462 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
Always admitting the possibility of an unknown factor in the situation, 
it appears to the writer that some, at least, of the several hypotheses sug- 
gested in the foregoing pages must have played an important part in pre- 
cipitating the exodus which the archeological evidence demands; and of 
these, Cook’s suggestion of an agricultural collapse appears to be the most 
probable. Possibly operating singly, but more probably working with other 
stimuli, such as climatic changes, fear, and superstition (the two last always 
potent forces among primitive peoples), bringing in their train attendant dis- 
ease, social unrest, and loss of confidence in themselves, their rulers, and their 
deities, these several factors may finally have brought about such an intol- 
erable condition toward the close of the Great Period that abandonment of 
the whole region ultimately came to be generally accepted as the only solu- 
tion for their extremity. 
And here we may leave the Maya. Their history in their new homes 
to the north and south, their brilliant cultural recovery and renaissance, 
particularly in Yucatan in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, 
the Spanish Conquest of the southern Maya under Pedro de Alvarado in 
1524 and of the northern Maya under Francisco Montejo the younger in 
1541, and the final extinction of the last remnant of the Maya civilization 
around Lake Peten Itza by Martin de Ursta in 1697, are all chapters of 
another story which lie without the province of the present investigation, 
and which must await another occasion for adequate presentation. 
