ERA AND DURATION OF AECHAIC MAYA CIVILIZATION. 147 



nation ; for the Mayas were in no sense nomadic, their instinct everywhere seeming 

 to be to cling to their homes until driven from them by force or disaster. What was 

 the cause of the disruption can only be conjectured. The little gleanable from the 

 barren field of Yucatec history discloses three causes that at different times powerfully 

 affected their national existence, any one of which if intensified, under the conditions 

 then existing, might account for the extinction of a far superior civilization. The first 

 of these was invasion by savage hordes ; the second, devastation by earthquakes, 

 tornadoes or pestilence ; the third and most important — -the one that had destroyed 

 all of power and glory in Yucatec civilization years before the coming of the Spaniards 

 — was domestic war. The first two of these causes would operate quickly, and might 

 suddenly arrest a people at the very height of their prosperity ; the last would be of 

 slower effect, requiring a century, or even centuries, perhaps, to bring about the final 

 downfall — but, whatever the duration of the period, it would be one of decadence. 

 There would be no rearing of cities or temples, progress being arrested, in every 

 direction except that of the nation consuming itself. The chronicles tell of no city 

 founded in Yucatan later than Mayapan. For five hundred years thereafter the nation 

 was too busily engaged in self-destruction to find time to build cities. 



Whichever of the causes indicated occasioned the downfall and dispersion of the 

 great Archaic nation, it must have had its full benumbing and repressive effect before 

 the first of the migrations recorded in the Yucatec chronicles, so that we need look 

 for no evidence of improvement subsequent to that date. The fact of the migrations 

 having been over two hundred years apart points pretty directly to internal dissension 

 as the cause of dispersion, though the later comers may have been a discouraged 

 remnant that had struggled on through those years hoping to overcome the evils of 

 pestilence or natural calamities. But, in either event, it may safely be assumed that 

 no cities or temples or other monuments of pride and prosperity were reared subse- 

 quently to the first migration. How long before it all such activities may have ceased, 

 it is impossible to say; but as in other instances dispersion has not often lagged tardily 

 behind its cause, we may assume that the decline of the Archaic cities followed swiftly 

 upon their attainment to the proudest pitch of glory, the stage at which the fatal 

 brood — jealousy, rivalry and ambition— that comes forth for the undoing of nations, 

 appears always to be hatched. Therefore, taking everything into consideration, I think 

 if the latest initial dates of the Archaic monuments are put a hundred years, say, ahead 

 of the time of the first Xiu migration, we shall not be more than a century out of the 

 way in respect to the ancient chronology, and probably not that far. 



Particular emphasis is intended to he laid upon " initial " dates in the foregoing 

 estimate. There are two kinds of dates in the Archaic inscriptions. The dates of one 

 character, and those of most frequent occurrence, appear in the body of the texts, and 

 designate the points from or to which the reckonings extend. Sometimes they are but 

 a clay apart ; at others, they are a few months or years ; while occasionally a flight is 



