422 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
sculptures of the Archaic type found in the highlands of Salvador and 
Guatemala, south and west of Copan respectively, notably a stone figure at 
the Hacienda of Miraflor, just outside of Guatemala City. (See fig. 67, a, 
b, and c, and pp. 208, 209.) Thus, had it been possible to date either of these 
two sculptures from Copan in the Maya chronological system, there would 

Fic. 67.—Anthropomorphic figures of the Archaic type: a, Copan, 
foundations of Stela 5; 4, Copan, foundations of Stela 
4; ¢, Hacienda Miraflor near Guatemala City. 
have been established at least one definite point of contact between the Old 
Empire and the Archaic culture, which seems to have had a far vaster exten- 
sion, and doubtless a much earlier origin than the Maya civilization as 
pointed out in the preceding section. 
Possibly these two figures may have been taken from some of the earlier 
inhabitants of the region, some Archaic people living south and west of 
Copan, and were placed in the foundations of Stele 4 and 5 as objects of 
unusual importance and sanctity. Or again, they may be very early Maya 
copies of still earlier Archaic sculptures found by the Maya when they first 
reached the region.!. Or again, they may date from a period at Copan before 
the hieroglyphic writing had been transferred to stone, a view the writer 
does not share, however, since he believes the Maya had been carving their 
inscriptions on stone for several centuries before they reached Copan. In 
any case, they do not controvert any of the conclusions reached above, and 
they may probably be referred to the same general period as Stela 20. 
Summing up the history of Copan during the Early Period, it appears 
probable that the branch of the Maya who colonized this region reached the 
Copan Valley shortly before, or not later than, the beginningof Cycle 9. In 
this connection the provenance and date of the Leyden Plate should be 
borne in mind. This small nephrite plate, as already noted on page 411, 
was found near the mouth of the Motagua River, some 130 kilometers 
northeast of Copan, and bears the very early date 8.14.3.1.12, which is about 
145 years earlier than the reading here suggested for Stela 20. Possibly this 
object may have been left behind at some intermediate stopping-place of the 
tribe on their migration southward from northern Peten (see plate 1 and fig. 
64), and it doubtless antedates the first settlement in the Copan Valley. 
1 Lothrop found a similar sculpture, although with a second figure on the back of the first, the whole being very 
crudely executed in block-like outlines similar to the sculptures under discussion, at La Florida, 50 kilometers 
northeast of Copan, in 1916. 

