilization were greater than theirs. Old stone walls in eastern Yucatan are mute evidence of the commerce, religion and art that Quetzalcoatl built up as the expression of his practical and ideal State. He encouraged trade that reached from Colombia to New Mexico, he preached a faith of abnegation and high ethics which later led speculative churchmen to identify him with St. Thomas, and in sculpture and architecture he formed a new and vital compound of the previous achievements of two distinct peoples, the Toltecs of the arid Mexican highlands and the Mayas of the humid lowlands. We can restate three of Quetzalcoatl’s personal triumphs in astronomical science corresponding to the years 1168, 1195 and 1208. We know that he conquered the great city of Chichen Itza in 1191 and erected therein a lofty temple which still bears his name and a round tower which is still an instrument for exact observation of the sun and moon. We know that Quetzalcoatl set up a benign system of local self government among conquered tribes of Guatemala which made those peoples relate his praises in song and story. We know that after his death he was made a god because during his life he had been “a great republican.” The archæology of eastern Yucatan belongs for the most part to the three centuries which intervened between the reign of Quetzalcoatl and the coming of the Spaniards. The buildings of Chichen Itza are copied at Paalmul and Muyil, settlements which pretty clearly grew up along one of the important trade routes from Chichen Itza to the far south. To be sure there are some vestiges in the region of the much older First Empire of the Mayas, several monuments having been discovered in recent years which bear dates in the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ.
