January 25, 1900] 



NA TURE 



293 



because he overlooks one of the factors essential to its 

 solution. The cradle of the Maya race is not Yucatan, 

 which they appear to have been the first to occupy as an 

 already civilised people (Mercer). They brought their 

 civilisation with them from the Anahuac tableland, which 

 they had reached from the Atlantic slopes (Tamaulipas, 

 \'era Cruz), where the original stock still survives. Here 

 the widely-diffused Huaxtec nation speaks, not a dialect 

 or a later form, but an archaic type of Maya speech. 

 Here also they had attained a high degree of culture in 

 remote times, as attested by the wonderful truncated 

 pyramid of Papantla, which, although described by 

 Humboldt, appears to be again forgotten. Though of 

 small size, Papantla must rank as the most wonderful 

 structure of the kind in the New World, being built, not 

 of adobe, like Teotihuacan, Cholula, and those farther 

 south, but of huge porphyry blocks covered with glyphs 

 and carvings of snakes and alligators, and exquisitely 

 polished, like the monoliths of Tiahuanaco on the shores 

 of Lake Titicaca. The pyramid is disposed in receding 

 terraces, and the platform on which the sacrifices were 

 offered is approached by a broad flight of steps. 

 Papantla is consequently a type of these structures, 

 which, like the dolmens and menhirs of the Afro- 

 European men of the New Stone Age, may now be fol- 

 lowed along the Maya line of migrations through 

 Cholula to Tula (Tollan), and thence by the western 

 (Pacific) route to their new homes in Central America. 

 What drove them south ? Natural expansion or invasion ? 

 Clearly the latter, else they must have held their ground 

 in the great centres of their culture on the plateau — 

 Teotihuacan and Tula-where the ruins are not of Nahua, 

 but of Maya type. The Nahuas, probably distant kinsmen 

 of the North American Shoshones, came later, and swept 

 in successive waves of barbarism over the tableland, clear- 

 ing out the cultured Huaxtecs (northern Mayas), and de- 

 stroying their great city of Tollan, whence came their 

 name, " Toltecs.'" The last wave was that of the Aztecs, 

 who, after settling in the V'alley of Mexico (Tenochtitlan) 

 and developing a certain culture under Huaxtec influences, 

 also spread southwards, following the same Pacific route 

 and ranging as far as Guatemala, Salvador and Nicaragua 

 (Pipils and Niquirans). Now everything may be ex- 

 plained. Safely entrenched on the Chiapas-Guatemalan 

 plateau, the early Mayas continued to develop their 

 "Toltec" culture, partly assimilating the Quiches and 

 other rude aborigines, all of whom now speak languages 

 of Maya stock, and at last passing at the apogee of their 

 civilisation into the hitherto unoccupied limestone 

 peninsula of Mayapan (Yucatan). Here they were still 

 later (not long before the discovery) followed by the 

 conquering Aztecs, whence the traces of distinctive 

 Xahua art, such as 



'■ those curious mural paintings recently found by Dr. 

 (iann in British Honduras, on the eastern limit of the 

 Maya area, paintings essentially Nahua in style, yet ac- 

 companied by a legend in Maya hieroglyphs " (p. 252). 



Mr. Maudslay also devotes a chapter to this Maya 

 script, which he rightly distinguishes from the Aztec, 

 while " doubtful if more than a mere trace of phoneticism 

 has as yet been established" (p. 254). A very full and 

 lucid account is given of the ingenious method by which 

 Mr. J. T. Goodman has with some measure of success 

 NC. 1578, VOL. 61] 



attempted to solve the riddle of the Maya Calendric 

 system. But, strange to say, no reference is made to 

 Mr. Cyrus Thomas's more extended and perhaps more 

 fruitful labours in this difficult field of palaeographic 

 research. In his "Day Symbols of the Maya Year" {xdth 

 Ann. Report Bureau Eth., p. 205), Mr. Thomas seems 

 at all events to prove that the Maya Script had passed 

 from the pictographic through the ideographic to an 

 initial stage of a true phonetic system. As in the Egyptian 

 hieroglyphs, all the processes are no doubt intermingled, 

 while several of the symbols must be read phonetically 

 as syllables if not as letters. The system would thus 

 appear to have reached the rebus stage, in which some 

 of the characters are to be taken as pictograms, some as 

 ideograms, and some as syllables irrespective of their 

 pictorial value. 



On the broader question of the independent evolution 

 of American culture, Mr. Maudslay takes what may now 

 perhaps be called the orthodox view. 



" It is, indeed, possible that accidental drifts from Asia 

 may occasionally have influenced American culture, but 

 such drifts across a great ocean must have been few and 

 far between. If the population of America came origin- 

 ally from the Asiatic Continent, such an original migration 

 must have taken place so early in the history of the 

 human race that it antedated the use of bronze, iron, or 

 domestic animals in the land from which the migrants 

 came" (p. 272). 



In other words, whatever the American aborigines owe 

 to the Old World dates from the Stone Ages, as the 

 expression is commonly understood, all else has been 

 locally developed independently of any extraneous 

 influences. 



The volume, it is almost needless to say, is superbly 

 illustrated with over a hundred photogravures, chromo- 

 lithographs, ground-plans and etchings, besides a large 

 scale-map of all the Central American lands (Guatemala, 

 Yucatan, Chiapas, Honduras and neighbouring districts) 

 in which ruined cities have been discovered. There is 

 also a sufficiently copious index, and the volume is 

 altogether handsomely equipped. A. H. Keane. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 

 Das Geschlecht der PJlanzen. Von R. J. Camerarius. 

 Pp. xiii + 78. (Leipzig : Engelmann, 1899). 



It seems difficult to believe that scarcely two centuries 

 have elapsed since botanists first began to recognise the 

 most elementary fact in the sexual propagation of plants, 

 namely, the function of the pollen as the male fertilising 

 agent. Yet such is the fact. The letter of Camerarius 

 to V'alentin, " De sexu plantarum," published in 1694, 

 marks an epoch in the history of botany. Up to that 

 time a knowledge of the processes which must precede 

 the production of a fertile seed had remained in statu 

 quo ante since the time of Theophrastus, the pupil of 

 Aristotle ; nor was any further substantial advance made 

 before the writings of Kolreuter and Sprengel, seventy 

 and one hundred years later. 



The services of Camerarius to botanical science have 

 been amply acknowledged by the historians of botany, 

 especially by Sachs in his "Geschichte der Botanik"(see 

 Garnsey's translation, pp. 385-90), who speaks of his 

 letter to Valentin as being "often mentioned, but appar- 

 ently little read " ; but now for the first time we have a 

 translation of it in any modern language, and the little 

 book is a valuable addition to the botanist's library. 



