Soon after this conversation we visited the ruin called _Knuc_, “Owl’s Palace,” and on reaching the top of the great pyramid, the first thing I noticed was a very pretty bas-relief of cement, consisting of diamonds and flattened spheres, of the kind met at Palenque. This relief formed the right side of a frame, topped by figures, traces of which were still discernible; below the projecting cornice was a thick coating of plaster, filling the joints, well smoothed and polished on the surface, and also a coating of paint on the wall.
“Well,” I said to my companion, Mr. Aymé, “what do you say now?”
And, indeed, this discovery proved that the monuments could no longer be considered the work of a different race, a different civilisation, or a hoary antiquity. In effect, their cement decorations are similar to those of the older edifices in Tabasco and many in Yucatan. I shall therefore distinguish the Aké period under three heads: the _cement epoch_, the _cement_ and _cut stone_, and the _cut stone only_, when the builders used only the latter in their decorations, examples of which are to be found in the later edifices at Uxmal and Kabah.
The Aké builders lived in a country where the calcareous layer was taken up in sheets varying from 10 inches to 1 foot 7 inches thick. They used them exactly as they came from the quarry, thus saving great expenditure in labour. When the shell of a structure was run up, it was thickly plastered over, painted, and ornamented with mouldings in relief. This explains at once why the stones on the pillars of the gallery and the blocks of the grand stairway are irregular. The discovery of the bas-relief and cornice filled me with joyful expectation, but although I was indefatigable in visiting the Succuna and other nameless pyramids, I brought to light nothing more of the kind; everything had crumbled away. Here are also found the typical superimposed layers of cement, which we mentioned in various places inhabited by the Toltecs.
To sum up, Aké seems to belong to the early times of the Toltec invasion in Yucatan; an epoch which may not improperly be termed Maya-Toltec, as the civilisation in Tabasco and Chiapas may be termed Tzendal-Toltec, and that of Guatemala, Guatemalto-Toltec.