II 

 Mexican Maize Fields 



MUCH was to happen. ... At the very time that the 

 agricultural Angles and Saxons were landing on the 

 shore of Britain, bringing with them the "korn" (millet or 

 barley) they had grown on the banks of the Elbe, the Maya 

 of Guatemala, builders of Copan, Palenque and a dozen other 

 cities, suddenly forsook the cities they had raised and migrated 

 eastward and northward into the isthmus of Yucatan. 



Why they left the seat of their first empire remains a mys- 

 tery. The ruins of the cities show that they were not destroyed 

 by invaders, but deserted. Those who built them walked away 

 and left them standing there to become the haunt of snakes 

 and lizards. Those who had cleared the milpas that stretched 

 away from the cities on every side forsook the fields. The rains 

 brought the jungle closer and closer, until all mark of cultiva- 

 tion was blotted out under lush wild growth. 



It was one of those extraordinary migrations which have 

 occurred several times in the history of the Maya. It may have 

 been inspired by some religious belief. Whatever the driving 

 force, it was sufficiently powerful to empty cities which had 

 had a population of thirty thousand, and to send a highly 

 civilized people into a new and unpromising wilderness. 



Not all went, of course. Descendants of those who chose to 

 stay on the fields they had cleared, tilled and sown, rather than 

 set forth into the unknown, still live in the mountain villages 

 of Guatemala. They are not a pure race. The Maya strain has 

 been crossed by half a dozen later tribes. But as each wave of 

 invaders was less civilized than those in possession of the land, 

 the newcomers adopted the habits and customs of the older 



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