Some writers, on viewing the configuration of these massive mounds, have erroneously concluded that they were built for the same purpose as the Egyptian pyramids; but we cannot sufficiently impress on the reader that in America the pyramid was synonymous with temple, or used as basement for temples and palaces. People may have been buried in the former, as they were buried in the latter; but that is no evidence of any analogy subsisting between them. In Egypt the pyramid was a sepulchre and nothing more, which received additions each successive year, and assumed smaller or greater dimensions, according to the longevity of the sovereign who erected it. The gigantic pyramids of Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus, correspond to reigns of sixty years each; the smaller correspond to short reigns in which kings were not given time for constructing great monuments. Now, the American mounds belong to one epoch, were built on one plan without any intermission. Architecture, whether civil or religious, entirely differs in the two countries. In Egypt palaces were built of wood; in America they were built of stone. Among Egyptians temples were colossal; among Americans, on the contrary, they were small, primitive, hardly more than altars. The temple was all-important with the former, the palace with the latter. In fact, the two polities were diametrically opposed, save on such points of contact as are common to all races in the early stage of their civilisation.
[Illustration: TERRA-COTTA MASKS AND HEADS FOUND AT TEOTIHUACAN.]
Some writers, arguing from the existence of a civilisation anterior to the Incas, concluded, with some show of reason, that there existed a pre-Toltec civilisation also; but a moment’s reflection will show that no parallel exists between the two; for the former, in a climate eminently favourable to the preservation of monuments, has hardly left any trace, whilst the latter, in a climate peculiarly destructive, has left whole cities and monuments in almost perfect preservation. In Peru, the people who followed the earlier races used extant remains for the foundations of their monuments, as, for instance, at Cuzco; whereas in Mexico and Central America monuments were repaired and restored on the same plan as that on which they had been erected. It follows that in Peru edifices are totally different in character from the foundations and cyclopean walls which support them, unless the ruins of Las Casas Grandes be considered pre-Toltec; but even so they would be the remains of edifices constructed by the first Nahua tribes in their progress towards the south.