A Brief Chapter on Sacrificial Mounds. 65 



Mexico, and are generally admitted to belong to an earlier period than 

 the Aztec domination. Papantla, Tu.sapan, and Mi,«antla, in Mexico, 

 and Uxmal, Palenque, Chi-Chen, and other localities in Central 

 America, exhibit fine illustrations of this peculiar type, all of which 

 were erected as suVjstructures for temples of worship, or as elevated 

 platforms for sacrifices. In the United States the representatives of 

 this class of pyramidal structures consist of mounds, in the form of 

 truncated cones or pyramids, whose summits are reached by graded 

 ways, affording an easy mode of ascent. Elevations of this class are 

 more common in the southwest than elsewhere, but may, nevertheless, 

 be observed in many of the Ohio earthworks. Illustrations occur at 

 the Cedar Bank works, in Ross county, as aLso in the Portsmouth, 

 Newark, and Marietta groups, in Isolated structures of thLs description, 

 which, as we progress southward into Alabama, Mississippi and Louisi- 

 ana, become more numerous, massive in character, and elaborate in 

 detail, until they reach their greatest development in the highly orna- 

 mented stone pyramids of Mexico. The great mound at Cahokia, 

 Illinois, may be mentioned as a magnificent example of this class. 



The imposing pyramid of Cholula, which served the Aztecs as a 

 model for their Teocallis, marks a departure from the foregoing type. 

 Its construction, according to the researches of Humboldt, Is to be 

 ascribed to the Toltecs, who invaded the vale of Anahuac, by the 

 traditional accounts of the Aztecs, at a period corresponding with the 

 sixth or seventh century of our era. In form, it may be described as 

 a succession of truncated pyramids, one above another, forming, at 

 each stage, terraces, connected by stairways. Of these stories, four 

 remain, constructed chiefly of sun-dried bricks and layers of stone, 

 now so resolved by the elements, and overgrown with vegetation, as 

 to be almost undlstinguishable from a natural elevation. Upon close 

 examination, however, the regular courses of brick used in its con- 

 struction, and portions of the stucco which once encased its exterior, 

 may still be discerned. 



The great Teocalli, in the city of Mexico or Tenochitlan, which had 

 been completed by the Aztecs shortly before the conquest, and 

 may be regarded as the type or representative of most of their 

 later structures of that class, consisted of a series of half cubes or 

 truncated pyramids, diminishing in size as they rose one above another, 

 with connecting stairways so placed as to compel an entire circuit of 

 the terraces, by the tram of priests and worshipers, at each stage of 

 the ascent to its summit. The only noticeable difference in these 

 two types, is in the manner of reaching the summit — in the 

 first, by a direct stairway or graded ascent, and in the second, by a 

 mode compelling a circuit of the entire structure. 



