OLD CULTURE OF 
“MIDDLE AMERICA 
Panty df Eeplorers Pag cas 
-gie Institution i in Washington i; 
| "Seeking Inscriptions to Give 
° Light | on Ancient Chulizauan| 
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from its Washington Bureau 
WASHINGTON, D. C.—Solution of 
some lof the fascinating riddles of. the. 
civilization which existed on the Afner- 
iean ‘continent before the coming of 
Columbus is the aim of an expedition 
sent out by the Carnegie Institution of 
Washington to Guatemala and . Yuca-| 
tan to find and study the remarkable 
ruins found there of cities of the Mayas, 
the people who inhabited them. From 
‘this expedition, Prof. W. H. Holmes, 
curator of the National’ Museum and 
a leading writer on subjects dealing 
with this early civilization, has re- 
cently returned. He has prepared, es- 
pecially for The Christian Science 
‘Monitor, the following sketch of the 
work of the expedition and of the field 
of research into which it goes: 
‘The riddle of the sphinx is still in 
a measure unsolved, although the 
greatest scholars of the time have ex- 
pended their genius upon the problem. 
The secrets of the: past, as embodied 
in the cultural remains of -the old 
world, have been studied with the ut- 
most care and have yielded in some 
degree to the never- ceasing attacks of 
the archeologist and the historian. The 
hieroglyphic inscriptions that for a 
long. period of years remained en- 
shrouded in the deepest mystery and 
even within the recent past were re-| 
garded as impossible of decipherment, 
have yielded up their key and the! 
Hgyptian book is now open for all to 
read. A flood of light has thus been) 
thrown upon the monumental remains 
of all classes, and the history of an- 
cient Hgypt takes’its place as an in-| 
tegral part of the history not only of 
the occupation’ of the great valley: of! 
the Nile, but of the activities of men 
elsewhere in the world. 
America has its parallel problems. 
which are now in process of solution. 
The ancient centers of culture of mid- 
dle America are represented by many 
ancient cities rich in sculptural and 
architectural’ remains and in great 
numbers of inscriptions. carved ‘in 
stone and written into books. These 
have held. their - secrets * With: excep- 
tional tenacity, but our ‘scholars are 
working away. on the meager clues 
ake The Christian Science Monitor 
ized the eae of Young, Cham- 
-polion, Maspero “and ‘Rouge ‘in the: 
Beyptian field, and such is the over- 
powering fascination of the long ago to 
the human mind that success in a 
large way may be considered certain, 
and should the scholars of the present. 
period fail in attaining the desired end, 
they will be followed by others and 
still others from generation to genera- 
\tion ‘until the spell is broken and the | 
‘world is made acquainted with what 
the ancient races of the American con- 
tinent did and thought and what they 
had to say to their kind. 
The problems of chronology are. 
among the most important that present | 
themselves for solution to the his- | 
torian of man in America.. The his- 
toric period, the period of written his-" 
tory as commonly conceived, bests: 
with the Columbian discovery, al- 
though away back in the year 1000s 
there occurs an isolated page of writ-: 
ten history, the story of the Norsemen,” | 
which, however, is not fraught with | 
particular interest to students of the 
aborigines. The long period antedat- | 
ing the arrival of Columbus is ilu- 
mined by traditions which carry. our, 
knowledge of native affairs back _aj 
little way only. The fossil remains o 
man and the crumbling remains of hig 
handiwork are less illuminating, but 
by ‘their study the paleontologist and 
the archeologist are little by poe np, 
veiling the ancient past. | 
The written history of ee i: 
mot confined, however, exclusively to 
‘old world chronicles, for it is gradu-. 
ally dawning upon us that the. early 
Americans were a literary people and 
‘cultivated history and poetry as well 
as various other. branches of culture 
with much assiduity. Our students 
are making haste to interpret the may 
elyphic texts which they find scul 
tured on monuments and inscribed ‘in 
the few books which have been re- 
covered from the wreck of one of the 
world’s most interesting cultures, it 
is found that these writings’ are not 
merely pictographic in character and 
thus intelligible to .students of a, 
strange race as pictures only, and 
quite beyond the limits of other inter- 
ipretation, but are phonetic in part and 
students are encouraged to believe 
that traces of an alphabet may yet b 
found. There is another phase | ot 
these records which offers no littl 
promise to the patient delver into the 
hidden places of history. The old 
texts are found to be largely calen- 
daric and the glyphic symbols for 
days, months; and cycles are be ng 
determined and the dates of many “on 
the cities are already known, the 
skeleton of aboriginal history being! 
parried thus back thousands of years, 
Cities of the southern Maya ar, ) 
‘iQ Guatemala and Honduras had th it 
greatest development between 200 aad 
500 years A. D., while the more north- 
ern centers yield dates reaching down, 
to within a few hundred years of 1e 
coming of Columbus. — 
