An Ancient Mexican CivilizationAuthor(s): Thomas R. HenrySource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Jan., 1939), pp. 97-98Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/16751 .

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 97

a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Gibbs also received many honors, first in Europe and then in his own country. He was elected to membership in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the Royal Society of London, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the Dutch Society of Sciences (Haarlem), the Royal Acad- emy of Amsterdam, the Bavarian Acad- emy of Sciences, the Cambridge Philo- sophical Society, the Royal Prussian Academy of Ber]in, the Royal Society of Sciences (Gottingen) and the London Mathematical Society. He also received the Copley Medal from the Royal So- ciety of London, and he was awarded the Rumford Medal by the American Acad- emy of Arts and Sciences. The univer- sities of Erlangen, Christiana and Princeton, as well as Williams College, bestowed upon him honorary degrees. He was a member of the National Acad- emy of Sciences.

What of the families of Hill and Gibbs ? Hill was of English and Hugue- not descent. Ifis father and his grand- father were artists, apparently- in no way distinguished. When he was eight years of age his father moved from New York City to a farm at West Nyack, N. Y., where Hill spent nearly all his life.

Gibbs was of English ancestry and descended from a family distinguished for its scholars. On his father's side there was an unbroken line of six college

graduates, five of whom were graduates of Harvard and one a graduate of Yale. Among his mother 's ancestors there were two Yale graduates, one of whom, Jonathan Dickinson, was the first presi- dent of the College of New Jersey. Gibbs himself was a graduate of Yale and spent the remainder of his life, ex- cept for a period of study in France and Germany, as a professor in Yale.

Perhaps nothing in the lives of Hill and Gibbs is more interesting and in- structive than their education. Hill graduated at Rutgers College and Gibbs at Yale, as many other boys before and since have done. It is probably safe to assume that they received as much in- spiration and acquired as much knowl- edge from their courses as does the aver- age student. But they both did some- thing that was and is quite exceptional. They read the masters in science. While yet an undergraduate, Hill read care- fully such great works as those of La- grange, Poisson, Laplace, de Pontecou- lant, Legendre and Euler, all of whom were French. Gibbs studied the works of Poisson, Cauchy, Fresnel and Clau- sius. Whether it was the qualities of their minds that drew Hill and Gibbs to the masters or the influence of the mas- ters that inspired themn to great achieve- ments we can not know. But at least they understood the masters and took pleasure in following the paths they had trod.

F. R. M.

AN ANCIENT MEXICAN CIVILIZATION A STADIUM with a seating capacity of

at least 8,000, moat-encircled ruins of a town and a towered, twelve-room build- ing are among the remains of an ancient civilization buried in the thick jungles of Campeche in southern Mexico, a land now traversed chiefly by wandering chicle hunters and found in a reconnais- sance just reported by archeologists of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The party, led by Dr. Karl Ruppert,

entered a region of dense forests, hith- erto penetrable only with pack mules, by airplane and located the ruins of twelve towns which had flourished long before the discovery of America and, presum- ably, were built by close relatives of the Maya Indians.

For the most part, these were small places with few substantial buildings. The town in which the stadium stood was an outstanding exception. There was a

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98 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

level area, about 60 by 70 yards, sur- rounded by a eoutinuous mound, which was broken in four places for entrances. An examination of the enclosing wall showed that it had been lined on the in- ner side by a series of from 18 to 20 steps. These constituted the seats of the ancient stadium.

The place was probably used, the archeologists believe, for religious cere- monies and ball games. A game in which a solid rubber ball was bounced back and forth from the hips of the play- ers with the object of getting it through a ring, as in present-day basketball, was very popular among the Mayas, and con- tests attracted large crowds. The game with many variations, extended north- ward as far as New Mexico and Arizona, and in central Mexico, had the patronage of the Montezumas. Even in the Mayan heyday, however, the Campeche region was probably bush-league territory. The ruins around the ancient stadium indi- cated the largest town in the region. The remains of several large buildings were made out, each with elaborate, stueco-decorated faqades.

Not far from a little lake in the same general region, the explorers came- upon the ruins of another town, now repre- sented only by a few low mounds except for the remains of a single remarkable structure. This latter made up one side of the town plaza. It has twelve large rooms, and three towers-one at either end and one in the center. This last was more than 50 feet high. All the towers were semi-circular and had "false stair- ways " which were ornamented with great stueco masks. The building might have been roughly similar in appearanee to a medieval castle. The moat-encircled town, adding still more to the medieval impression, was a few miles from the same lake in a different direction.

The number of ruins still discernible indicate that the region must have been at one time a flourishing population cen- ter. Difficulty of access has deterred previous explorers. The Carnegie party found, however, that several of the mounds had been opened by chicle hunt- ers in search of buried treasure.

Dr. George Stromsvik, of the Carnegie archeological staff, reported the finding of another large ball-court in the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Copan in Honduras. This was presumably a "big league" bowl where star athletes bumped rubber balls back and forth be- fore cheering crowds more than a thou- sand years ago. Excavations show that it was the third similar stadium on the same site. It consisted of a long, rectan- gular playing area bounded on either side by a low, vertically faced beneh from which sloping surfaces rose to a second vertical wall. On each wall were mounted three great stone parrot heads. All these heads had fallen down. It has been possible, however, to locate their original bases and they will be rep]aced. The floor of the playing-court was paved with flat stones. These have been dis- torted by pressure of tree roots, and it will be necessary to relay them.

Along oine wall was found a bancd of hieroglyphic inscriptions from which it is hoped to find the approximate date when the stadium was built. Oine incised stone in this band was removed, and the archeologists found on its back another inscription showing that it had been taken from another ball-court on the same site. They found a date which they interpreted as indicating that the old court had been in use for 260 years be- fore it grew too antiquated for the enthu- siastic fans of ancient Copan.

THOMAS R. HENRY

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