SCIENCE 



FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, li 



SOME EXAMPLES OF MEXICAN PRE-COLUMBIAN ART. 



During the winter of 188 1 I collected on the site of the ancient 

 city of Teotihuacan (" the place of those who adore the gods "), 

 about forty kilometres north-eastward from the City of Mex 

 ico, and within the great valley enclosing the capital, several 

 hundred objects of moulded and modelled terra-cotta. Some of 

 these I gathered from the heaps of debris that mark the locality of 

 this " former religious centre of the Nahuan nations ; " but the 

 greater number were secured, generally six or eight in a place, by 

 visits to the houses of the simple agricultural people, who had found 

 them while cultivating the neighboring gardens and fields. The 

 soil in which these objects had reposed for a period of unknown 

 duration, is spread around the two great teocalli oi earth and broken 

 stone that rise conspicuously above a broad fertile plain. The Pyra- 

 mid of the Sun, the principal of these prehistoric structures, is prob- 



displayed in the great museums in Europe and on this continent to 

 modern apprehension are generally meaningless or grotesque. Often 

 two round cavities stand for eyes ; a crooked ridge laboriously fur- 

 rowed out with stone tools is offered for an arm ; or the action of 

 the figure is so violent and crudely expressed, or the surface so 

 overloaded with symbolic designs, that the original thought is lost 

 to the observer of to-day, or seems the work of some unskilled and 

 ignorant devotee. It is, however, not in the hard stone carvings 

 that we can hope to find any adequate evidence of the mental ca- 

 pacity of the aboriginal sculptor. The plastic clay that abounds 

 was all that he could desire for fixing and transmitting his concep- 

 tions. Indeed, it seems to me that no form of pristine thought 

 should advance more rapidly and steadily toward excellence than 

 that which may be expressed in clay. The artistic conceptions of 

 the best minds, once formulated in this material, would be trans- 

 mitted to following generations in the shape most readily compre- 

 hended, imitated, and improved, — a model and a stimulus for 

 every succeeding artist. 



ably the highest work of American aboriginal peoples. It overtops 

 the celebrated mound of Cholula nearly fifty feet, and, with a base 

 somewhat larger than that of the chief pyramid of Gizah, it rises 

 214 feet, nearly half the height of the Egyptian world-wonder. 

 ' The rains of many summers have furrowed the sides of this ancient 

 temple into irregular ravines, through the aid of which, and by ex- 

 ercising a little care in selecting a zigzag path, I was able to ride 

 my tough pony to the platform upon the summit. 



Among the numerous fragments of terra-cotta obtained as above 

 described, a large proportion are one to two inches in either di- 

 mension, and represent the human head or face. Many are 

 reliefs broken, by the action of time or otherwise, from vessels 

 of clay, or from figures more or less complete. These faces or 

 parts of figures are often accompanied by elaborate ornaments, 

 such as necklaces of beads, high head-dresses of feathers, and 

 large ear-rings, all carefully moulded or stamped in the clay. Many 

 pieces consist simply of heads attached to a short neck, without 

 any evidence of having formed part of a more complete figure. 

 From all the evidence in my possession, I conclude these objects 

 belong to a date anterior to the Spanish Conquest. By some stu- 

 dents a portion of the types are referred to the Aztec period ; an- 

 other portion, to the Toltec, or even to the pre-Toltec Totonacs ; 

 but into this discussion I shall not here enter.i 



The massive Mexican statues of basalt and trachytic lava that are 



1 For a learned and valuable contribution to our knowledge of the *' terra-cotta 

 heads of Teotihuacan," see Mrs. Zelia Nuttall's illustrated essays in tli 

 Journal of Archseology,'i886. 



Out from the dull uniformity of primitive thought from time to 

 time glows the light of a genius whose inventions, transmitted by 

 poetry or tradition or the plastic arts to succeeding enlightened 

 peoples, command from them the warmest sympathy and recogni- 

 tion, — a genius who, like him of " the wooden statue of Sakara," 

 is hailed as a worthy compeer by cultivated men of the ripest civ- 

 ilization. The student wandering among the conventionalized art- 

 products of the oldest dynasties at Boulaq, stands amazed before 

 this wonderful production of a mind that wrought in the dim twi- 

 light of the history of the human race. Thereafter he feels that the 

 possibility always exists of detecting among the works of any un- 

 enlightened people isolated examples of a high art insight. The 

 tools of the Sakara sculptor were of a primitive character, and 

 he sought the soft native wood as a medium for his produc- 

 tions : with still ruder tools at his command, the Mexican artist 

 found the proper medium in the potter's clay that lends itself, with 

 all its perfections, alike to the hand of the mound-builder and to the 

 modelling tools of Canova. 



The accompanying engravings represent faces that were selected 

 from those found at Teotihuacan to illustrate the capacity of pre- 

 Columbian Mexican artists. They have been reproduced, without 

 retouching, by the direct process, from my photographs of the origi- 

 nals in the Metropolitan Museum. 



No. I represents a fragment of terra-cotta engraved about one- 

 third greater than the actual size. It is a portion of a larger clay 

 object, upon which the remarkable face has been impressed by 

 means of a carefully prepared matrix or stamp. This matrix was 



