COMMERCE OF THE MAYA BLOM 433 



This may be an appropriate moment to draw attention to the fact 

 that European education chissifies the advancement of man toward 

 civilization through a group of " ages ", i. e., the stone age, the bronze 

 age, the iron age. After the last of these " ages ", man was appar- 

 ently civilized. 



European man reached the iron age, where he was still divided 

 into innumerable petty principalities, each fighting the other, all 

 groping to achievement. Man of the American continent reached a 

 far more complete civilization and a less complicated state of affairs 

 using stone tools solely. 



Iron tools were unknown in the American continent before the 

 arrival of the Spanish hordes. If they had been known there, the 

 world would have looked different today. 



When we stand before any one of the hundreds of magnificent 

 Maya temples, long abandoned, and now crumbling before the on- 

 slaught of time and vegetation, we must admire the fact that every 

 stone was cut without metal tools, every stone and every basket of 

 mortar was carried on a man's back. No beast of burden other 

 than man was known to the Maya. Man was the beast of burden, 

 and this beast was a slave. Slaves were a trade object. 



The Maya were a civilized people, and as such they were divided 

 into many classes, ranks, and castes. At the bottom of the division 

 stood the slave, and even among the slaves there were distinctions. 



He who defaulted a gambling debt at the ball game could be made 

 a slave valued at the amount he had lost. He could not be resold 

 for more than his debt, and he could be reinstated as a free man if 

 he or his relatives paid the loss. 



If a slave, man or woman, died within a certain time after sale, 

 the seller was obliged to return a certain amount of the price to the 

 buyer.^ 



Captives in war were made slaves, and their progeny was born 

 in slavedom. Thus we learn from Landa. The man who slept with 

 a slave woman could be made a slave. Undoubtedly, it was slave 

 labor which sweated to construct the religious structures. Certainly 

 the traders had slaves to carry their loads of merchandise along the 

 highways of Mayapan, the great " land of the royal turkey and the 

 deer." 



Nomadic peoples are dependent on the chase, civilized peoples 

 live or die with their commerce. 



In the foregoing I have enumerated some of the most important 

 objects which the Maya traded, as well as their monetary units and 

 their system of counting these units. I will now turn to the market- 

 places where the merchandise was circulated. 



»Cogolludo: Lib. 4, Cap. 4, p. 292, ed. ISfiT. 



