548 INDIAN SETTLEMENTS IN CENTRAL AMERICA. 



level limestone appears, has evidently caused and favored this improve- 

 ment, as the appearance of finely grained limestone, resembling the 

 slate of Solenhofen at Palenque and Menche Tenamit, must have caused 

 the flourishing industry of relievo painting in that district. In the 

 Chorti territory, where, nearCopan, an easily worked building material 

 appears in abundance (a decomposed, eruptive stone), architecture has 

 progressed in a very peculiar manner, but the stone houses, while other- 

 wise apparently of the same construction, appear less large and impos- 

 ing than in the more northern districts. In the low plains of Tabasco 

 (Comalcalco) the Indians (Chontal) have erected stone houses by the 

 help of an artificially produced building material (bricks), beyond 

 doubt in imitation of the stone houses of their eastern and northeastern 

 neighbors. 



Stone houses, so far as is now known, have not been built by any 

 but the lowland Maya family m North Central America — that is, by the 

 Mayas and the tribes of the Choi group (Choles, Chontales, and Chor- 

 ties). These are the same tribes which even now differ from the other 

 Maya people by certain peculiarities in their house architecture 

 (advanced walls). Such stone structures as the Mam and the Quiche 

 tribes possess are here entirely wanting, as are also the temple courts 

 resembling the letter H. 



In the territory of the Chontales only the ruins of Comalcalco, and 

 in that of the Chorties, only those of Copan are known tolerably well. 

 As I do not know the former from personal knowledge, and during my 

 visit to the latter (January, 1894) only found a beginning made of a 

 more careful examination, I can add nothing new to what has been 

 stated before. I limit myself, therefore, in the remarks that follow to 

 the observations which I made in the Choi territory in Peten and 

 Yucatan. 



The ground plan of almost all stone houses is rectangular, and 

 wherever wings or other additions appear they also are rectangularly 

 added to the main building. In Yucatan I saw several rounded-off 

 edges on tower-like side wings (Ixtinta, Tzibinocac), and I thought it 

 remarkable that these exceptions from the general rule should occur 

 there alone, where the dwelling houses of the Indians uniformly show 

 rounded-off ground plans. 



These stone houses are in their simplest form narrow buildings with 

 but one inner apartment, to which access is had from the side of a 

 passage (e. g. the stone houses V, VI, and VII in S. Clemente). Where 

 the buildings show any progress, the one inner room appears sub- 

 divided by niches, passages, and additions, and is approached by 

 several doors of entrance on one side (fig. 5a, the principal temple of 

 Menche Tenamit), or several separate rooms are found in the same 

 stone house, connected with each other, but each having its own means 

 of entrance from without — e. g. the stone houses I, II, and III in S. 

 Clemente, fig. 9. If architecture has made still greater progress we 



