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| THE RUINS OF UXMAL - Probably the most remarkable
ruins in the world stand in Central America, and, perhaps,
principally in Yucatan. Often buried under the luxuriant growth of
tropical forests, these ancient palaces and temples, when uncovered
or exhumed, expose a vast area of inscriptive sculpture, little or
none of which is as yet legible to the scholarship of modern times.
The Aztec calendar has given some import to hieroglyphs that were a
part of the Maya calendar, but it remains that a people lived in
Central America who were advanced in arts and ceremonies that were
Egyptian and Phoenician, and yet not one written thing is known about
them, although thousands of their pictures and monuments remain,
having been erected in the belief that language inscribed on rocks
could not perish. The first book on this great subject was written
by Stevens, in two volumes, and is now rare, but its pictures have
been copied into many subsequent books of Americana. At the
inception of the exposition, Edward H. Thompson, United States Consul
to Yucatan, under direction of Chief Putnam, of the Ethnological
Department, went into the jungles of Uxmal, Labua, and Copan, and at
the risk of death by fever, made papier-mache molds of many of the
tablets and ruins of the region. Cast into staff in Jackson Park,
and garnished with tropical plants, these reproductions offered to
the people of America their first opportunity for profound study.
The tablets were shown in the Anthropological Building. No doubt the
reading of the alphabet will follow as a direct result. |
