2O Singing Valleys 



other cereal. It was not even necessary to clear or turn over the 

 soil for corn. One had only to girdle the trees with a stone 

 hatchet to destroy the foliage and let in the sunshine, scratch 

 the surface of the soil, and drop the kernels into hills. After 

 that the maize took care of itself. To the ignorant savage who 

 knew no more of agriculture than this, the maize yielded him 

 enough to keep him from starvation. The husbandman who 

 had reached a higher degree of intelligence and who irrigated 

 his land and worked the hills with a hoe, gathered the harvest 

 into generous bins. 



Ultimately, the corn's lavish rewards in return for very little 

 labor increased the population and the national wealth. It 

 made the Maya builders of cities. In Guatemala, along the 

 Montagua River in Honduras, and later in Yucatan, the corn- 

 planters developed a culture which is one of the world's 

 wonders. Perhaps 2000 years ago these early Americans drained 

 the jungle floor, built temples, paved avenues and developed 

 a communal life. They traded with other tribes living up and 

 down both coasts of the Americas. Europe may not have been 

 unaware of them. The sands of Panama have given up the 

 skeleton of a Roman galley, some bits of rusted armor and 

 coins bearing the inscription of Augustus Caesar. At a time 

 when the ancient Britons were painting their faces blue and 

 dressing in skins, the Maya were setting down their history and 

 religious philosophy in a form of picture writing which, ac- 

 cording to von Humboldt, they and the Egyptians must have 

 learned from the same source. They were designing intricate 

 sculptures to cover the facades of great, pyramided temples; 

 they were weaving and building. Their skill in mathematics 

 is revealed by their invention of the abstract conception of 

 zero, which made possible for them intricate astronomical cal- 

 culations, resulting in a continuous calendar. 



On the east and west sides of the plaza of their city of 

 Uaxactun, built somewhere about 591 A.D., the arrangement 

 of temples and pyramids formed a giant sundial which deter- 

 mined the procession of the equinoxes and solstices through 



