File:The ancient cities of the New World - being travels and explorations in Mexico and Central America from 1857-1882 (1887) (14596270100).jpg

Identifier: ancientcitiesofn00char (find matches)
Title: The ancient cities of the New World : being travels and explorations in Mexico and Central America from 1857-1882
Year: 1887 (1880s)
Authors: Charnay, Désiré, 1828-1915
Subjects: Indians of Mexico Indians of Central America
Publisher: London : Chapman and Hall
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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at Ake. This, however, is an error, for Iobserved that the builders used stones cut on the side facingthe outer surface of the pillars, leaving the inner sides uncut;and as they did not perfectly fit one into another, but leftcavities sometimes 3 inches deep, they were filled up withfragments of stone rubble which I found, and the whole wasno doubt smoothed and polished over with mortar or cement.*But what was this sinofular structure intended for .^ If fora covered gallery, the wood or thatch roof has long sincedisappeared and left no trace. Could it have been a com-memorative monument ? We know not, save that it is theonly monument of the kind in Yucatan, and that its dimen-sions are far from colossal. Not that theories are wanting •some writers have gone so far as to imagine this monumentto have been erected to commemorate periods or reigns, andeach block to represent cither a ahau - katun, twenty - fouryears, or a century, kahm, fifty-two years. Now, as there * See note at end.
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AkE and IZAMAL. 299 are thirty-six pillars having each ten stones, this monumentwould be, by the first computation, 8,640 years old, and bythe second, 18,720. It is clear that were this the case thefirst stone would have disappeared long before the last onehad been placed, and that the earlier would have lookedolder than the later ones, whereas the same air of decay is

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