seler] 



ANTIQUITIES OF GUATEMALA 



85 



probable. The inclined position which was given to the face masks 

 in the vessels of the Lacandons proves that the original shape can not 

 have been an erect hgure like those of the Zapotec tioure vessels and 

 the vessels of Ranchito de las Animas. The}' are, it would seem, more 

 like the vessels represented in <:/, ligure 23, and a, figure 24, below — 

 that is, animal figures whose bodies form the hollow of the vessel. 

 The human face which our vessels show might have originated as a 

 substitute for tiie animal head. It seems more probable to me that the 

 human face held in the open jaws of the animal on the vessel in d^ fig- 

 ure 23, and similar ones, as well as in numerous small clay figures 

 of Yucatan, in the stone monuments of Menche Tinamit, and else- 

 where, has finally become predominant. This would best explain to 

 me the projecting band bv which the face mask of our Lacandon 

 vessels is bordered above the forehead, which is wanting only in the 

 mask of e^ figure 13.'^' This, then, would represent what remains of 

 the animal jaw, and the erect, comblike object above it the relic of a 



^^ 



Fig. 14. Potterv vessels from Guatemala. 



tuft of feathers, which rises in most of these figures above the crown or 

 the nostrils. The vessel shown in e^ figure 13, which, instead of the 

 band above the forehead and the comblike, erect object, shows only a 

 notched edge of the forehead, appears to represent the last stage of 

 this development. 



1 need not especially dwell upon the fact that the face masks contain 

 only things which have long since gone out of use, which the makers 

 of these vessels no longer had before their eyes, and which they merely 

 repeated in stereotyped fashiow. Neither the ear pegs, nor the knob- 

 like objects resting on the cheeks (cheek pegs?), nor the knob, which is 

 difficult to explain, placed above the root of the nose, nor the deep 

 cuts which outline the upper lip in/, figure 13, are used to-day among 

 the Lacandons. Like the Lacandons themselves, these vessels, fossil- 

 ized, as it were, represent the remains of a long-vanished epoch of 

 civilization. 



The territories of the Chols and the Lacandons would to-day adjoin, 

 on the south, the lands of the Qu'ekchi and their kin, the Pokonchi. 



a In a, fig. 13, the whole of the part referred to is broken off. 



