GUATEMALA—-KIDDER 355 
of the utmost archeological and artistic importance. The work, 
however, would be long and costly. A tremendous amount of labor 
would have to go into the mere felling of the forest. And the jungle 
growths once removed, the pyramids and temples would have to be 
stabilized, for the tree roots, which in past ages have caused such 
destruction, now serve to hold and bind together the masonry of walls 
and terraces. For this reason, no project should be undertaken at 
Tikal until a thorough and definitive piece of excavation and repair 
can be assured. 
In so brief asummary as this of the archeological riches of Guatemala 
and of their scientific significance, it is impossible to do more than 
outline a few of the manifold problems of the lowland area. Those 
of the origin of Maya civilization have already been glanced at, and 
it was assumed that it arose from a local Archaic base in north- 
central Peten. The outward sweep of Maya culture seems to have 
been comparable to that of Christianity over early medieval Europe, 
that is to say, a diffusion to already resident and probably Maya- 
speaking populations of a religious cult, with linked ceremonial, 
artistic, architectural, and intellectual attributes, rather than a 
spread of people. Although this is somewhat of an assumption, it 
seems to be borne out by divergences from Peten practice in the more 
everyday aspects of material culture, such as milling stones, common 
household pottery, etc., which are to be seen in the Motagua Valley, 
at Copan, on the Usumacinta, and in Yucatan, all areas into which, 
if we have correctly interpreted the evidence of the dated stelae, 
Maya ceremonialism penetrated from the Peten nucleus. 
What stimulated the development of the extraordinary Maya cult 
and what factors conditioned its wide acceptance will probably never 
be revealed to us, but as to the life, the arts, the architecture, the 
calendar, and the hieroglyphic writing of the Maya, we already have 
considerable knowledge, and further work in the as yet almost un- 
touched wealth of ruins in Peten and adjacent regions will yield a 
rich harvest of new information. We may also learn whether the 
entire territory occupied by peoples of Maya culture was under the 
sway of a central government, in other words whether the ‘Old 
Empire” was indeed an empire; whether it was loosely bound together 
in some sort of confederacy; or whether, like ancient Greece, it was 
divided into independent city states. At all events, the southern 
cities were in existence for some six centuries before they were aban- 
doned and the once populous Peten reverted to jungle. Why this 
should have occurred has not as yet been satisfactorily explained. 
So much—and it is little enough—for the lowlands of northern 
Peten. Between them and the highlands is the vast and also densely 
forested sweep of southern Peten, a little-explored region which seems 
never to have been heavily populated. 
