THE FALL OF THE OLD EMPIRE. 459 
This colonization of Yucatan from the southeast agrees, moreover, with 
a tradition gathered by Father Lizana, who wrote as early as 1601: 
“They [the first Spanish priests] knew that the natives came, a part from the 
east [the original colonization of the country here in question], a part from the west. 
So in their old language they call the east by another name than which they use 
to-day. Now they call the east, LiKin, which amounts to saying the place from 
which the sun rises upon us. And the west they call ChiKin, which means the 
fall or the end of the sun, or rather, where it hides itself in relation to us. But in 
old times they called the east, ‘Cenial, The Little Descent,’ and the west, ‘Nohenial, 
The Great Descent,’ (the former) referring to the few people who came on the one 
side, and (the latter) to the great multitude who came on the other, whoever they 
may have been.” 
The former, the Little Descent, doubtless refers to the comparatively 
few people who first settled at Chichen Itza arriving from the southeast, and 
the latter probably refers to a more general movement into Yucatan, the 
Great Descent, from the southwest, Tabasco (?), which seems to have taken 
place during the tenth century.’ 
It was stated on page 457 that the migration which depopulated the 
region of the Old Empire was two-fold in direction; that in addition to the 
Maya who moved northward and colonized the peninsula of Yucatan, others 
moved southward and into the highlands of Guatemala, and later became the 
Quiché, Cakchiquel, Tzutuhil, and other related Maya tribes of historic times. 
The only dates in the Maya hieroglyphic writing known from this 
latter region are the two Initial Series on the Quen Santo (Sacchana) stele 
found by Seler in 1895 at the Hacienda of Sacchana, in the State of Chiapas, 
Mexico, but which he states had been brought thither from the neighboring 
ruins of Quen Santo in the Department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala.’ 
(See plate 1.) The dates of these two monuments are 10.2.5.0.0 (Stela 1) 
and 10.2.10.0.0 (Stela 2), the latter being exactly the same date as that on the 
Chichen Itza lintel. 
Here, indeed, is an interesting archeological condition, two monuments 
600 kilometers apart, both without the territory occupied by the Maya dur- 
ing the Old Empire and both recording precisely the same date, which date is 
only ro tuns later than the latest closing dates in Seibal and Tikal, the nearest 
large Old Empire cities in each case; and therefore if Yucatan (Chichen Itza) 
was colonized from cities in the northeastern part of Peten, such as Tikal, 
Uaxactun, Nakum, Naranjo, and La Honradez, for example, the highlands of 
Guatemala (Quen Santo) would appear to have been colonized from cities 
in the southern part of Peten on the upper reaches of the Pasion, Chixoy, and 
Lacantun Rivers, such as Seibal, Cancuen, Aguas Calientes, Altar de 
Sacrificios, Ocosingo, and Tzendales. (See plate 1.) 

1 Lizana, 1893, pp. 35 4: ' ae 4.4 
2Landa (1881, pp. 74, 75) mentions great numbers of Maya-speaking people immigrating into Yucatan from 
the south about this time, which he conjectures must have come from Chiapa, “because many words and com- 
positions of the verbs are the same in Chiapa and in Yucatan.” 
3 Seler, 1902-1908, vol. 11, pp. 251, 252. 
