410 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
He further believes this culture was the common product of tribes then 
living in the highlands of central Mexico, but that the Nahua led in 
its development and dissemination, and that it was carried by them 
southward down the Pacific Coast-plain of Central America to Guatemala, 
Salvador, Nicaragua,! and as far south as the Isthmus of Panama.’ 
It appears as not unlikely that before this period the Maya may have 
found their way to the Gulf Coast-plain, possibly to the general region 
now occupied by the Huasteca or Totonaca. If so, they must have been 
largely a hunting and fishing people, depending only partly upon the many 
wild fruits and plants of the tropical forest to supplement their food-supply, 
moving to and fro in their quest for food, and not held to fixed abodes by the 
exigencies of an agricultural life, their time filled with and their energies 
absorbed by the struggle for bare existence. 
To such a people, living in such an environment richly endowed by 
nature with a fertile soil and a warm, moist climate, the factors most essen- 
tial for the growth of crops, and wanting only cultivation in order to yield 
a maximum return for a minimum effort, there may have come, from the 
highlands to their west, knowledge of the practice of agriculture, probably 
first as applied to the cultivation of corn. 
Soon, because of the several factors just mentioned, the returns in pro- 
portion to the effort expended became very much greater than on the arid 
highlands; nature herself lent a more helping hand; the harvests became 
more and more abundant, until from scarcely sufficing for the general needs 
of the tribe from one harvest to the next, reserve supplies of food began to 
be-accumulated, thus releasing from purely economic production energies 
which could be directed toward other ends, religious and esthetic. 
The introduction of agriculture brought about a tremendous change in 
the lives of the groups which it touched. Instead of moving hither and 
thither, driven by the necessities of a game, fish, and only casually vege- 
tarian dietary, living in temporary houses under a very loose social and 
governmental organization, agriculture for the first time made possible, 
indeed compelled, the establishment of permanent homes and developed the 
need for property rights. Larger social units than the family became pos- 
sible, such as the village, clan, and tribe; and with less and less time 
being absorbed in the food-quest, more and more time was devoted to the 
development of the household arts; pottery-making and loom-weaving were 
invented; religion became more complex, and esthetic instincts wider and 
more elaborate in their expression. 
Under some such conditions as these the Maya emerged from a nomadic, 
hunting, and fishing life to a sedentary agricultural one, and because their 
habitat was so richly endowed by nature to begin with, and far more fertile 
than that of the arid-highland peoples, the resulting civilization which they 
were able to develop gradually surpassed all surrounding cultures, and event- 

1 Spinden, 1917, p. 43. 2 Thid., 1917), p. 269. 
