File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (18161061001).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo14amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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Capitol of a rectangular column — lower chamber of the Temple of the Jaguars. The design shows a grotesque face surrounded by three hiunan figures. The man at the top bears a head-dress of leaves and flowers and holds flowering branches in his hand
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Sculptured column. Temple of the Tables. The use of squaro and round columns at Chichen Itza, transforming the outer room of the temple into an open portico, is a great advance over the simple doorways of the earlier Maya buildings 30 Mexico under his stand- ard. These men have Nahua names. In all probability the con- quered city was given over to them as the spoils of war at the end of the long contest. After this however, there seems to have been little in the way of peace. Civil wars rent the land and while we cannot put an exact date on the final fall and abandonment of Chi- chen Itza and Uxmal it is probable that these events occurred somewhere in the four- teenth centur)'. Mayapan, the last city to survive, fell in 1442, almost exactly a hundred years before the Spaniards made their first permanent settlement at Merida. When we try to arrange the buildings of Chichen Itza in their proper order of erection, it is remarkable that so many of the finest structures clearly belong to this last short period when the city was in the hands of foreign rulers from the distant Mexican highlands. It is unlikely that a single structure of the first occupation of Chichen Itza will be found in a good state of preservation. The stone with the early date that has already received comment is a lintel that was probably taken from an old l)uilding and is reused in a later one. There are, however, a number of struc- tures that probably date from the second occupation when Chichen Itza was a purely Maya center. The Akat'cib and the Casa Colorada are Maya struc- tures without a trace of foreign influence. Most of the Monjas Group is also Maya without modification. The Castillo, the Temple of the High Priest's Grave, the

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