ARCHEOLOGY. 365 



Upon reaching Flores, Dr. Guthe met with instant and hearty- 

 cooperation on the part of the government officials under Dr. Jose 

 Prado Romana, the Governor of Peten, and of Dr. Robert Boburg, 

 a resident Englishman. Unusual labor conditions and the strange 

 class of work required caused some trouble at the beginning, which 

 was, however, soon regulated. 



The early Spanish writers state that the Itza left their home, Chichen 

 Itza in northern Yucatan, about the year 1450 and went south, found- 

 ing a city which they called Tayasal, upon a large island in the lake 

 of Peten Itza. The purpose of the present expedition was to verify as 

 far as possible the historical and geographical information contained 

 in the early reports of this site,^ to secure an accurate idea of the plan 

 and extent of the ruins, and to do what preliminary excavations 

 seemed advisable. 



Recent archaeological investigators in this country have ascertained 

 that this city is now upon a large peninsula which juts into the lake 

 from the east. The present capital of Peten, the little village of Flores, 

 is situated upon a small island within a quarter of a mile of the shores 

 of this peninsula. Through conversations with inhabitants of Flores 

 who knew the surrounding country, and by means of personal observa- 

 tions of the topography and present lake of Peten Itza, it was possible 

 to explain and clarify, in a most gratifying manner, many of the state- 

 ments of the early Spanish writers which were obscure or seemed to be 

 actually contradictory. Current place-names were secured for some 

 of the spots mentioned in the early accounts, and the itineraries of the 

 seventeenth century explorers were worked out with a fair degree of 

 accuracy. Copies of three of the early maps of the district were inter- 

 preted satisfactorily by a study of the region at first hand. 



During Dr. Morley's visit to Flores, careful measurements were made 

 to determine the probable amount of subsidence in the water-level of 

 the lake since the end of the seventeenth century, which made of the 

 then island of Tayasal a promontory. A rock outcrop near the plaza 

 of Flores, with a design incised upon it, is 45 feet above the present 

 water-level. A very distinct line of demarkation on the peninsula 

 itself, between the low jungle growth of the lake-shore and the grass- 

 lands w^hich cover the ruins proper, is approximately 40 feet above the 

 present water-level. From this evidence and other corroborative data, 

 it seems probable that 225 years ago the water-level was between 

 40 to 45 feet higher than at present. There is some contradictory 

 evidence, such as finding potsherds below this former water-level, 

 but the general mass of evidence, including that in the early maps, 

 is overwhelmingly in favor of the figures given. 



The civic and religious center of Tayasal, as marked by the larger 

 mounds, occupies the western and highest part of the former island, 



^History cf the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas, P. A, Means, Peabody Museum 

 Papers, Vol. VII, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1917. 



