Living architecture: Mayan

THE ARCHITECTURE of the ancient Mayan people presents the modern World with a unique paradox and a riddle that has so far remained unsolved. The paradox lies in the fact that, unlike the buildings of other vanished civilizations, those of the Maya were never subject to the depredations of human hands. In ancient Egypt, in Greece and Rome, materials for new buildings were obtained by destroying the old. In the Central American lands of the Maya, the monuments were subject only to the attacks of the climate and the jungle; all the component parts remained and archaeologists can now reconstruct the buildings with an unparalleled degree of accuracy'.
Yet they cannot fully explain how it came about that a civilization which produced countless temples and palaces of monumental size and designed cities that are completely in tune with modern ideas of city planning, rose to a brilliant peak and then fell into utter decline in seven centuries.
Yet another fascinating paradox is presented by this civilization : the Maya invented writing and arithmetical systems, evolved a remarkably accurate astronomy, discovered concrete, yet they had no knowledge of the wheel nor the service of any domestic animals. In many technological fields they were at a Neolithic stage of development.
With such limited means at their disposal, the Maya produced what the author de-scribes as "a vast, powerful architecture, with colossal pyramids and palaces of astonishingly modern horizontality." Against the dramatic background of the rise and fall of their civilization, he deals in detail wit4 the design and construction of the principal buildings which for more than a thousand years lay unknown and undisturbed ill the heart of the jungle.