456 
been condensed into much conventionalised signs, 
and nothing but cyphers and sums have been made 
out with some certainty. The rest is guesswork, 
run wild. 
The Nahoa, Zapotecs, and Tarascans had risen 
to kingships, but the Maya were split into many 
small tribes, independent, and each under its own 
hereditary chief, a condition of things which makes 
it difficult to account for the splendour and size 
of the temples and other public buildings, unless, 
as Spinden suggests, the old Maya, like the 
Greeks, were religiously and artistically a nation, 
but politically anumber of small sovereign States. 
Little is known about their religious ideas. They 
worshipped many deities—above all, one repre~ 
sented by the plumed serpent, with endless sym- 
bolic variations. The ceremonials centred in 
processions, incense-burning, and human. sacri- 
fices, the victims being supplied by raids. The 
ritual, the appeasement of the many deities in 
their various phases and imagined manifestations, 
necessitated a most elaborate calendar, which, to- 
gether with their complicated chronology, implied 
a considerable amount of astronomical know- 
ledge. 
Foremost in the field of work at Mayan anti- 
quities is the Peabody Museum. “ Maya art was 
on a much higher scale than any art in America, 
except, possibly, the textile art of Peru,” “Ube 
ancient masterpieces of Yucatan and Central 
America show a fine technique and an admirable 
artistic sense, largely given over to the expression 
of barbarous religious concepts, and they furnish 
many analogies to the early products of the classic 
Mediterranean lands. Indeed, upon such tech- 
nical grounds as fore-shortening, composition, and 
design, Maya art was in advance of the art of 
Assyria and Egypt, and only below that of Greece 
in the list of great national achievements.” But 
whilst the Greeks apotheosised the human form, 
the Maya gods and heroes had fundamentally the 
characteristics of reptiles, birds, and beasts, more 
or less humanised grotesque figures, often 
smothered, overpowered by the detail of sym- 
bolical attributes. 
Painting in colours upon paper and excellent 
plaster, carving in wood and stone, modelling 
in clay and stucco, low and high relief, and full 
round, were much practised, and these people 
would have accomplished more if they had risen 
to iron and bronze chisels, instead of implements 
of stone and obsidian, and if the country had 
supplied them with marble instead of a coarse and 
uneven limestone. 
Our author has arranged the numerous principal 
monuments of Copan in Honduras upon a pri- 
marily stylistic principle. They fall into four 
chronologically successive stages, but it is to be 
remembered that a new type of stela, for instance, 
was well begun before the old type was aban- 
doned, so that there is a considerable overlap; 
provided always that their Maya dates have been 
correctly interpreted, which is by no means 
always the case. 
NOM 28 21, NViOLanOay 
NATURE 
[JULY 25% Tom 
First: the stela show glyphs of archaic form, 
and in low, flat relief. Altars are drum-shaped, 
plain, or with rudely carved ornamental symbols. 
Second : the stele are sculptured, with gradualiy 
higher relief. The face of the figure is that of 
an animal. The head-dress of the figure consists 
of the face of an animal. The heels stand to- 
gether, with toes turned outward, forming an 
angle of 180°. 
third: the stele are sculptured. 
faces with turban-dress. 
Fourth: stele sculptured, practically in full 
round, with considerable modelling of face and 
limbs, which assume a less awkward position., 
Elaborate head-dress with feather-drapery. The 
altars represent two-headed dragons or serpents, 
a turtle, or a couple of grotesque jaguars. 
The whole development at Copan comprised 
only 276 years, beginning with the 11th tun of the 
4th Katun, and ending with the roth year of the 
18th Katun of the oth cycle; according to 
Spinden’s assumption from about 250 A.D. to 
525 A.D. 
For Guatemala and Honduras, where, besides 
others, the famous monuments of Tikal, Quirigua, 
and Copan are situated, he distinguishes, after a 
proto-historic period, an archaic period from 160— 
755 A.D., upon which follows the great or brilliant 
period which lasted to about 600 A.p. For no 
particularly binding reasons this is supposed to 
include the wonderful monuments of Palenque in 
Tabasco. After some transitional period a Nahoa 
period in Mexico is fixed at from the year 1195 
onwards, 
From this it will be seen that the tendency to 
assign a sensational age to the Central American 
monuments has given way to more reasonable 
views, although our author goes quite far enough 
back when he puts the beginning of the gth cycle 
at 160 A.D., whilst others are satisfied with a 
date several hundred years later. 
It may not be amiss to make a few explanatory 
remarks about this Maya chronology. They had 
a ceremonial almanac of 260 days; twenty sec- 
tions of thirteen days each; twenty day-signs of 
animals and other natural objects, combined in a- 
certain order with the numerals 1~13, so that every 
one of these 260 days had an absolutely fixed 
name, number, and position. They reckoned 
by scores, whilst the number 13, as Foerstemann 
discovered, is based upon the fact that eight years 
of 365 days are exactly five years of the planet 
Venus, which they worshipped. This curious 
almanac is, in fact, based upon a combination of 
terrestrial and Venus years. 
They had further a civil year of 360 days, called 
a tun; twenty tuns are a katun, and twenty katun 
a cycle or big period. Now, if every score of 
years is designated by a name-day of the cere- 
monial almanac. 260 katuns can be fixed with- 
out repetition, i.e. 5200 years of 360 days. If 
this unwieldy number is subdivided by a score 
of scores, 400, there result thirteen cycles. 
Foerstemann has further discovered that the zero 
Grotesque 
