HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



The building material of the small temple excavated in 1914, its 

 level in the city, and its general method of construction, conform to 

 that of the small one on the southern side of the quadrangle (pi. iv). 

 These two low buildings appear to underlie the greater temples of 

 the higher level, which are of red sandstone. They are more archaic 

 in appearance, much smaller, devoid of inscriptions, and poorer in 

 ornamentation. It seems reasonable to place them in time with the 

 lesser monuments above referred to. 



The indications are that we have here the remains of two cities 

 of different epochs. The upper one at its foundation level is about 

 a meter below the present surface of the Motagua valley, which has 

 been silting up gradually during past ages at a nearly uniform rate. 

 A study of several miles of railroad cuts and of ditches through the 

 plantations of the United Fruit Company leads to the conclusion that 

 the overflow of the Rio Motagua (pi. v) during the height of the 

 rainy season results in a slight building up of the general level. If we 

 are correct in our chronology of the monuments and temples which 

 belong to the last epoch, the later city of Quirigua flourished during 

 the early centuries of the Christian Era, and, since the time of its 

 abandonment, the general level of the valley has been raised about 

 one meter. This gives a fairly safe time measure to apply to the 

 stratification that has been going on in recent centuries. 



The conclusion is that from a yard to a meter of silt has been de- 

 posited during the last sixteen hundred years. This amount was accu- 

 mulated around the foundations of the larger temples and the bases 

 of the larger monuments. Confirmation of this is found in the location 

 of hundreds of village sites scattered over the valley in which only the 

 tops of the mounds appear above the surface. Excavation shows that 

 they were situated upon the flood-plain of the valley as it was when 

 the later city of Quirigua was flourishing. These sites probably repre- 

 sent the villages of the people who were tributary to the temple 

 city. They are numerous enough over the valley and upon the adjacent 

 hills to indicate a very large population within a radius of five miles, 

 taking the great Plaza as a center. These villages contain no important 

 temple ruins, and in only two of them have monuments been found. 



The above describes briefly the situation in the Motagua valley 

 in the early centuries of the Christian Era, if the American method of 

 correlating the Maya and Christian calendars is correct. Should the 

 German system be the correct one, we must place this period, which 

 for convenience we will call the Golden Age of Central America, from 

 ten to fifteen centuries earlier and consider it contemporary with one 

 of the great periods in the history of Egypt. 



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