406 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



is named), and of the Nahuatlan in Nicaragua (Pipils, Niquirans, 

 and others) 1 . 



This very circumstance has no doubt tended to increase the 

 difficulties connected with the questions of their origins, migrations, 

 and mutual cultural influences. Some of these difficulties have 

 disappeared by the removal of the " Toltecs " (see above), who 

 had hitherto been a great disturbing element in this connection, 

 and all the rest have in my opinion been satisfactorily disposed 

 of by E. Forstermann, a leading authority on all Aztec-Maya 

 questions 2 . This eminent archaeologist refers first to the views 

 of Dr Seler^, who assumes a southern movement of Maya tribes 

 from Yucatan, and a like movement of Aztecs from Tabasco to 

 Nicaragua, and even to Yucatan. On the other hand Dieseldorff 

 holds that Maya art was independently developed, while the links 

 between it and the Aztec show that an interchange took place, 

 in which process the Maya was the giver, the Aztec the recipient. 

 He further attributes the overthrow of the Maya power 100 or 200 

 years before the discovery to the Aztecs, and thinks the Aztecs or 

 Nahuas took their god Quetzalcoatl from the "Toltecs," who were 

 a Maya people. Ph. J. Valentini also infers that the Mayas were 

 the original people, the Aztecs " mere parasites 4 ." 



Now Forstermann lays down the principle that any theory, to 

 be satisfactory, should fit in with such facts as : (i) the agreement 

 and diversity of both cultures ; (2) the antiquity and disappear- 

 ance of the mysterious Toltecs ; (3) the complete isolation of the 

 Huaxtecs from the other Maya tribes, and their difference from 

 them ; (4) the equally complete isolation of the Guatemalan 

 Pipils, and of the other southern (Nicaraguan) Aztec groups from 

 the rest of the Nahua peoples; (5) the remarkable absence of 

 Aztec local names in Yucatan, while they occur in hundreds in 



1 Some Nahuas, whom the Spaniards called "Mexicans" or "Chichimecs," 

 were met by Vasquez de Coronado even as far south as the Chiriqui lagoon, 

 Panama. These Seguas, as they called themselves, have since disappeared, 

 and it is no longer possible to say how they strayed so far from their northern 

 homes. 



- Nene Mayaforschungen, in Globus LXX. p. 37 sq. 



3 Alterthumer atts Guatemala, p. 24. 



4 Analysis of the Pictorial Text inscribed on two Palenqne Tablets, N. York, 

 1896. 



