PROBABLE FUNCTION OF THE MAYA MONUMENTS. 397 
A very obvious and natural reason for this change is suggested by the 
Maya method of counting time, 7. ¢., in terms of elapsed units, which kept 
the priests continually looking forward to a date which would close the 
current period, not backward to a date that had already passed. Their con- 
ception of time was such that they were always planning ahead, waiting for 
a future date which, when it arrived, closed a current time-period for them. 
Instead of erecting monuments to inaugurate new time periods, therefore, 
they erected them to commemorate the passage of elapsed ones. It was not 
the first day of the New Year which was of ceremonial importance to them 
as it is to us, but the Jast day of the Old Year. When a time period was 
finished and its corresponding monument erected, the priests were done with 
it, and were already looking forward to and preparing for the next period- 
marker. Any other procedure, such as erecting monuments after the occur- 
rence of the events they were to commemorate, must have been more or less 
upsetting to Maya psychology and contrary to their general conception of 
time. And thus, possibly even to obviate some such a feeling as this, there 
grew up the practice of selecting, 7 advance of the dates of actual dedication, 
the dates upon which the monuments were to be erected. This procedure 
had the very practical advantage of giving the priests ample opportunity 
to prepare for the important occasions which these period-endings were— 
a preparation, indeed, which must have required a great deal of time. 
First the block of stone had to be quarried and from it the stela roughly 
shaped. Next it had to be transported, sometimes for a distance of several 
kilometers, to the site where it was to be erected, and there set up in pre- 
viously prepared foundations.! The transporting of blocks of stone weighing 
sometimes as high as 50 tons (Stela FE, Quirigua), was of itself no small 
undertaking, and must have taxed the resourcefulness of the rulers not a 
little. The method probably followed was to use logs as rollers, which could 
be had in all sizes, of excellent hardwoods, and in unlimited quantities in the 
forests nearby, and to drag the blocks over these. The forests also pro- 
vided an abundance of natural ropes, lianas, hanging vines, and the like, 
and with these simple expedients and plenty of labor the monoliths were 
eventually moved from the quarries to the cities and erected in their ap- 
pointed places. 
But this was only half the undertaking. Before a monument could be 
put into formal use, that is, dedicated, it had to be sculptured, and such are 
the intricacies of the inscriptions and other designs that it is absolutely 
necessary to assume that the sculptors who executed them had working- 
drawings of the designs constantly before their eyes. 
The inscriptions, as we have seen, contain many fairly complicated 
calculations which had to be worked out in advance of the dates they dealt 
with, and probably were written down on paper or skin or wood to serve as 
1 These foundations, as noted more than once in the preceding chapters, are sometimes of an elaborate nature, 
cruciform subterranean chambers built of stone, over which the stele were set up, their bases held in sockets formed 
by surrounding slabs. Such constructions, made of cut stone, had to be prepared in advance, and demanded 
codrdinated activities. 
