THE PENINSULA OP YUCATAN. 185 



large scale, as may be inferred from a few which stiU remain almost intact. Evidence of 

 another kind of high achievement is found in the size of the cities. People who could 

 live in such vast numbers and could carry on such great public works must have had a 

 highly organized and effective social and political system; otherwise chaos would have 

 ensued. And finally the ancient Yucatecos are thought by some authorities to have been 

 on the point of taking one of the most momentous steps in human progress. They had 

 developed a system of hieroglyphics, and were apparently beginning to evolve the use of a 

 definite character to represent a definite sound, instead of a character for each separate 

 word, a step which the Chinese, able as they are, have never taken. 



The more one studies the problem, the more one feels that the ancient Yucatecos were 

 full of new ideas; and in the last analysis ideas are the cause of human progress. It is 

 possible, to be sure, that the seeds of some ideas, such as hieroglyphic writing, came origi- 

 nally from the eastern hemisphere — from Egypt perchance, or China, or some other part 

 of the Old World. We can not here discuss this view, although it seems to be far from 

 proven. This much, however, will be admitted, even by those who accept it: the con- 

 nection between the Old World and the New, if any ever existed, was brief and one might 

 say almost accidental. There was quite surety no such thing as any prolonged intercourse 

 wherebj^ for centuries ideas and methods of thought and action were transferred across 

 the water. They will also admit that the wonderful ruins of Yucatan and of the neighboring 

 Maya areas are distinctly Mayan in style. Whatever may have been imported from 

 other parts of the world had remained long in Central America and had been remodeled 

 to fit the genius of the old American race before it became fixed in the great structures 

 which now arouse our admiration. Mayan ideas in art, Mayan methods of supplying 

 water in a land where there is no surface water, and Mayan pecuharities of religion and 

 taste had become strongly developed. Therefore we must conclude that even if some 

 race from abroad did originally bring civilization to the land, a matter which most of the 

 best authorities deny, the newcomers did not stagnate and deteriorate, as seems to be the 

 case with modern immigrants to this region after a generation or two. They did not 

 imbibe the tropical languor which ultimately seems to check progress unless there is a con- 

 tinual stimulus from without. They kept on working, and developing new ideas for 

 generation after generation. They had the industry to make some of the world's finest 

 ruins, fashioned of carefully hewn stones and ornamented with wonderful carvings; and 

 they did it all without the aid of iron, and with no apparent stimulus from without. At 

 the most the people of Maya land can scarcely have borrowed from other nations a tenth 

 as much as is borrowed by all modern nations, or even as was borrowed by the Greeks. 

 If any race ever worked out its own salvation, it was the ancient Mayas. To develop so 

 far must have required many centuries, and so we may safely say that the Mayas were 

 once continuously blessed with an activity of mind and body comparable to that of almost 

 any part of the world. The stimulus to such activity can scarcely have come from other 

 countries. Was it something in the fiber of the original race, or was it something in their 

 environment? 



Before we attempt to discuss this question, let us measure the achievements of the 

 Mayas by still another standard. Thus far we have confined our attention to the ruins 

 of the relatively dry bush- or jungle-covered portion of Yucatan, but an even greater num- 

 ber lie to the south and southwest as far as Honduras and Chiapas. Many are located 

 in the densest kind of forest. The description of the one rather small ruin of this type 

 which I was able to visit in Yucatan will indicate the conditions in which they are located. 

 Lake Kichankanab, it will be remembered, lies on the edge of the tropical forest, equidistant 

 from the Gulf of Mexico on the west, the northern shore of Yucatan on the north, and the 

 Caribbean Sea on the east, 100 miles from each of them. The difficulty of making clearings 

 and the virulence of malarial fevers cause the inhabitants to be limited to a few widely 



