ARCHAEOLOGY. 317 



not improbable that this latter monument also dates from the same katun, 

 though this fact has not yet been established from its inscription. 



Mr. O. F. Cook's study of the agricultural possibilities of the Peten region 

 developed nothing in the way of the former use of agricultural terraces like 

 those he found in Peru or in the Cahabon District of southern Guatemala, 

 nor do the natural conditions indicate that the land was kept in permanent 

 cultivation. 



In a preliminary announcement Mr. Cook states: 



"The milpa system of agriculture, the planting of maize and other crops in temporary 

 clearings, probably was used by the ancient inhabitants of Peten, as it still is by the modern 

 representatives of the Mayas in the neighboring regions of Central America. 



"The milpa system has a natural limit when the land becomes occupied by grasses, since 

 the burning over of grasslands does not kill the roots or allow crops to be planted. In the 

 absence of plows or metal tools for the tillage of grass lands, primitive people generally were 

 limited to the destructive, bushburning, milpa agriculture. But in view of the long occupa- 

 tion of the ancient sites in Peten, it is believed that precautions must have been taken to 

 keep the milpa fires from spreading to adjacent lands, a custom still followed in the Cahabon 

 district, south of Peten. By confining the fires to the milpas the fallow lands are kept in 

 bush, and the complete deforestation and reduction of the country to a grass land, or 

 savannah, are deferred. Nevertheless, a gradual extension of savannahs is to be expected in 

 any populous region that is farmed continuously by the milpa system, so that in time the 

 planting of corn or other crops is restricted and the population declines or moves to new 

 lands, as the Mayas appear to have done when the cities of Peten were abandoned and new 

 cities were built in Yucatan, in the sixth century A. D. 1 " 



Extensive artificial terracing has been found recently in the hilly country 

 of western British Honduras, in the Cayo District, south of the Belize River. 

 All the archaeological evidence here, however, pottery, mounds, etc., indicates 

 that the region was occupied very much later than the lowlands of Peten 

 just west of it; that whereas the cities of the latter date from the Old Empire 

 (down to 630 A.D.), the sites of the Cayo District are probably to be assigned 

 to the very close of the new Empire, possibly as late as the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries. 



It is suggested that this region may have been colonized from the high- 

 lands of Guatemala by groups of the southern Maya, the Kekchf , for example, 

 who still have villages as far north as San Antonio in southwestern British 

 Honduras and San Luis and Poctun in southeastern Peten. The southern 

 Maya probably developed the use of agricultural terraces after the abandon- 

 ment of the Peten region and their migration southward into the mountain 

 valleys of Guatemala (after 630 A. D.), so that the discovery of such terraces 

 in the Cayo District may point to their southern origin, and thus corro- 

 borates rather than vitiates Mr. Cook's conclusions as to their non-existence 

 during the Old Empire in Peten. 



Further study of these terraces as well as of the archaeology of the Cayo 

 District will be necessary before final conclusions may be formulated, but 

 it already seems fairly evident that its occupation dates from a time long 

 subsequent to the Old Empire period, and that its colonization possibly may 

 not have taken place until after the thirteenth century. 



On August 5, Doctor Morley sailed for Rio de Janeiro, where he represented 

 the Institution at the Twentieth International Congress of Americanists 

 held there August 20-30. 



1 The Official Record, United States Department of Agriculture, vol. 1, No. 20, May 17, 

 1922, pp. 1, 3. 



