ARCHEOLOGY. 



271 



dates also underwent considerable modification. The extraordi- 

 narily accurate Initial Series, for example, by means of which one 

 day could be distinguished from any other in a period of 374,143 

 years, which had been so prevalent in the south, practically disappear 

 in the north. Of the 150 odd Initial Series known, only 3 are found 

 in Yucatan. Not only Initial Series, but all the other kinds of texts, be- 

 come very much scarcer in the north. Indeed, in the whole penin- 

 sula there are only 12 sites known having as much as a single inscrip- 

 tion, as compared with thrice that number in the south; and the whole 

 content of these few constitutes less than 3 per cent of the Corpus 

 Inscriptionum May arum. 



Because of this scarcity of material — hardly offset by the few 

 manuscript chronicles (the Books of Chilan Balam) that have come 

 down to us — and because of our lack of knowledge as to the method 

 of dating used, it followed that we knew much less of Maya history 

 during the New Empire (600 A. D. to 1541 A. D.) than during the 

 Old Empire (100 B. C. to 600 A. D). 



The immediate object of the second trip, therefore, was an exami- 

 nation of all known Yucatan sites having inscriptions, together with 

 a first-hand study of the original texts, in the hope that some of this 

 obscurity might be cleared away. The sites visited and their respec- 

 tive locations will be found on figure 1. 



90° 



Z(f 



LEGEND 



Archaeological Sites 

 -Route of E'sfpedition 



<^ 



22 



rT.l--YUC)^TAN i . 



'-T-^N V „ . . iChlcherTltz: 



JxJmaTt X'f^t" /' I 



'ifgbk*-^-.Cave of .^ Yul 

 \ t \ 1 Loltun / I 



olactun \*Labna /' ! 



Itza 

 uum« 



oantaP.osa n/ 



^ 



QUINTAN A C^l 



ROO ChacMoot^' 



CAMFECHE 



1! 



{-h 



90 



20 



Fig. 1. — Map showing itinerary of the 1918 Central American Expedition in the 

 Peninsula of Yucatan. All sites shown above, with the exception of Chac 

 Mool on the east coast, have hieroglyphic inscriptions. 



