456 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
“Many forested places in Central America, which now afford conditions 
favorable for these humus-loving animals, are occupied by small and incomplete 
faunas. This shows that the period of reforestation has not been long enough 
to permit these sedentary, slow-moving creatures to spread again over the reforested 
areas. ‘Thus in the valley of Ocosingo [an old Empire city, see plate 1] in southern 
Mexico are many such tracts of new forest in which the humus fauna is still very 
poorly represented.” 
Cook’s suggestion that many of the Central American forests are of 
recent growth was corroborated by Whitford’s investigations in the Motagua 
Valley in June 1919. 
Under Cook’s hypothesis we are to conceive the Maya as founding 
their first cities in northern Peten in the midst of a vast primeval tropical 
forest, and as gradually felling this forest in the vicinities of their settlements 
and putting the cleared lands under cultivation. 
Later, penetrating southward through the Peten forest, some of the 
Maya eventually reached Copan and repeated this same process of clearing 
and cultivating there. Still later, other cities were founded, and gradually 
the whole region covered by the Old Empire was brought under intensive 
occupation. 
Perhaps as early as the Middle Period, judging from certain archeologi- 
cal evidence to be presented shortly, there began to be concern over the 
economic condition, the increasing difficulties in the way of securing ade- 
quate supplies of corn, the great Maya staple. As early as the Middle 
Period, if Cook’s hypothesis be correct, the increasing distances to which 
the people bad to go to find suitable land for their mz/pas, especially around 
the older cities, where the zones of grassy savannas had become the largest, 
must already have occasioned the rulers and priestly caste considerable 
anxiety. But before the end of another century, 7.¢., in the Great Period, 
the situation must have become so acute as to have caused general dissatis- 
faction with, if not indeed actual distrust of, deities, rulers, and priests who 
could permit such a condition to continue unchecked. 
The writer imagines many of the religious ceremonies of the time must 
have been specially devised for meeting this grave national crisis, and for 
seeking the aid of their deities, particularly those of fructification and fer- 
tility, to avert the threatened extinction of the food-supply, which was 
drawing ever nearer and nearer. 
That no solution for this urgent national economic problem was found 
would appear to be indicated by the fact that from 9.18.0.0.0 on, one by one 
the southern cities were abandoned; at least no more monuments were 
erected in any one of them after 10.2.0.0.0, and indeed, a few of them— 
Palenque, Altar de Sacrificios, and Itsimte for example—had possibly been 
abandoned much earlier. (See fig. 69.) 
The earliest abandonments would naturally have taken place at the 
oldest cities, or those where the total area available for cultivation had not 


1 Cook, 1909, p. 14. 
