1012 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



and then they had to draw them some 

 miles farther to their place in the build- 

 ing. It would not be a difficult feat of 

 mechanical engineering today, with our 

 improved conditions, but we must con- 

 sider the real difficulties as they actually 

 existed among that primitive people. 

 On the other hand, they had an abun- 

 dance of time, and labor was cheap, and 

 in a despotic age all the workmen neces- 

 sary could be pressed into service. 



some: of the bi^ocks were enormous 



Enough remains in the quarries to 

 enable us to understand their methods. 

 In blocks still in situ we may see the 

 process of leveling the upper surface of 

 a huge portion of rock, and then cutting 

 channels on the four sides to form a 

 parallelogram, and next followed the 

 under cuttings from each end, for there 

 are blocks just as the stone-cutters left 

 them after having under-cut away two- 

 thirds of the block. Likely they meant 

 to detach it by means of driving wooden 

 wedges under the separated ends and 

 then soaking them with water, and, pos- 

 sibly, hastening the process by means of 

 a heavy lever. 



We can scarcely imagine the amount 

 of labor necessary to cut the stones for 

 the Mitlan buildings, with nothing but 

 rude stone tools, especially as many of 

 these stones were tons in weight. It 

 was a most laborious task, for the work- 

 men had often to take many uncomfort- 

 able attitudes, and there were cramped 

 backs and wearied arms and bruised 

 hands. 



Some of the stones were of enormous 

 size, such as the lintels, some being 20 

 feet in length and 4^ feet in each of 

 the other dimensions and weighing as 

 many as 15 tons, while the monolith col- 

 umns were nearly 15 feet in length and 

 weighed as much as eight tons. There 

 were two heavy jambs required for each 

 doorway, besides the sill or bottom 

 stone, and what consummate patience 

 and perseverance were required to pro- 

 vide all this building material, notwith- 

 standing the peculiarly tractable charac- 

 ter of the volcanic trachyte. Some 50 



lintel stones remain, varying in length 

 from 10 to 20 feet, but the original num- 

 ber was much greater. 



THEY HAD STONE IMPI^EMENTS ONEY 



Holmes estimates that there were as 

 many as 1,500 wooden beams in all the 

 different groups of buildings as origi- 

 nally constructed. What infinite pa- 

 tience was required for these hewers of 

 wood with stone axes. Without steel or 

 iron, they cut the trees in the forest as 

 best they could, and then cut them again 

 into the required length for beams to 

 support the flat roof. 



With all our mechanical skill today, it 

 would be child's play for our architects 

 to rear such one-story structures as 

 those at Mitla, for our age builds sky- 

 scrapers and tunnels and runs passenger 

 trains through the mountains and to the 

 summit of the Alps and under great 

 rivers ; mounts up on high and soars 

 through space, and dispatches messages 

 through the air to friends far away at 

 sea, achieving wonders that the builders 

 of Mitla never dreamed of ; and we must 

 not speak of their architectural triumphs 

 as rivaling ours; for while it was re- 

 markable for them in the Stone Age, and 

 hence of great interest to us, there 

 would be no difficulty in our duplicating 

 it, and even greatly improving it. There- 

 fore, we must not look at it merely in 

 comparison with the greatest architect- 

 ural achievements of ancient and mod- 

 ern times, but from their own stand- 

 point, in the light of their civilization 

 and knowledge of the mechanical arts 

 and the character of the tools they had 

 to work with. When we consider the 

 conditions under which they labored, we 

 are amazed at what they accomplished, 

 and their triumph in architecture in the 

 face of seeming insurmountable diffi- 

 culties. 



How did they cut down the trees and 

 hew them into shape with their rude 

 tools? Had they lived in the Iron Age 

 and possessed steel axes, saws, planes, 

 and chisels, our wonder would not be so 

 great ; but they lived in the Stone Age, 

 and yet with all the serious limitations 



