Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-07-19
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This ruined site Is of the worlds high.
est cities. ancient or modern, for it stands
$500 feet above sea level. 1t lies in the Valley
of Toluca, west of Mexico City. Modern Ca
lixtlahuaca, the Indian village on the edge Of
the ruins is enigma today, for its handful
of inhabitants speak Aztec, while all the other
surrounding villages for many miles do not
understand them, for they speak dialects of
Otomi, another ancent tongue very different
in form.
The Calixtlahuaca hillsides were inhabited
over enormous period of time, judging by
the evidence of pottery and such tell-tale
mains from at least five successive types or
people from the most primitive Of Archaic"
folk to the highly sophisticated, if bloodlike,
Aztecs of later times. The heavy Aztec hoof
is everywhere seen, tor the circular temple OF
the Air God is theirs. and so IS Nthe butcher
stone, and many other things. Like all i'm
periaistic peoples, the Aztecs forced their arts,
customs and religion upon their victims.
In the middle of the fifteenth century, Ca
hxtlahuaca was conquered and overhauled by
Axayacatl, the emperor of Tenochtitlan, the
city-on- the-lake that later to become
Mexico City. A few years before the Spanish
Conquest in 1921, in the reign of the last Of
the Montezumas, Yocoyotzin, whom Cortez was
later to imprison and depose, Calixtlahuaca
was RACED, and the rightful owners driven away
A GARRISON of Aztec soldiers was placed
there an outpost of the empire and
the isolated handful Of Aztecs there today are
probably the descendants of those American
Romans" That is about all that history
knows.
Archeoloeists have always been interested
in one famous example of round temples in
Mexico, the "Caracol" or "Snail-shell' of
Chichen 1tza in the peninsula of Yucatan q
thousand miles east of Calixtlahuaca, and
across the Mexican Gulf. 1t is in the distant
land of the Mayas but not too far away from
the imperialism of the conQuering hordes from
the Mexican mainland.
The famous Caracol of Chichen is q great
white circular tower whose superposed layers
recede in size to the top. Some of the walls
are broken and this has a spiral effect 1t
resembles somewhat snail she'll
Not because it looms into the skies for al
most hundred feet, but because the windows
in the topmoSt turret seem to have been de-
lberately placed for accurate observation of
the sun at different stations of the tropical
year, it was called the Maya Astronomical
Observatory" by Carnegie Institution archie
ologists now working there
Bishop Landa. writing shortly after the Span
ish Conquest of Yucatan in the middle of the
sixteenth century when he still had the op-
portunity to learn a lot of Maya lore direct
says that Quetzalcoatl, the God of the Air,
otherwise known as the Plumed Serpent came
from the Mexican mainland and conquered
round temple in Chichen TIA
\A/ HEN the Mexicans built the city of
w Mayapan little north of Chichen TIA
another such round temple was constructed
there. The Mayapan round temple does not
exist To-Day, ior it was destroyed by lightning
In 1867. But sketch made before shows il
was modelled after the Small" of Chichen. %
which edifice it bore striking resemblance.
third round building was discovered also
in Yucatan, by DR.. Herbert Spinden of The
Brooklyn Museum. in the Maya maritime town
OF Palmul on the Caribbean coast. The build
ing is in foul round receding sections. the
uppernlost turret having room with windows.
From assures behind ruined altar come cur.
rents OF cold air, suggesting hidden chambers.
The fourth and last of the round buiIdines
known In the Republic Of Mexico is one much
earlier by thousands Of years, and built long
before Quetzalcoatl was born. It is at CuicuiI.
CO. "The Place of Singing" near Mexico civ
1t sits in 13-mile lava sheet whose are corr
sentative estimates put at least at 5000 years
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