HISTORY OF COPAN DURING THE OLD EMPIRE. 431 
The history of Copan during the Great Period is the history of the Main 
Structure, and here, in altar, stela, stairway, temple, palace, court, and 
plaza, we may read the record of the tribe’s growing power and wealth. Her 
increasing influence outside of the valley has already been noted, as, for 
example, the colonization of Quirigua by emigrants from Copan at the close 
of the Middle Period. But during the Great Period more distant colonies 
were established, at Paraiso, Rio Amarillo, and even on the other side 
of the divide in the Chamelecon Valley at Los Higos. (See figure 57.) 
Fortunately, at the last-mentioned site the lahuntun-ending 9.17.10.0.0 is 
recorded, so that we know at least one of her colonies besides Quirigua 
was occupied at the height of the Great Period; in fact, this latter date is 
only 2 years earlier than the last group of stele in the Great Plaza. 
Her sphere of esthetic influence we may imagine to have extended far 
beyond this cluster of southern Maya cities, of which she was easily the 
leader, and to have been felt far to the south, southeast, east, and northeast, 
where peoples of much lower cultures eagerly copied, as best such outer bar- 
barians might, her art, sculpture, and ceramics, decorative motives of the 
latter being traceable as far to the southeast as Costa Rica. 
In the northwest, 7. ¢., the Peten region, she must have come in contact, 
if not indeed in open conflict, with some of the great northern cities, Tikal, 
Nakum, or Naranjo, for example, and in this direction her sphere of actual 
dominion probably did not extend beyond the Golfo Dulce or the Sarstoon 
River. (See plate 1 and fig. 57.) 
In size Copan was second only to Tikal, and in learning and art she had 
no peers. The wealth of her inscriptions, probably comprising as high as 
40 per cent. of the Corpus Inscriptionum Mayarum, has already been noted. 
In sculpture she enjoyed a similar preéminence not only in mass of material 
but also in superiority of workmanship, technical processes, and the like. 
In the extent of her architecture alone she may have fallen somewhat behind 
her great northern rival. 
Judged as a whole, however, Copan may be aptly called “the Athens of 
the New World,” a title the writer has been wont to bestow upon her in 
drawing analogies from the ancient cities of the Old World; and in closing 
this summary of her history it may be claimed with perfect assurance that 
no other city of aboriginal America ever attained so high a level of cultural 
achievement. 
The curve of civilization at Copan, based upon the prevalency of the 
monuments, is shown graphically in figure 68, the data upon which it is 
based appearing in Appendix IX. The abscisse of the curve are the suc- 
cessive hotuns of the Long Count shown by the vertical lines, every fourth 
one of which, corresponding to a katun-ending as well, being heavier. The 
dates of these several hotuns appear above, only those corresponding to the 
second and fourth ones, 7.¢., the lahuntuns and katuns respectively, being 
written out. The brackets above indicate the three periods of the Old 
Empire. The ordinates of the curve are the number of times any given 
