Maya Architecture
It was in the wonderful architectural system which it developed without outside aid that the Maya people most individually expressed itself. As has been said, those buildings which still remain, and which have excited the admiration of generations of archæologists, are principally confined to examples of ecclesiastical and governmental architecture, the dwellings of the common people consisting merely of the flimsiest of wattle-and-daub structures, which would fall to pieces shortly after they were abandoned.
Buried in dense forests or mouldering on the sun-exposed plains of Yucatan, Honduras, and Guatemala, the cities which boasted these edifices are for the most part situated away from modern trade routes, and are not a little difficult to come at. It is in Yucatan, the old home of the Cocomes and Tutul Xius, that the most perfect specimens of Maya architecture are to be found, especially as regards its later development, and here, too, it may be witnessed in its decadent phase.