3-4 BUKEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 57 



longth of the one used for the same purpose in the older cities. The 

 following quotations from early Spanish chroniclers explain this 

 practice and indicate that the inscriptions presented on these time- 

 markers were of an historical nature : 



There were discovered in the plaza of that city [Mayapan] seven or eight stones 

 each ten feet in length , round at the end, and well worked. These had some writings 

 in the characters which they use, but were so worn by water that they could not be 

 read. Moreover, they think them to be in memory of the foundation and destruction 

 of tiiat city. There are other similar ones, although higher, at Zilan, one of the coast 

 towns. Th.e natives when asked what these things were, replied that they were 

 accustomed to erect one of these stones every twenty years, which is the niunber 

 they use for counting their ages.' 



The other is even more explicit : 



Their lustras having reached five in number, which made twenty years, which 

 they call a katun, they place a graven stone on another of the same kind laid in lime 

 and sand in the walls of their temples and the houses of the priests, as one still sees 

 to-day in the edifices in question, and in some ancient walls of our own convent at 

 Merida, about which there are some cells. In a city named Tixhualatun, which sig- 

 nifies ' ' place where one graven stone is placed upon another, ' ' they say are their 

 archives, where everybody had recourse for events of all kinds, as we do to 

 Simancas.2 



It seems almost necessary to conclude from such a parallel that 

 the inscriptions of the southern cities will also be found to treat of 

 historical matters. 



Second. When the monuments of the southern cities are arranged 

 according to their art development, that is, in stylistic sequence, they 

 are found to be arranged in their chronological order as well. This 

 important discovery, due largely to the researches of Dr. H. J. 

 Spinden, has enabled us to determine the relative ages of various 

 monuments quite independent of their respective dates. From a 

 stylistic consideration alone it has been possible not only to show 

 that the monuments date from different periods, but also to establish 

 the sequence of these periods and that of the monuments in them. 

 Finally, it has demonstrated beyond all doubt that the great 

 majority of the dates on Maya monuments refer to the time of their 

 erection, so that the inscriptions which they present are historical in 

 that they are the contemporaneous records of different epochs. 



Third. The dates on the monuments are such as to constitute a 

 strong antecedent probability of their historical character. Like 

 the records of most ancient peoples, the Maya monuments, judging 

 from their dates, were at fu'st scattered and few. Later, as new 

 cities were founded and the nation waxed stronger and stronger, the 

 number of monuments increased, until at the flood tide of Maya pros- 

 perity they were, comparatively speaking, conmion. Finally, as 

 .decline set in, fewer and fewer monuments were erected, and eventu- 

 ally effort in this field ceased altogether. The increasing number of 



1 Landa, 1864: p. 52. aCogoUudo, 1688: i, Ub. iv, v, p. 186. 



