ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH AT THE RUIiNS OF CHICHEN ITZA. 



INTRODUCTION. 



"THE GREEKS OF THE NEW WORLD." 



This question is often asked: What aboriginal people of the New World 

 had achieved the highest culture before the coming of Europeans? And 

 indeed it is a matter of recognized importance to determine which native 

 American race had traveled farthest on the road from savagery to civilization. 



A comprehensive review of man and his achievements in the Western 

 Hemisphere discloses but two peoples whose claims need be considered for 

 this distinction, namely, the Inca^ of Peru and the Maya of southern Mexico 

 and Central America. These two nations were the leaders of civilization in 

 their respective continents, and in each case their nearest competitors were 

 far behind. But when it comes to a choice between the two, to awarding 

 preeminence to one over the other, justifiable differences of opinion exist. 

 In the first place, neither race surpassed the other in every branch of human 

 activity. In some fields the Inca excelled, and in others the Maya. The 

 Inca were preceded by several earlier civilizations, to which they were largely 

 indebted for essential features of their culture, whilst the Maya had no such 

 inheritance. They were originators and not adapters of art and architecture. 

 Maya remains present an unbroken cultural development extending over 

 1,500 years. It is admitted that the Inca surpassed the Maya in the textile 

 arts and possibly also in governmental and social organization. But even 

 granting this partial superiority, the writer believes that a broader compari- 

 son of the two cultures will award first place to the iSIaya. It is certain that 

 the latter far excelled the Inca in the arts of sculpture, painting, and archi- 

 tecture, and in the sciences of writing, arithmetic, astronomy, and chro- 

 nology. Their history recorded in their hieroglyphic inscriptions covers a 

 range of more than a thousand years; their observations in astronomy reveal 

 a knowledge of the movements of heavenly bodies equalled by that of few 

 peoples of antiquity; their system of chronology kept an account of elapsed 

 time which in accuracy rivals our own; while in sculpture, painting, and 

 architecture the Maya have been most aptly termed "The Greeks of the 

 New World."- 



'By Inca ia here meant the people who dominated Peru at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The Inca 

 civilization, like the Aztec, was of comparatively recent origin, not extending back more than three or four 

 centuries before the first coming of Europeans in 1523. 



^For a brief bibliography of the Maya civilization and culture area see Appendix I, page 83. 



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