CORRELATION OF MAYA AND CHRISTIAN CHRONOLOGY. 525 
1. THE GUATEMALAN SCHOOL. 
The efforts of this school may be dismissed with brief comment. The cor- 
relations suggested are only approximate, in the cases of Fuentes y Guzman and 
his copyist, Juarros, being nothing more than the bare statement that Copan was 
occupied and in a flourishing condition down to its conquest by Hernando de Chaves 
in 1530. (See Appendix V.) This belief, of course, rests on the assumption that 
the town of Copan conquered in that year by Hernando de Chaves was the same 
place as the great group of ruins now known by that name, but even Garcia de 
Palacio, writing as early as 1576, suspected that this was not the case,! as also 
Stephens? in 1839. Finally, in 1885, Maudslay completely demonstrated the 
untenability of this position,’ and a decade later Gordon reached the same con- 
clusion.* 
Galindo believed Copan was colonized by “the Tultecos” from Mexico about 
the close of the sixth century after Christ,® and continued to be occupied down to 
the Spanish Conquest at the height of its perfection,® and even afterward.’ 
These early attempts at correlating Old Empire and Christian chronology were 
based upon the erroneous assumption above noted; they have no scientific value 
and are only of interest because they were the first ventures in this particular field. 
2. THe FRENCH SCHOOL. 
The first serious attempt to correlate New Empire and Christian Chronology, 
based upon reliable data and scientific in method, was that of the Yucatan anti- 
quary Don Pio Pérez, who published his correlation under the title of “Ancient 
chronology of Yucatan; or a true exposition of the method used by the Indians for 
computing time,” as an appendix to Volume I of Stephens’s Incidents of Travel 
in Yucatan:® 
“The fundamental point of departure from which to adjust the Ahaus [7.¢., katuns] 
with the years of the Christian Era, to count the periods or cycles, which have elapsed, and 
to make the years quoted by the Indians in their histories agree with the same era, is the 
year of our Lord, 1392, which according to all sources of information confirmed by the 
testimony of Don Cosme de Burgos, one of the conquerors, and a writer (but whose observa- 
tions have been lost) was the year in which fell the 7 Cauac giving in its second day the 
commencement of 8 Ahau, and from this as from a root, all that preceded and have followed 
it are adjusted according to the table of them which has been given, and as this agrees with 
all the series that have been found, it is highly probable that it is the correct one.’”® 
Unfortunately, Pérez believed the katun was composed of 24 years of 365 days 
each in place of 20 tuns of 360 days each, which brings him to the year 144 A.D. as 
the beginnin'g of the « kahlay katunob given on page 499, which, according to the 
correlation suggested here, occurred in 176 A. D., with the Initial Series 9.0.0.0.0. 
Brasseur de Bourbourg’s correlation is also based on the chronicle from the 
Book of Chilan Balam of Mani, and curiously enough is within 2 years of the date 
suggested by the writer for the opening entry in the u kahlay katunob on page 499: 
“Maya chronology fixes the year 174 of the Christian Era for the departure of the four 
Tutul Xius: ‘leaving the house of Nonohual, and the Land of Tulapan which is to the west 
of Zuyua, having at their head Holon-Chan-Tepeuh.’ This epoch was also that of their 
arrival in Chacnouitan. But after that, this chronology remains silent until the year 258, 
which it gives as the epoch of a new migration of the Tutul Xius and of their establishment 
in the province of Zyan-Caan to the southeast of the Yucatecan peninsula.’’” 

1See Appendix IV, p. 541. *Stephens, 1841, vol. I, pp. 99, IOI, 160. 3Maudslay, 1886, p. sgt. 
4Gordon, 1896, p. 3. 5Galindo, 18354, p. 546; see also page 19 and Appendix XI, page 595. 
6Ibid., 18354, p. 545; see also note 3 on page 19 and Appendix XI, page 601. 
1Ibid., 1835a, p. 549; sce also note 3 on page 19 and Appendix XI, page 603. 
8See Stephens, 1843, vol. 1, pp. 434-459. *Tbid., p. 442. 
WBrasseur de Bourbourg, 1857-1859, vol. I, p. 3. 
