GUATEMALA—KIDDER 353 
those systems were in full working order. Where this took place is 
as yet unknown. Peten seems to be the most likely region, but the 
eminent Mexican archeologist Alfonso Caso has recently brought for- 
ward weighty arguments tending to show that bar-and-dot numera- 
tion, always thought to have been a Maya invention, may have been 
originated in Oaxaca, supposedly by the ancestral Zapotec !; and if 
the very early date on the famous stela of Tres Zapotes, in Veracruz, 
has been correctly read and if it recorded a contemporaneous event, 
one might have to look to the southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico 
for the place of origin of the Maya calendrical system. 
We now pass upward in time to the Classic Period, which saw the 
full flowering of Mesoamerican civilization in Guatemala, Honduras, 
El Salvador, and Mexico. It was once rather generally believed, 
because of the brilliance of this development among the Maya, that 
their culture preceded and stimulated such others as those of Monte 
Alban, Tajin, and Teotihuacan in Mexico, and of Tazumal in El 
Salvador. Finds of Early Classic Maya pottery at Teotihuacan and 
also in tombs at Kaminaljuyu, where it was associated with Teoti- 
huacan pottery and a stone carving of unmistakable Tajin style, have 
suggested, however, that most, if not all, the Classic cultures came into 
being more or less simultaneously, each apparently growing out of a 
preexistent and already locally specialized Archaic forerunner. As to 
the chronological position of still another very important culture, the 
Olmec or La Venta of southern Veracruz and Tabasco, there is greater 
doubt, the distinguished Mexican artist and scholar Miguel Covarru- 
bias believing it to have been earlier than, and in some respects 
ancestral to, those just listed. Other students feel that Olmec was 
probably contemporaneous with them. 
This problem and many others have been really little more than 
formulated. Much exploration, excavation, and comparative studies 
of ceramics, stone artifacts, jade carving, and major stone sculpture 
must be carried out before satisfactory solutions can be reached. In 
all such research Guatemala is destined to play a most significant 
role because of the abundance of its ancient remains and also because, 
throughout its long pre-Columbian history, parts at least of Guatemala 
served as a highway for migration and trade. 
Archeologically speaking, Guatemala, of the Classic Period may, like 
Gaul, be divided, very roughly, into three parts: the northern lowlands, 
the highlands, and the Pacific coast. The northern lowland province 
consists of the Department of the Peten, and British Honduras, 
with limited extensions into the Mexican states of Campeche and 
Chiapas. The Peten is its heart, both geographically and culturally. 
In Peten lie Piedras Negras, Altar de Sacrificios, Uaxactun, Holmul, 
Xultun, Naranjo, and Tikal, the greatest of all ancient Maya cities. 
4A. Caso, “Calendario y Escritura de las Antiguas Culturas de Monte Alban,” Mexico, 1947. 
