There was, as far as quantity is concerned, an excellent display of
Indian pottery, incense-burners, water-pots and domestic utensils, and
small stone figures of gods. But these were all lying haphazard in a
case with Spanish pottery and tile work. One of the most interesting
exhibits from the archæologist's point of view is the much disputed
"Cozumel Cross." Found on the island of Cozumel in the seventeenth
century, it was brought to Merida and placed first in the patio of the
Franciscan Convent, then in the Church of the Mejorada, whence it was
removed to its present position. It is a very ordinary stone cross,
standing some three feet high with a two-foot cross-piece. On it, in
half relief, is an image of the Saviour, made of plaster, coloured, with
the hands and feet nailed. Chiefly upon this relic has been based a
ridiculous theory that at some remote date Christianity had been
preached to the Indians and that the worship of the Cross was found to
exist in Yucatan by the Spaniards. The truth is, as the American
traveller J. L. Stephens showed years ago, the "Cozumel Cross" is
nothing but a poorly sculptured piece of ornamentation from the first
Catholic church built in the island of Cozumel by the order of Cortes.
The director made vigorous efforts to convince us of its Indian origin,
but one look at it was enough; and we passed on to an exhibit which was
the special object of our visit.
In Guatemala, around Copan and Quirigua, skulls have been unearthed from
time to time the teeth in which had in some instances been ornamented
with tiny discs of polished jade. The workmanship was of the most
exquisitely precise nature, and the object had evidently been adornment
and not dentistry. When these skulls were submitted to expert dental
surgeons in America, they declared the work so excellent as to be
unsurpassable even with the present-day mechanical devices and
instruments. Since these finds, archæologists have been searching for
years in Northern Yucatan for some skull which exhibited a like dental
ornamentation. A few months before we arrived in Yucatan their
persistent hopes had been fulfilled. About twenty miles to the
north-east of Merida, at a town called Motul, during casual excavations
at a hacienda, a skull was found which now lay before us. Several teeth
in the upper and lower jaw were missing, but in the former two of the
front teeth had let into their centre tiny discs of bluey-green jade so
firmly done that, after the lapse of centuries, the stone still formed a
surface flush with the enamel of the tooth. Since our return to England
we have seen in the British Museum a skull from Ecuador, in which some
of the upper teeth are ornamented in the same way, but with gold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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