MORLEY] INTRODUCTION TO STUDY OF MAYA HIEEOGLYPHS 33 



true of any of the three codices now extant, though there are grounds 

 for beUeving that the Codex Peresianus may be in part at least of an 

 historical nature. 



Much less progress has been made toward discovering the meaning 

 of the inscriptions. Doctor Brinton (1894 b: p. 32) states: 



My own conviction is that they [the inscriptions and codices] will prove to be 

 much more astronomical than even the latter [Doctor Forstemann] believes; that 

 they are primarily and essentially records of the motions of the heavenly bodies; and 

 that both figures and characters are to be interpreted as referring in the first instance 

 to the sun and moon, the planets, and those constellations which are most prominent 

 in the nightly sky in the latitude of Yucatan. 



Mr. Bowditch (1910: p. 199) has also brought forward very cogent 

 points tending to show that in part at least the inscriptions treat of the 

 intercalation of days necessary to bring the dated monuments, based 

 on a 365-day year, into harmony with the true solar year of 365.2421 

 days.^ 



While admitting that the inscriptions may, and probably do, 

 contain such astronomical matter as Doctor Brinton and Mr. Bow- 

 ditch have suggested, the wTiter believes nevertheless that funda- 

 mentally they are historical; that the monuments upon which they 

 are presented were erected and inscribed on or about the dates they 

 severally record; and finally, that the great majority of these dates 

 are those of contemporaneous events, and as such pertain to the 

 subject-matter of history. 



The reasons which have led him to this conclusion follow: 



First. The monuments at most of the southern Maya sites show 

 a certain periodicity in their sequence. This is most pronounced at 

 Quirigua, where all of the large monuments fall into an orderly 

 series, in which each monument is dated exactly 1,800 days later than 

 the one immediately preceding it in the sequence. This is also true 

 at Copan, where, in spite of the fact that there are many gaps in the 

 sequence, enough monuments conforming to the plan remain to 

 prove its former existence. The same may be said also of Naranjo, 

 Seibal, and Piedras Negras, and in fact of almost all the other large 

 cities which afford sufhcient material for a chronological arrangement. 



This interval of 1,800 days quite obviously was not determined by 

 the recurrence of any natural phenomenon . It has no parallel in 

 nature, but is, on the contrary, a highly artificial unit. Consequently, 

 monuments the erection of which was regulated by the successive 

 returns of this period could not depend in the least for the fact of 

 their existence on any astronomical phenomenon other than that of 

 the rising and setting of eighteen hundred successive suns, an arbi- 

 trary period. 



The Maya of Yucatan had a similar method of marking time,' 

 though their unit of enumeration was 7,200 days, or four times the 



1 This is the tropical year or the time from one equinox to its return. 

 43508°— Bull. 57—15 3 



