112 MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA 
Now it appears that some sort of an equation is intend- 
ed by this subtraction of 210 days and the subsequent 
addition of zero days to arrive again at the point of de- 
parture. ‘The error due to the omission of the extra 
‘leap year’’ day would amount to two full years plus 
210 days in the time covered by the Initial Series. The 
two full years could be dropped from the calculation and 
the 210 days would show the apparent displacement of 
the sun from its assumed calendrical position. Of 
course, it is not to be supposed for an instant that the 
Mayas had kept an actual record of the movements of 
the heavenly bodies for 4000 years. They probably 
based their original point of departure—the day 4 Ahau 
8 Cumhu—upon some calculated correlation which after- 
wards proved to be slightly erroneous. With a clearer 
understanding of the length of the year and of the revo- 
lution of Venus they may have attempted on this monu- 
ment to record the accumulated error on theoretical 
rather than actual grounds. 
Hieroglyphs. Mayan hieroglyphs resemble the 
Egyptian and Chinese hieroglyphs only in being ‘‘ sacred 
writing’’ that is not based upon an alphabet. ‘The 
styles and symbols are entirely different. No Rosetta 
Stone has yet been discovered to give us inscriptions in 
more than one system of writing in Central America. 
The great use of hieroglyphic inscriptions on monuments 
was characteristic of the earlier period of Mayan history 
and at a later time the writing was reduced to books. 
Landa obtained what he supposed was a Mayan alphabet, 
but what he really obtained was a list of word signs con- 
taining among other sounds the particular sounds he 
desired. 
The phonetic use of syllables rather than of simple 
sounds or letters is probably an important feature of 
Mayan writing. Many hieroglyphs are pictographic 
