442 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
5. The sharp upward movement in 10.1.0.0.0, when no less than 8 different 
monuments were erected at 5 different sites. 
6. The final return to the base-line after 10.2.0.0.0, indicating the extinction 
of the Old Empire civilization.’ 
THE FALL OF THE OLD EMPIRE. 
There remains to be considered but one further question, namely, the 
several hypotheses which have been advanced to account for the decline 
and fall of the Old Empire civilization. In discussing this important ques- 
tion, one of the most perplexing in the Maya field, the writer is obliged to 
admit at the outset that he is unable to offer any single hypothesis which 
by itself satisfactorily explains the unusual archeological data set forth 
in the preceding section—a sudden cessation of the monuments in the 
individual cities when each was at its cultural and esthetic apogee, but a 
gradual abandonment of the region as a whole, covering a period of about a 
century. Probably any social phenomenon as extensive and radical as that 
of the Maya exodus at the end of the Old Empire—a complete abandonment 
of a fairly large country which they had occupied for more than five cen- 
turies—may not be ascribed to any single cause, but rather to a complex of 
causes, which, operating together, finally brought about the end observed. 
Turning next to the consideration of the principal causes, which at one 
time or another have been suggested as being responsible for the extinction 
of the Old Empire civilization, the following seem to exhaust the list: 
earthquakes, civil or foreign wars, disease, social and political decay, cli- 
matic changes, and the exhaustion of the soil by the agricultural methods 
practised. 
Concerning the first or earthquake hypothesis, it appears to be the most 
improbable of all. It rests primarily upon the present ruined condition of the 
Old Empire cities, the fallen temples and palaces, and the overthrown and 
shattered monuments, and upon the prevalence of severe earthquakes in 
adjacent areas. The heavy earthquakes which so frequently visit the high- 
lands of Guatemala, and which only recently have destroyed the capital 
of that country for the third time in its history, do not extend with anything 
like the same severity to the low adjoining coast-plain, 7.e., the region 
occupied by the Old Empire civilization, and this agency may be said to be 
entirely inadequate to have caused all the ruin observed. 
Moreover, a personal examination of all the larger Maya cities known 
(all in Classes I, II, and III, on page 441 except Ocosingo) has convinced 
the writer that the luxuriant tropical vegetation in which every one is now 
buried, or was when first discovered, is alone responsible for the appalling 
destruction wrought. It should be remembered in this connection that all 
the Old Empire cities are situated in extremely fertile locations, probably 
originally selected for town-sites because of this very fact, and when first 
1 The two monuments recording the date 10.2.10.0.0, Steta 2 at Quen Santo, and the lintel from the Temple of 
the Initial Series at Chichen Itza, both lie without the region of the Old Empire. 
