Evening star., 1952-12-15
Carnegie Group Probes
Site of Walled City
Muyopon on the Yucoton
Was Port Of Moyon Empire
By Thomos R. Henry

By Thomos R. Henry
A great walled American Indian city
where humble folks lived in houses with
stone foundations and walled gardens
through most of the 18th Century is
being investigated by archeologists Of
the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
This city is Mayapan in the Yucatan
Peninsula. part of the empire" of the
Mayas, who achieved the highest civil
ization found in the New World The
area around the great city today is a
semi-desert covered thickly with thorn
bushes.
The old city, sort of Maya Chicago,
was surrounded with wall of rough
heWn stone nearly six miles long, very
thick at the bottom and tapering to-
wards the top. Most of it has fallen
down long since, but parts are stand
ing. These. in a few cases, are six
feet high. Building of this wall sur
rounding an oval area must have con-
stituted one Of the greatest expenditures
Of human labor in history.
The great Maya metropolis was
Chichen Itza. It might be called an
Indian New York City. 1t was the head
quarters OF Maya culture, place Of
pyramids and temples which were
among the wonders of the world. Maya
pan also was something of a religious
center but, the present researches show.
it was essentially a city of folks" a
lightless maze of narrow alleys winding
between garden walls.
Only Foundations Stone.
1t always will be impossible to know
what Maya family home was like.
Only the foundations, at the most, wele
stone. The superstructures were Of
material which long since has disap-
peared. The outstanding find has been
that of the remains of stone walls be-
hind each house. enclosing irregular
plots which can hardly have been
anything else but backyard gardens
or perhaps plain backyards where the
families could enjoy privacy on hot
nights. -
Mayapan apparently flourished dur
ing the latter half of the 18th and the
first part Of the 10th centuries and its
culture must have been at peak about
the time of the first voyage of Columbus.
It must have been a place of plain,
ordinary folks. It had no great yen for
culture. 1t is described by the Carnegie
report of the exploration as "a great
thriving city existing in sort Of cul-
tural vacuum" A possible explanation
is that all the artistic and religious
energy the Maya had was focused on
building up the holy city of Chichen
liza, with practically nothing left for
other cities Anyway, Mayapan seems
to have been place of fairly prosper
GUS workers and business men, rather
than of artists, priests and architects.
Evidently when family home was
built it was 'for keeps" The graves
Of the family were dug under the house
before the foundations were laid. These
were chambers below the floors. The
practice of burial under the floors was
noted by 18th century Spanish his
torian. Often, however, these graves
never were used. In only three of seven
uncovered were human remains found.
Mobiles Were Cremated.
The same chronicler also reported
that this sort of burial was for ordinary
folks. "Nobles and persons of high
esteem" he says. were cremated. Re-
mains Of what may have been a crema-
tory with charred bones of adults, chill
dren and animals have been uncovered.
Mayapan, the archeologists have
found, evidently was a city with few
streets but it probably didn't have much
of traffic problem. It was a place.
however, of innumerable alleys.
Passage through the city," says the
report, was evidently accomplished by
winding through the gaps and spaces
between neighboring boundary walls.
Sometimes, particularly where houses
fnOpfonr al ~
adjacent enclosures form short, often
meandering lanes averaging about two
meters in width"
Each household or group" continues
the report, "has its own fenced yard
Many yards are sufficiently large and
on suitable terrain for the raising of
fruit trees and small gardens. Others
include only the tops of rocky hillocks
which seem unsuited for horticulture.
In more densly settled districts where
space is limited, the enclosures tend
to become more irregular and two neigh
boring house groups may share a COM
mon wall"
The great wall of Mayapan, says DR..
Edwin M. Shook of the Carnegie staff,
now appears as ribbon of stone rub
BILE meandering over nine linear kilo-
meters through the low, dry and ex-
ceedingly thorny Yucatan bush. It was
built of rough limestone blocks quarried
from outcrops of bed rock. The stone
was utilized as it came from the quarry,
without further shaping or dressing and
laid without mortar. Disturbance by tree
roots during the centuries has reduced
most Of the wall to rubble. A few parts
still stand to an average height of Is
meters and an occasional section reaches
two meters.
"A total Of seven major and five minor
passages were discovered at intervals
in the great wall. The minor gates are
straight, narrow passages about one
meter wide, their floors surfaced with
lime cement. The major gates are dis
tinguished from these by considerable
thickening of the great wall on each
side of the gateway and by more
elaborate plan. This consists Of an en-
trance about two meters wide through
the wallis outer part, leading to rec
tangular space suggesting portico, but