[Aztlan] Maya " scale drawings"

[Sam Edgerton]

Falken: I'd be very interested to learn more of what you are discovering 
about how the Maya at Caracol and elsewhere applied geometry in the 
planning of their buildings.    I believe we have some evidence that the 
Aztecs and Maya made small plaster models in preparation for full-size 
construction but it's not clear that these were intended to be in scale. 
What you seem to be describing sound not like scale drawings per se, but 
full-size templates. Templates are only detail diagrams which might 
be  inscribed on the walls of structures on site which masons could use for 
measuring lintels, posts, etc.  Am I correct as to what you have 
found?  Indeed, the ancient Greeks did just that.   Incised lines, some 
straight and some even curved, have been found along the base of the Temple 
of  Artemis at Ephasus, for example, against which the builders aligned the 
stone shafts to be cut into column lengths and trimmed for entasis.

One of my specialties is European architecture of the Middle Ages and 
Renaissance. There is no evidence that scale plans like modern "blue 
prints" were used to construct any of the great Gothic cathedrals and even 
the huge cupola over the Duomo of Florence. Not until uniform units of 
measurement were established by the  mid sixteenth century do we encounter 
scale drawings in general use. To be sure, medieval and Renaissance 
architects built small scale 3-D models  to show  patrons what their new 
buildings would look like, and also supplied templates for the workers on 
site as guides for the construction of various details like windows and 
doors, etc. Whole structures in full, however, were never pre-planned to 
scale on paper. It was left to the skills of the "architect" who during 
those earlier times was more akin to what today we call a general 
contractor, and not yet accorded our modern reverence for the likes of 
Frank Lloyd Wright (or Ayn Rand's condescending Howard Rourke).  It was the 
then "architect's" responsibility basically to insure that what he put up 
would not fall down. His reputation depended not so much on the beauty of 
his buildings or any other special aesthetic effects but on his success in 
fulfilling the current demand for ever higher domes and towers that did not 
collapse. By trial and error after many years, builders during the Middle 
Ages and Renaissance had learned that by laying out with rope and staff 
basic geometric forms on the ground that when elevated would sustain the 
required superstructure. For instance, the length of a diagonal across a 
square in plan, was just the proper height for vertical shafts to hold up 
the corners of a ribbed vault. This was one of the "secrets of medieval 
masons," passed down from master to succeeding master within the closed 
masons' guild system throughout the Gothic period. Ancient Mesoamerican 
builders used the same "rope and staff" technique just as did old world 
builders as is attested to in the attached URL, an image from the Mixtec 
Codex Vindobonensis. I've yet to be convinced by any of Wayne van Kirk's or 
David Lubman's arguments so far that Maya (or any Mesoamerican) 
"architects" could pre-plan a priori unique echo effects to the vertical 
faces of their buildings as they rose from the plan - unless, following 
some accidental occurrence of such an effect, they replicated it a 
posteriori by either resetting the stones or remodelling with plaster.

http://lanfiles.williams.edu/~sedgerto/MIXTECMEASURE.TIF

Sam Edgerton