ABSTRACT
The discovery of architectural ruins in Central America of immense extent, and of a style perfectly anomalous, excited throughout Europe and in our own country the most extravagant expectations. The antiquary looked for revelations concerning a race older than Assyria and Babylon; antediluvians, perhaps, who built with the skill and magnificence ot the “giants of those days.” The colossal edifices of the Aborigines of Mexico, Central America, and Yucatan, are mostly pyramidal in form; the pyramid rises by terraces, which gradually decrease in size; upon the top is left a level space of sufficient size for the building which crowns the summit. In Mexico these teocalli were very numerous. “They were solid masses of earth, brick, or stone. The bases of them were several hundred feet square, and they towered to a height of more than a hundred feet. Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico. “Human sacrifices were adopted by the Aztecs or Mexicans, two hundred years before the conquest.
