CHAPTER XVII. 



GUATEMALA AND THE HIGHEST NATIVE AMERICAN CIVILIZATION.* 



When the final revision of this volume was made in January and February 1913, the 

 author felt that his conclusions as to the torrid zone required further testing. The logical 

 place for such a test was Guatemala, since there the Mayas brought to a culmination the 

 highest civilization of native American origin. Accordingly in March and April 1913, 

 independently of the Carnegie Institution, he spent about four weeks in that country or 

 on its borders in British and Spanish Honduras. In previous chapters four chief lines of 

 evidence have been used, namely, alluvial terraces, changes in lakes, the distribution of 

 ruins, and the rate of growth of trees. Only two of these, terraces and ruins, are of much 

 significance in Guatemala. Lakes, to be sure, are numerous, and of great beauty, but all 

 have outlets, and are of interest chiefly in relation to the volcanoes which seem m several 

 cases to have formed them by closing deep valleys which previously opened toward the 

 Pacific. The trees of Guatemala are of course abundant, but are of little use for our 

 purpose. Those growing in the tropical forests of the lowlands are often of large size and 

 perhaps of considerable age, but constant moisture renders their rings too indefinite to be 

 reliable. The pines of the highlands, on the other hand, although possessed of definite 

 annual rings because of the pronounced contrast between the wet and dry seasons, appear 

 rarely to be over 100 years old, and hence are of little importance. Terraces and ruins, 

 on the other hand, are not only abundant, but they fortunately lie sometimes in intimate 

 juxtaposition. 



Our consideration of the terraces and ruins will be clearer if preceded by a brief descrip- 

 tion of the country as a whole.f From northeast to southwest, Guatemala, together with 

 British Honduras, which for convenience I shall treat as if it were part of the same country, 

 consists of a young Atlantic plain, a system of mature mountains, a young volcanic plateau, 

 and a young Pacific plain. The Atlantic plain is merely a continuation of that of Mexico, 

 which, after expanding into the peninsula of Yucatan, diminishes in width until it is 

 finally drowned beneath the sea east of the Cockscomb Mountains of southern British 

 Honduras. The whole plain is densely forested, intensely fever-stricken, and almost 

 uninhabited. A few mahogany cutters form villages along its winding rivers, a small 

 number of cattle are fattened in grassy savannas where an excess of sand or water prevents 

 the growth of trees, and a few primitive Indians cultivate isolated patches of land here and 

 there in its remote recesses. As a whole it is one of the world's most scantily populated 

 and least-known districts. 



The mature mountains consist of a series of ranges of distorted strata running nearly 

 east and west and rising from 5,000 to 10,000 feet above the sea. Their seaward portions, 

 where exposed to the northeast trades, are heavily forested and feverish, and therefore 

 almost uninhabited. The higher portions, and also those of the lower mountains which 

 are not kept continually wet by the trade winds, are covered with pines and support a 

 moderate number of people. Most of the population, however, is concentrated in deep, 

 dry valleys or basins such as those of Coban and Zacapa, which he among the mountains 

 and are thus protected from excessive moisture. 



* This chapter, in a somewhat changed form, is reprinted from the Transactions of the American Philosophical 



Society, vol. lii, No. 211, pp. 467-487, Phil.idelphia, 1913. 

 t See map, p. 174. 



211 



