Science: Digging in Yucatan

SCIENCE

The Story of a Complete Civilization Is Being Recovered

Archaeology is booming as it never boomed before. Not less than 20 expeditions in every quarter of the globe are digging to unearth new treasuries of human culture. American brains and capital are backing many of these.

Nearly equal in importance with the Egyptian discoveries are the new findings in Yucatan. The civilization of the Maya race, covering at various times a large part of the Yucatan peninsula, Guatemala, Salvador and northern Honduras, has been known for over half a century by archaeologists to have reached the highest level of culture of any of the ancient peoples of the New World. It is thought to have begun about the first century before Christ, reaching its zenith from 400-600 A. D., and to have flourished at intervals until about 1400 A. D. The Spaniards found these sites depopulated. Epidemics of yellow fever and other tropical diseases are believed to have caused the decline and fall of this great people.

For ten years expeditions headed by Dr. Sylvanus G. Morley, distinguished anthropologist of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Dr. Herbert J. Spinden, of Harvard, have been exploring the little-known ruins. Now a well-organized group of scientists and engineers, including Dr. Morley, John F. Barry, William Barclay Parsons, Dr. Marshall H. Saville of Columbia and Dr. John C. Merriam, president of the Carnegie Institution, is surveying the field preliminary to a more exhaustive explor ation. Restoration and preservation of the astonishing Mayan architecture is the prime task in view.

The chief centers of the Mayas, now attracting public interest, are Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Mayapan, forming a league which ruled Yucatan about 1000-1300 A. D. At Uxmal is the House of the Governor 330 feet long, the most imposing building of the region. At Chichen Itza are a pyramidal castle 130 feet high; temples to Kukulkan, the chief Maya divinity; a civic center two miles long, surrounded by several square miles of massive buildings, terraces, etc.; a large enclosed court in which a game like basketball was played; life-size statues of Chac-Mool, the “Tiger King ” of the Mayas ; a sacred well, 150 feet across and 70 feet deep, used by the Maya religious cults. In the mud at the bottom of this well have been found human skeletons — the most beautiful maidens were hurled to death here at annual festivals to propitiate the rain gods — and extraordinary relics of jade, mosaics, pottery, weapons, balls of copal— offerings brought to this Mecca by pilgrims from all over the Mayan world.

The best collection of these relics in the United States is at the Peabody Museum, Boston. At its height the Mayan race probably numbered several million people, and the population of Chichen Itza was about 500,000. Their decorative arts show exquisite workmanship. Astronomy and mathematics were highly developed. They had an elaborate picture writing, much of which has been deciphered, giving the clue to many dates in inscriptions and chronicles. Their calendar was the most complex and exact known in the ancient world, with a century of 52 years, and a year of 18 months of 20 days each.