THE FALL OF THE OLD EMPIRE. 453 
to be adapted to agriculture. ‘To recognize these natural limitations of the primi- 
tive civilizations of Central America should make us more careful to appreciate 
and to correct the harmful tendencies of some of our own systems of agriculture.’”! 
Cook’s conclusions are based upon personal studies in the highlands of 
Guatemala, and in the State of Chiapas, Mexico, among the descendants 
of the Old Empire Maya, the Quiché, Cakchiquel, Tzutuhil, and other 
modern representatives of the Maya stock in this region, where the methods 
of agriculture in vogue have changed little if any since pre-Columbian times. 
The Maya method of agriculture, ancient as well as modern, may be 
briefly summarized as follows: cutting, burning, planting, and sometimes 
weeding. As soon as the rainy season is over a new piece of forest is cleared, 
usually in January or February, and the fallen trees and underbrush are 
allowed to dry under the fierce heat of the March and April sun. When 
sufficiently dry to burn readily, usually in March and not later than April, 
the clearing is burned. Throughout the Maya area, north as well as south, 
the skies in April are covered with a pall of smoke, the sun setting each night 
a ball of fiery red. It is the time of the mi/pa (cornfield) burning, just before 
the end of the dry season. 
After the first rains, usually during the first half of May, the corn is 
planted among the fallen, charred trees, some of which have not been entirely 
consumed. A sharpened fire-hardened stick is generally used, and the corn 
planted 5 to 7cm.deep. In some places weeding is practiced, in others not, 
the burning being deemed sufficient to retard the growth of weeds until 
after the corn has a good start. The harvest is usually not garnered at all. 
In August, when the corn has ripened, the ears are bent down and left hang- 
ing on the stalks to be gathered only as they are needed, in some cases being 
left on the stalks until the end of the dry season, when the last are picked and 
brought in. This method of harvesting is not so casual as it first appears, 
since the ears are much less subject to attack by insects, decay, etc., when 
left hanging on the stalks in the open air than when they are picked and 
stored in floorless thatched huts, where deterioration from all causes is more 
rapid. 
Whatever may have been the practice in ancient times, to-day the same 
field is not usually put under cultivation two successive seasons; but a new 
piece of forest is cleared and the same process repeated. ‘This is done 
because the second season’s crop from the same field is from 40 to 50 per cent. 
less than the first season’s yield, and the natives, as a rule, prefer the larger 
return even at the cost of the greater labor involved in clearing new pieces 
of the forest each year. 
After lying fallow from 2 to 5 years, and in some places even 7 years, 
sufficient trees and bushes have grown up in a clearing to permit its being 
put under cultivation again, and then the same process is repeated and the 
cycle of milpa rotation is complete. But each time the same clearing is 

1 Cook, 1909, p. 23. 
