JA^■UARY 2 7, 19 1 6] 



NATURE 



593 



There appears to be little doubt that the heads under 

 <iiscussion on Stela B at Copan are intended to repre- 

 sent the blue macaw, while those on the buildings of 

 northern Yucatan are but manifestations of the serpent' 

 that gives its proper character to Maya art. These 

 somewhat ludicrous extremes in identification are 

 reached by comparison with other Maya representa- 

 tions rather than by comparison with drawings made 

 in China. In the first instance, it was arrived at 

 independently by F. Parry in his " Sacred Maya 

 Stone," a fanciful study written in 1893; by G. B. 

 •Gorden in "Conventionalism and Realism in Maya 

 Art at Copan," 1909; by A. M. Tozzer and G. Allen 

 in their "Animal Figures in Maya Codices," 1910; 

 and by the present writer in his " Study of Maya Art," 



1913- 



Three drawings will serve to illustrate the point, 

 all taken from Copan, and one from the back of 

 Stela B itself. The first (a) is a full, round sculpture 

 of a macaw head, in which the characteristic long 

 upper bill, short under bill, and thick tongue are 

 drawn rather realistically. The eye is surrounded by 

 raised knobs, and below the eye there is a spiral 



formed by knobs. The nostril is seen in its proper 

 position, and a line of demarcation appears along the 

 lower edge of the upper bill. In (b) the left-hand half 

 of the hieroglyph represents the same head, and it is 

 to be noted that the under part of the upper bill is 

 now differentiated from the upper part by cross- 

 hatching When we come to c (the drawing is taken 

 from the side, and shows details not visible on the 

 front) we can trace all the parts shown in the two 

 previous faces. The eye is surrounded by knobs, but 

 the spiral below the eye is turned in the opposite 

 direction. The nostril is in plain view, and parts of 

 the under side of the upper bill are marked by cross- 

 hatching. The lower bill and the tongue are lacking, 

 but the omission of the lower jaw is very frequent 

 in Maya drawings of animal heads. There is added, 

 however, an ear, above which rises a flamboyant 

 ornament. This detail of the ear with its ornament is 

 unnatural, but is found, nevertheless, on most Maya 

 drawings of reptile and bird heads. The Central 

 American artists were not concerned only with the 

 realism of natural motives, but having put in their 

 drawing enough fact to identify the subject, they felt 

 free to let their fancy range. Dr. Seler was not so 

 absurdly mistaken as might be supposed in his sug- 

 stion of tortoise heads, because the Maya draw the 

 id of this reptile very much as they do those of the 



NO. 2413, VOL. 96] 



macaw. The glyph for the day Kayab is now admitted 

 to represent a bird's head, although previously ex- 

 plained as that of a tortoise. 



That the heads with projecting snouts used as 

 architectural decoration are connected with the concept 

 of the snake rather than the elephant is easily proven 

 by a study of homologous parts in a series of 

 designs. Space forbids me to go into this subject, 

 but I have already treated it rather fully in the paper 

 referred to. As for the elephant-mound and the 

 numerous "elephant-pipes," they have long since been 

 discredited as regards the original identification, and 

 not a few have been cast into the limbo of plain frauds. 



It is not a mere difference of opinion upon rather 

 minor details of archaeology that prompts this reply 

 to Dr. G. Elliot Smith's communication. It is because 

 he ventures to draw conclusions of great importance 

 as regards cultural connection between China and 

 Mexico in ancient times from this tainted evidence. 

 In dealing with the hydra-headed fallacy of Old 

 World origins for New, World civilisations it is 

 necessary to cut off each head in turn with a searing 

 sword. Herhert J. Spinden. 



American Museum of Natural History, 

 December 18, 1915. 



In my second letter on this subject, which was pub- 

 lished in Nature on December 16 (p. 425), I have 

 already dealt with the main point raised by Prof. 

 Tozzer 's letter; and since then I have presented to 

 the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, for 

 publication in its Memoirs, a detailed examination of 

 the whole problem, with a series of illustrations and 

 a full discussion of all the evidence. The account 

 given in my memoir sheds a remarkable light upon 

 the psychology of Americans, 

 both ancient and modern, and 

 especially upon the ethno- 

 logical " Monroe doctrine," 

 which demands that every- 

 thing American belongs to 

 America, and must have been 

 wholly invented there. The 

 Maya civilisation was Amer- 

 ican in origin only in the 

 same sense that Harvard Uni- 

 versity is — immigrants from 

 the Old World supplied the 

 ideas and the technical know- 

 ledge, which enabled an insti- 

 tution to be built up, no doubt 

 with certain modifications prompted by local conditions 

 and the contact of a variety of cultural influences. 



As it may be some time before my lengthy memoir 

 can be published, I should like to refer to Prof. 

 Tozzer's other arguments now. 



Like the other American ethnologists, to whom I 

 referred in my last letter, he lays great stress upon 

 the fact that "the ornamental scroll beneath the 

 eye" (see the figures taken from Spinden's mono- 

 graph) is found both in the elephant- (c) and the 

 macaw-sculptures (a) at Copan ; and he uses that fact 

 as an argument in favour of what I regard as the 

 picture of an elephant having been intended for a 

 macaw. Has it ever occurred to Prof. Tozzer to 

 inquire into the origin and meaning of the scroll to 

 which he attaches so much importance? If he will 

 do so, he will learn that, so far from the elephant 

 having borrowed the scroll from the macaw, the 

 scroll was an essential part of the elephant-design 

 before it left Asia, and, in fact, is found in conven- 

 tionalised drawings of the elephant in the Old World 

 from Cambodia to Scotland. There is no doubt what- 

 j ever that there was a certain amount of confusion in 



