NO. 1 CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN LATIN AMERICA 
35 
out along the piedmont zone of the Guatemalan Pacific slope and up 
into the highlands around Kaminaljuyu; the hieroglyphic writing 
present on some of these monuments ; and the fact that some Izapan- 
style monuments are dated to the 7th Cycle of the Long Count sys- 
tem, one (from El Baul) being 256 years antecedent to the most an- 
cient dated monument known thus far for the lowland Maya (Coe, 
1957). Some of these derivative Izapan cultures, such as Miraflores 
at Kaminaljuyu with its rich tombs and fine sculptures (Shook and 
Kidder, 1952; Girard, 1962, fig. 242), were extraordinarily complex 
and continued to exert strong influence over their respective areas for 
a long time. 
It is therefore suggested that regional developments of the Late 
Formative in southeastern Mesoamerica — Monte Alban I, Izapa, Mi- 
raflores, and perhaps the Chicanel Phase in the Peten — are all to a 
certain degree the cultural legatees of Olmec civilization, and 
reached their full inheritance when the Gulf coast began to lose its 
importance. In fact, by the very end of the period influences are 
moving in a different direction than before, as seen in the presence of 
such non-Gulf coast ceramic features as negative painting, mammi- 
form supports, bridged spouts, and so forth ; these are part of the fa- 
mous "Q" Complex proposed by Vaillant and Lothrop many years 
ago, and their exact origin, while probably southern, is still puzzling, 
although we now know that they are relatively late in the Formative 
picture. 
The Classic Period is somewhat arbitrarily considered to have be- 
gun about A.D. 300, or a few decades earlier, and to have endured 
until about a.d. 900, by which time the Maya centers of the Peten had 
been abandoned. This dating, of course, depends upon the correct cor- 
relation of the Long Count with the Christian calendar, and practi- 
cally all recent radiocarbon determinations validate the Goodman- 
Thompson correlation ( Satterthwaite and Ralph, 1960). However, 
the idea of a six-centuries span for the Classic is just one more case 
of the Maya tail wagging the Mesoamerican dog, and is largely valid 
for the Maya area alone. Certainly if we define the Classic as a sort of 
Golden Age, when high civilizations with unified art styles were in the 
ascendancy, then the Classic began on the Gulf coast as long ago as 
the Middle Formative. Again, let us be pragmatic, and consider the 
A.D. 300-900 period as a useful slice of Mesoamerican time, rather 
than as a great developmental level. 
There is no evidence that the achievements of the Classic Period in 
the southeastern part, or for that matter in any other part, of Meso- 
america rested on any unusual changes in food production or technol- 
