DISTRIBUTION OF THE MAYANCE LINGUISTIC STOCK. 615 
i Sos “Laguna de Términos,” it fits in completely with what is said by 
rdonez. 
Linguistically the language of Tezulutlan, or what we have heretofore called 
Cholti, is rooted in northeastern Chiapas, with the Tzental tongues; structurally 
closest stands probably the little-known adjoining Mame, next closest the north- 
ern Maya, and then last the highland pre-Conquest kingdoms of the Quiché and 
Pokom. The letter 7 is unknown to all the other Mayance, save the last two; and 
when they developed it, the same influences seem to have expelled the / from the 
by that time divorced far-eastern Cholti, and left them Chorti. Languages grow 
and diversify under the spur of up-springing civilizations. The separate growth 
of Quiché and Maya, therefore, would correspond to the growth of the two new 
kingdoms; and that the Maya should have stayed closer to the Old Empire tongue, 
the Tezulutleca one may call it, than the Quiché, is to be expected from the now estab- 
lished closer relationship between the Old and New Empires than between the Old 
Empire and the later Guatemala highland kingdoms, both in cultural tradition 
and sciences. Meanwhile the Tzental, Mame, and Cholti would live on, in the 
past, and changing or separating less—just as Iceland has done, compared say 
to Sweden. 
In closing I may say that if we disregard the traditions of the Votanide Empire, 
as pertaining rather more to the realm of mythology than to that of history, and 
if we do not carry history back of the actual Old Empire period, just as later we 
have to reject the events back of Balam Quiché, as probably mythological in nature, 
and if we posit the four kingdoms, as Ordonez gives them: (1) Tul-ha or Ocosingo, 
(2) Na-chan or Palenque, (3) Chiquimula or Copan, and (4) Yucatan or Tikal, as 
we have indicated; if we bring this period to an end with the events of about 600 
A. D., followed by a dispersion and rebirth in the north, toward 900 or 1000, with 
Uxmal as the chief center; and the Nahuatl influx coming in about 1200, resulting 
in the growth of new Chichén Itza, followed by the events of the chronicles in the 
Books of Chilan Balam down to the fall of Mayapan, and the return south of the 
Itza to Tayasal, spreading the newly-grown Maya-Itza tongue over what may 
have been Tezulutleca in Old Empire days; and if meanwhile a historical connec- 
tion was maintained in the south of which we have no present knowledge, resulting 
in a Quiché rebirth somewhat later than that at Uxmal, becoming definitely his- 
torical with Balam Quiché, and his incorporation of the eastern Chiquimula sur- 
vival of the Copan branch—we will have stated little that is new in itself, but we 
will have brought together the ethnographic and linguistic evidence, with the his- 
torical and chronological evidence which has been growng under Morley’s work, 
and with the cultural and very positive stylistic evideice which Spinden has so 
skillfully brought together. 
There remains to be mentioned one final point of no small importance. Prior 
to Mayance times, the Central American territory washed by languages generally 
classed in with northern South American, and now reduced to scantiest remains 
north of Nicaragua, namely, to the little Chiapanec “linguistic island,” in the 
mountain knot of Chiapas, occupying a linguistic position similar to that of the 
Pyrenees or Wales. And finally, that the Tezulutlan empire, starting from around 
Ocosingo, and perhaps by entry through the Usumacinta delta, as Ordonez relates, 
should then have spread first across the fertile northern regions through Peten to 
Golfo Dulce, leaving the mountain range and the Pacific slope to the earlier inhabi- 
tants, is just as natural as it is that its dispersion should have later been down over 
these same northern plains into Yucatan, leaving the highland occupation, with the 
resulting historical Quiché kingdoms, to a later date. 
