CHAPTER OF ANCIENT AMERICAN HISTORY 



27 



[Maya history depends upon three Hnes of 

 study which must be carefully brought 

 into relation, each with the others — 

 namely, traditions, inscriptions and nat- 

 ural developments in art. The first of 

 these is, at first sight, most intelligible. 

 Brief chronicles, called Books of Chilan 

 Balam, were preserved at several towns 

 in northern Yucatan. These chronicles 

 were written in Spanish letters but in 

 Maya words by educated Maya Indians 

 during the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries and were doubtless based upon 

 earlier native documents which con- 

 tained hieroglyphs and pictures. The 

 events of history recorded in these 

 chronicles are fixed with reference to the 

 katuns or twenty-year periods of Maya 

 chronology. These katuns are dis- 

 tinguished from each other by the num- 

 bers one to thirteen which fall in a pecu- 



liar order. Any date in the chronicles 

 is definite for a cycle of thirteen times 

 twenty or 260 years. But by putting 

 down all the katuns . which passed, 

 whether or not there were historical 

 entries opposite them, the Maya his- 

 torian prevented confusion in the 260- 

 year cycles and actually carried the 

 historical count over a stretch of seventy 

 katuns, or fourteen hundred years, be- 

 fore the coming of the Spaniards. 



Typical vaulted room illustrating the archi- 

 tectural skill of the Maya builders. The vault 

 is a solid concrete mass covered by a veneer of 

 nicely dut facing stones 



The plumed serpent in the sculptiu-ed lower 

 chamber of the Temple of the Jaguars. Tliis may 

 be identified with Kukulcan, the Maya equivalent 

 of Quetzalcoatl [Drawn from carving in illustra- 

 tion at bottom of preceding page] 



Now let us glance at the second line 

 of research — the inscriptions. These 

 are found on monolithic monuments, 

 lintels, tablets and other objects. The 

 inscriptions of the greatest value to the 

 student of ancient American history 

 are those expressing dates in the so-called 

 archaic Maya calendar. This archaic 

 calendar is essentially the same as the 

 one used in the Books of Chilan Balam 



