GUATEMALA AND THE HIGHEST NATIVE AMERICAN 



CIVILIZATION. 



By ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON. 



{Read April i8, 191 3.) 



By common consent the most backward part of our continent is 

 Central America. Among the repubhcs of Central America Guate- 

 mala is considered to hold the lowest place. In Guatemala it is uni- 

 versally agreed that the province of Peten is the wildest, most un- 

 civilized and most uninhabitable part. Peten, then, may be regarded 

 as at the very bottom in the scale of American civilization. Its 

 native inhabitants are either absolute savages, or semi-barbarians, 

 densely ignorant and highly inefficient. Nevertheless in the past 

 this region was the home of the highest civilization that ever de- 

 veloped in any part of the western hemisphere, a civilization which 

 was not transitory, but lasted hundreds of years. It seems to have 

 grown up where we find its traces, since nowhere else do we dis- 

 cover any premonitions of it. Here the ancient Mayas developed 

 a unique system of architecture, whose earlier stages appear at 

 Copan and the ruins of Peten, while its latest and most showy, 

 although decadent, expression is found in the wonderful ruins of 

 Yucatan a few hundred miles farther north. In this same part of 

 Guatemala the Mayas devoloped the art of sculpture to such a point 

 that their statues, though crude in many ways, represent the features 

 of the ancient populace so exactly that type after type among the 

 modern population is easily recognized in the monuments. Here 

 the Mayas attained such skill in the mechanic arts that great stones 

 fifteen to thirty feet long, and weighing 20 to 80 tons were trans- 

 ported from quarries a mile or two away and set up in the midst of 

 great court-yards or temple areas. The buildings themselves were 

 elaborately planned and decorated with all manner of carefully 

 carved designs. All this was done with no tools, so far as can be 



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