145 



PROBABLE ERA AND DURATION OF THE 

 ARCHAIC MAYA CIVILIZATION. 



It is impossible at present to fix exactly the era of the Archaic Maya nation, 

 and it will forever remain so unless some inscription be found that brings their 

 chronology into accord and aligns it with that of the Yucatecs, Cakchiquels, or some 

 other of the modern branches. The chance for such a discovery is slight, but it is not 

 altogether hopeless. The people of the great Votanic empire were not extinguished 

 absolutely ; they were dispersed ; and at some point intermediate between their 

 original home and the places where they reappeared as separate nationalities may yet 

 be found records marking the various stages of transition between the different 

 calendars. 



But, though no precise determination of the period in which they flourished can be 

 made, I think it possible to approximate very closely to it. There are several indices 

 to guide us in such an attempt. In the first place, the inscriptions themselves show 

 that Palenque, Copan, Quirigua, Menche, and Tikal were contemporaneous, at least at 

 some stage in the existence of each. There is not an instance of diversity in all their 

 calendars ; their dates are all correlative, and in most of the records parallel each other. 

 From this is deducible the important fact that — whether a single empire, a federation, 

 or separate nations — they were a homogeneous people, constituting the grandest native 

 civilization in the "Western Hemisphere of which there is any record. Yet when the 

 Spaniards arrived upon this theatre of prehistoric American grandeur, there was not 

 only no powerful nation extant but no tradition or memory of former national greatness. 

 The very sites of the ancient capitals were unmentioned, nameless, unknown. This 

 obliviousness could not result from the passage of a few score or a few hundred years. 

 It could only come in the wake of a period that had outlasted the patience and reten- 

 tiveness of even aboriginal minds. Next, Dr. Otto Stoll, the distinguished comparative 

 linguist, who has made a special study of the Maya dialects, states that the Cakchiquel 

 language, one of the most nearly affined to that of the Tzentals, who at present occupy 

 the central seat of the extinct empire, is yet different enough to require a period of at 

 least two thousand years to account for the divarication. This points to a remote date 

 of separation, though indefinite. Thirdly, we find in the Yucatec chronicles a definite 

 indication, singularly in keeping with Dr. Stoll's estimate. All the Xiu chronicles 

 begin with a record of the migration of their ancestors, in two great bodies about two 

 hundred and forty years apart, from some region to the westward. From long and 



BIOL. CENTR.-AJ1ER., ArchiEol. 19 



