136 MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA 



for aid upon seven foreigners with Mexican names. 

 These foreigners may have later acquired Chichen Itza 

 as the spoils of war. There is no definite statement to 

 this effect, but the architecture and art of Chichen Itza 

 show a great and sudden influx of new ideas that are 

 characteristic of the Valley of Mexico. No other city 

 of this region has so many of these intrusive features. 

 An instance is the Great Ball Court with its connected 

 temples. The ball court is found in many Mexican 

 cities where it had a strong religious significance but it 

 is absent from any of the great Mayan cities with the 

 exception of Chichen Itza and Uxmal. Sculptures and 

 hieroglyphs in the style of the Mexican highlands also 

 occur in quantity at Chichen Itza. No one can state 

 definitely the length of this Toltecan supremacy on 

 Mayan soil, but it probably was not for long and pos- 

 sibly came to an end before the middle of the fourteenth 

 century. The cities in the Valley of Mexico to which 

 this intrusive culture is to be ascribed are those of the 

 Toltecan period, such as Tula, Teotihuacan, and 

 Cholula. 



Modern Period 

 1450 to the present day 

 After the fall of Mayapan, the Mayas seem to have 

 been divided into many warring factions. All the great 

 cities were abandoned although the temples were still 

 regarded as sacred. Of course, stone construction was 

 still prevalent as we know from some of the Spanish 

 descriptions of towns on the coast. Learning was still 

 maintained by the nobles and the priests. But there 

 was not the centralized authority necessary for the 

 keeping of such luxurious capitals as existed in the old 

 days. The Itzas, in part at least, returned to one of 

 their ancient seats in the south, founding the island 



