Sculptures in stone are found, ranging in size from the small amulets, representing deities, and designed as personal ornaments, to monu ments of colossal size, such as the so-called Mexi can calendar stone, and the great stehe of the ruins of Quirigua. In wood-carving the Mexi cans displayed even greater skill than in the working of stone. The great altar tablets of Tikal, the wooden drums. and the atlatls or throwing-sticks splendidly carved, and in some instances covered with gold leaf, attest their proficiency in this branch of art. Carving, in stone, wood, hone, or shell, was done with stone or copper tools. .Jadeite, emerald, rock crystal, turquoise, and serpentine were carved into numberless varieties of personal or naments. chiefly in the territory of the Mixtees and Zapotees of Oaxaca, and by the Mayas in the mountainous parts of Chiapas. The Nahuas and Zapotecs fashioned mosaics on wood, shell, and clay, using bits of shell. jadeite, turquoise, obsidian, mother-of-pearl, and hematite to form the designs.
In the ceramic art the products of the several civilized nations are quite distinct, and we may determine their provenance with a certain amount of exactness. The terracotta figures of the Ja lisco district, the ware from the vicinity of Cholnla. the funeral urns from the Oaxaca Val ley, and the pottery from the Maya region are characteristics of each centre. In metallurgy we find the ancient Tarascos. the Aztecs. Totonaes, Nixtecs. and Zapotees were very skillful in the manipulation of copper into axes, tweezers, rings, rattles, and bells. Beautiful objects of gold have been found in the Matlantzinea region near To luca and in the Mixtecan and Zapotecan areas. which are the very highest achievement of the ancient American goldsmiths. Ear, nose, and lip ornaments; beautiful bells, some representing symbolic laces and animals' heads; beads; circu lar breastplates; the copilli or crown of rulers, and even remains of armor made of the precious metal, have been found in ancient graves during recent years. Unfortunately the greater part of these 'finds' go to the melting pot.
The ancient "Mexicans believed in a future life which was graded according to the manner of death, and among the Zapotecs they had elaborate funeral ceremonies and sacrificed slaves to assist the shades of important persons on their journey to paradise. They had greater and lesser deities. The principal god of the Aztecs was Teotl, who was worshiped as a supreme being. Next to Teotl, Tezcatlipoca was venerated as the soul of the world, who rewarded the righteous and pun ished the unrighteous. The great beneficent god was Quetzalcoatl among the Nahuas, called Kukulean by the Mayas, the great feathered serpent deity, undoubtedly a deified culture hero. He invented the arts and taught the' people wis dom by his laws. According to his various at tributes he appears under different names, as do many other gods of the Mexican pantheon.
Tlaboc was the god of rain, and among the Aztecs, Huitzilopocbtli, the terrible war god, was patron and protector. There were gods of the hunt and chase, of play, flowers, wine, merchants, trickery, lust, and so forth, while each trade and occupation had its own patron deity. The religious rites were elaborate and prescribed with minuteness. The multiplicity of gods required a great number of priests and priestesses. who were almost as highly venerated as the deities they served. There were degrees of priesthood and religious orders: fixed and movable festivals. The great teoeallis or god houses were commanding edifices of stone, built on high truncated pyramids with annexed build ings. Their idols were many and hideous, smeared with the blood of human and animal sacrifices.
Among certain of these civilized tribes we find artificial flattening of the head : also trepana tion. and decoration of the teeth by filing and interlaying with certain stones. such as jadeite, turquoise, obsidian, and hematite, rock crystal and obsidian. Labrets, or lip ornaments, made of obsidian and gold. were inserted in holes in the lower lip; V-shaped ornament's of obsidian and shell were bung from the nose, and large ornaments were inserted in incisions in the ears. Many of the musical instruments are still ex tant. and we find in various museums examples of the teponortli, the horizontal drum, made from a log of wood hollowed out on the under surface and having two tongues cut on the up per one, which were beaten with rubber-tipped sticks. Among the instruments were the upright drum, of a hollowed log of wood, with skin-cov ered top. beaten with the hands: flageolets. whis tles, and rattles of clay: trumpets: and rattles of shell and notched human bones from the arm or leg, rasped with a bone or shell. Painting was another art in which the ancient Mexicans had made remarkable progress. This is shown by the mural paintings of Tentibunean, Mitla. and ChiclnIn Itzfi. and those recently discovered in British Honduras. One of the most important sources of information for the study of ancient Mexico is found in the existing pictorial and hieroglyphic codices. or books. As is well known, several of the tribes of Mexico had attained a degree of culture at the time of the Spanish Conquest that led to the recording of events, not only on stone bas-reliefs and sculptures. but on material of a more perishable nature. These codices were on strips of deerskin. the surface of which was covered with a thin coating of stucco. They were folded screen-fashion, and the paintings were on both sides. The had furthermore invented a kind of paper, In Mexico proper, in addition to bark-paper, it paper was made from the leaves of the maguey plant. Agave Americana; this paper they also sized with a coating of lime.