556 



THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 



on the site of Ti-hoo, the ancient Maya capital, is at the present day to a great extent 

 Mayan still. Even the old style of building is retained, the houses in the suburbs being built 

 at an elevation of a yard or so above the level of the roadway, while the different streets are 

 indicated by images of various birds representing the old Mayan minor deities. The Mayas 

 are a people of delicate and almost feminine physiognomy, and of equally gentle disposition. 

 Nevertheless, they held out stubbornly against the Spanish conquerors; and in a narrow strip 

 of country between Yucatan and British Honduras a remnant of the Mayas has survived all 

 the wars which have convulsed this part of the American Continent. There seems, indeed, a 

 tendency for the Spanish settlers and half-breeds to become absorbed in the native stock; 

 while, with the exception of the Campeachy district, the old Maya-Quiche dialects are tending 

 to regain the ascendency in Yucatan and Guatemala. Even nominal Christians retain many 

 of the old Maya rites; the descendants of the national astrologers still practising the ancient 



divinations, forecasting the future, and predicting good or 

 bad harvests by the stars. The old tutelary deities have, 

 however, assumed the names of Christian saints, although 

 their attributes have become more or less modified; and the 

 doctrine of the transmigration of souls still holds its position, 

 as is exemplified by the practice of chalking the road from 

 the house to the grave of a recently deceased person, in 

 order that the soul may be able to find its way at the 

 proper time to enter the body of a new-born child. 



But the chief interest connected with the Maya-Quiche 

 civilisation centres on the system of reckoning time; and 

 in this connection we cannot do better than quote from the 

 report of the Director of the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology: 

 " Most of the American tribes had advanced to the stage 

 of graphic symbolism, and were thus on the threshold of 

 writing when the New World was discovered by Columbus. 

 Among many of the tribes the art was rudimentary, and 

 limited to crude pictography. The pictographs were painted 

 or sculptured on cliff-faces, boulders, the walls of caverns, and 

 other rock-surfaces, and even more frequently, although less 

 permanently, on trees, as well as on skins, bark, and various 

 artificial objects. . . . Among certain Mexican tribes, also, 

 autographic records were in use, and some of them were 

 much better differentiated than any within the present area 

 of the United States. The records were not only painted 

 and sculptured on stone and moulded in stucco, but were 

 inscribed in books or codices of native parchment and paper. 

 Among the plains Indians the calendars are simple, consisting 

 commonly of a record of winters and of notable events occurring either during the winter or 

 during some other season of the year; while the shorter divisions are reckoned by 'nights' 

 (days), 'dead moons ' (lunations), and seasons of leafing, flowering, or fruiting of plants, migrating 

 of animals, etc.; so that there is no definite system of reducing days to lunations or lunations 

 to years. Among the Pueblo Indians calendric records are inconspicuous or absent, though 

 there is a much more definite calendric system, which is fixed and perpetuated by religious 

 ceremonies; while among some of the Mexican tribes there are elaborate calendric systems 

 combined with complete calendric records. The perfection of the calendar among the 

 Maya and Nahua Indians is indicated by the fact that not only were 365 days reckoned 

 as a year, but the bissextile (leap year) was recognised indeed, some astronomers have 

 regarded the calendar of ancient Mexico as even more accurate than the Julian calendar of 

 early Christendom." 



Photo by M. Pierre Petit] [Paris. 



A GAUCHO OF LA PLATA. 



