19 
Carnegie Institution in Washington have published some very intriguing 
accounts of the Mayas and their works, but no student or authority on 
the Mayas ever produced a more incisive and appreciative appraisal of 
their cultural achievement than Morley: 
"In appraising the civilization of any people, the true measure of 
their attainment is not the sum total of their achievement compared with 
the achievements of other peoples, but rather their entire accomplishment 
counted from their own cultural zero. 
"Thus the construction of the Empire State Building with all the 
mechanical devices, modern machinery and building materials available 
to its builders is much less an achievement than the erection of a Maya 
temple of far less size and complexity, but built entirely without metal 
tools, structural steel, cement, hollow tile, machine-sawn and dressed 
stone, compressed air, electricity, gas, steam, and elaborate hoisting 
machinery. The former was built with the knowledge of the ages behind 
its builders; the latter without metal tools, beasts of burden, either 
animate or inanimate, or even knowledge of the principles of the wheel. 
"To find a condition in the Old World comparable to the Maya cultural 
scratch, it is necessary to go far back in human history to early Neolithic 
times when man’s knowledge and utensils were similarly restricted. On this 
primitive horizon only may the Maya civilization be fairly compared with 
other civilizations of antiquity both in the Old World and in the New. 
"When the material achievements of the ancient Maya in architecture, 
sculpture, ceramics, the lapidary art, feather-work, cotton-weaving and 
