[Sidenote: They are probably not older than the twelfth century.] These edifices are not so durably constructed as those which in Europe have stood for more than a thousand years. They do not indicate a high civilization on the part of their builders. They do not, as Mr. Andrew Lang says, "throw Mycenae into the shade, and rival the remains of Cambodia."[150] In pictures they may seem to do so, but M. de Charnay, after close and repeated examination of these buildings, assures us that as structures they "cannot be compared with those at Cambodia, which belong to nearly the same period, the twelfth century, and which, notwithstanding their greater and more resisting proportions, are found in the same dilapidated condition."[151] It seems to me that if Mr. Lang had spoken of the Yucatan ruins as rivalling the remains of Mycenae, instead of "throwing them into the shade," he would have come nearer the mark. The builders of Uxmal, like those of Mycenae, did not understand the principle of the arch, but were feeling their way toward it.[152] And here again we are brought back, as seems to happen whatever road we follow, to the middle status of barbarism. The Yucatan architecture shows the marks of its origin in the adobe and rubble-stone work of the New Mexico pueblos. The inside of the wall "is a rude mixture of friable mortar and small irregular stones," and under the pelting tropical rains the dislocation of the outer facing is presently effected. The large blocks, cut with flint chisels, are of a soft stone that is soon damaged by weather; and the cornices and lintels are beams of a very hard wood, yet not so hard but that insects bore into it. From such considerations it is justly inferred that the highest probable antiquity for most of the ruins in Yucatan or Central America is the twelfth or thirteenth century of our era.[153] Some, perhaps, may be no older than the ancient city of Mexico, built A. D. 1325. [Footnote 150: Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p. 348.] [Footnote 151: Charnay, _op. cit._ p. 209. "I may remark that [the] virgin forests [here] have no very old trees, being destroyed by insects, moisture, lianas, etc.; and old monteros tell me that mahogany and cedar trees, which are most durable, do not live above 200 years," id. p. 447.] [Footnote 152: The reader will find it suggestive to compare portions of Schliemann's _Mycenae_ and M. de Charnay's book, just cited, with Morgan's _Houses and House-Life_, chap. xi.] [Footnote 153: Charnay, _op. cit._ p. 411. Copan and Palenque may be two or three centuries older, and had probably fallen into ruins before the arrival of the Spaniards.] [Sidenote: Chronicle of Chicxulub.]