APPENDIX II. 
THE CORRELATION OF MAYA AND CHRISTIAN CHRONOLOGY. 
NATURE OF THE PROBLEM. 
No problem in Maya archeology has excited wider interest or provoked more 
general consideration than the correlation of the Maya chronological system with 
our own Gregorian calendar; and indeed, few problems of similar importance in 
any archeological field offer equal promise of ultimate exact solution. 
The nature of the Maya inscriptions upon which this correlation must neces- 
sarily depend is such as to indicate that an exact alinement of the two chronologies 
to the very day is not only a possible but also even a probable outcome of pending 
investigations. 
It has been frequently stated in these pages aie a large part of the Maya 
inscriptions, indeed practically all of the deciphered glyphs, treat of the subject of 
time in its various manifestations, such as the lengths of the apparent revolutions 
of the sun, moon, and other planets around the earth, and probably also of the 
eclipses which the first two occasionally undergo. In fine, it appears highly prob- 
able that actual astronomical phenomena of determinable nature are recorded in 
the Maya inscriptions; and it only awaits the exact identification of any one of these, 
such as any particular solar or lunar eclipse which was visible in northern Central 
America during the first six centuries of the Christian Era for example, to make 
immediately possible an exact correlation of Maya chronology with our own 
Gregorian calendar. | 
Pending the solution of this problem by the astronomical method, which, 
however imminent it may be, has yet to be achieved, the writer wishes to suggest a 
correlation of the two chronologies based upon other data, which he believes is 
probably correct to within 4 months and possibly to within 49 days. 
It was stated in Chapter I that Maya chronology is a highly artificial but 
exceedingly accurate system for measuring elapsed time, with the day as the basic 
unit of the count. The current day is given in terms of the total number of elapsed 
days which separate it from the starting-point of the system, a point more exactly 
fixed in time than the zero-point of our own calendar, 7. ¢., the birth of Christ. It 
finds its closest modern analogy not with our Gregorian calendar, but with our 
Julian Period, used by astronomers and chronologists in measuring elapsed time, 
the hypothetical starting-point of which is the year 4713 B.c. Indeed, the two 
systems are so similar that Professor R. W. Willson, of the Harvard Astronomical 
Department, has suggested to the writer the propriety of describing any Maya date 
by its corresponding Maya day number after the practice of astronomers and 
chronologists in designating any given date in the Gregorian calendar by its cor- 
responding Julian day number. 
As a matter of fact, the whole problem of the proper correlation of Maya 
and Christian chronology may be reduced to precisely this: the correct engage- 
ment of the Mayan and Julian Periods at any single point; for if it were possible 
to establish a single point of contact between the two, every date in Maya chron- 
ology could be transcribed into its corresponding Julian or Gregorian equivalent, 
and the dates on the Maya monuments would suddenly become more accurately 
fixed in our own chronology than any event of Old World history prior to the birth 
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