THE ORIGIN OF THE MAYA CIVILIZATION. 405 
that of a common language, that it is necessary to postulate a separation of 
the Huasteca from the other members of the Maya stock before the latter 
had developed the highly distinctive civilization by which they were charac- 
terized in later times.’ Linguistically considered, it is necessary to regard 
both as having had a common origin, however remote; but culturally con- 
sidered, the two must just as surely have separated before the Maya devel- 
oped their civilization. 
But how was this separation effected? Were the Huasteca left behind 
in a general southward movement of the Maya race, or do they represent 
a branch which pushed northward and away from the parent stock? This 
question can not be definitely answered until the Gulf Coast-plain of Mexico 
from the Grijalva to the Panuco River has been carefully examined, and 
excavations made at the principal archeological sites, but already it seems 
probable that the former explanation is the more likely to be correct. 
It will be seen in figure 64 that the provenance of the Tuxtla Statuette 
is about midway between the territory occupied by the Huasteca and the 
northern Peten region, where the earliest inscriptions within the Maya area 
have been found; that is, the earliest of all Maya texts comes from a region 
where typical Maya remains have not been found, which, however, stands 
about midway between the historic region occupied by the Maya farther 
south, and a region now occupied by Maya-speaking people, whose remains 
show no Maya cultural characteristics. 
Sapper attempts to solve this problem on the basis of certain linguistic 
evidence, laying particular stress on the two following factors: (1) that the 
name for pine-tree among the different Maya-speaking peoples shows a 
remarkable agreement, and (2) his discovery of a small Maya tribe in the 
highlands of southeastern Chiapas, the Chicomucelteca, which he claims is 
more closely related to the Huasteca linguistically than any other tribe of 
the Maya stock. From the first he argues that the original home of the 
Maya was in a pine-tree country, 7. ¢.,a mountainous land; and because of 
the second he suggests the highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala as the most 
likely place for this to have been: 
“Then it seems as most probable that the mountainous country of Chiapas- 
Guatemala is the original seat of the Maya family of peoples, from whence at an 
early date the Maya and Chol tribes must have migrated to the lowland, while 
still earlier the Huasteca emigrated from Chiapas along the Atlantic coast-plain 
to the north and settled at their present seats.’” 
This, of course, may be true, but it is easier to conceive the Chicomu- 
celteca, whom Sapper estimated doubtfully at not more than 4,000 in 1897, 
as moving southward to their present habitat in southeastern Chiapas at 
some early time, than it is to conceive the Huasteca, at present numbering 
at least 42,000, as moving northward from the highlands of Chiapas to their 

1 See Seler, 1902-1908, vol. 11, pp. 168-183; Prieto, 1873; Joyce, 1914, and Staub, 1919, for descriptions of the 
Huasteca and their material culture. 
2 See Sapper, 1897, p. 398. 
