I began this chapter with the intention of summing up in a few paragraphs the conclusions I had myself come to, but although the paragraphs have grown into pages I find that no definite statements have been made.
How can we assert that the Maya hieroglyphics were originated and developed within the Maya area until the ruins on the Rio Panuco, and at Teotihuacan, have been thoroughly excavated and explored, and up to the present they have only been scratched at? Did the development of Nahua culture affect that of the Mayas, and is that the reason why the art at Chichén has an indefinable Nahua flavour? We shall not know this for certain until the ruins in Tabasco, Campeche, and Peten have been thoroughly explored, and we can trace the connecting links. Amongst the many other puzzles, how are we to account for those curious mural paintings recently found by Dr. Gann in British Honduras, on the eastern limit of the Maya area, paintings essentially Nahua in style yet accompanied by a legend in Maya hieroglyphics? It is a fascinating subject for speculation, but the field offered for actual exploration is still more fascinating, and further research on the ground promises to supply facts worth more than volumes of dissertation built upon insufficient premises.
Within the Maya area there may, of course, have been many layers of culture widely removed in time which we cannot at present differentiate. Although it is not yet possible to trace the various stages which must have marked the evolution of the art which culminated in Copan and Palenque, it is not difficult to show that a great gap exists between the remains of those centres of ancient culture and the ruins of towns known to have been inhabited at the time of the Spanish invasion. I called attention to this fact when treating of the strongholds of the Quichés and Cachiquels, and have endeavoured in this chapter to show that the same gap yawns unbridged between Tayasal and Tikál. Prescott’s picturesque account of the Aztec city of Mexico, and Stephens’s interesting description of the ruins he visited in Honduras, Tabasco, and Yucatan, aided by Fuentes’s fabulous stories of the glories of Utatlan, have engendered a popular belief that at the time of the Spanish conquest the Indians throughout Central America were living sumptuously in magnificent stone-built cities. Such beliefs die hard, indeed they lay such hold of the imagination that from time to time enterprising newspapers echo the story told to Stephens sixty years ago by the Padre of Santa Cruz Quiché, and favour us with reports of Indian cities still inhabited and flourishing, hidden from the gaze of the vulgar by a wall of impenetrable forest.
SERPENT BIRDS, PALENQUE.
CHAPTER XXVI. THE HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTIONS.
MAYA INSCRIPTION FROM PIEDRAS NEGRAS. (The glyphs are read downwards in double columns from left to right.)
I have left to the last the subject of the hieroglyphic inscriptions. For those of my readers who have not previously paid any attention to the subject it is necessary to begin at the beginning and to say that there is a very considerable difference between the Mexican picture-writing and the Maya hieroglyphics, although not so very long ago they were all classed under the same head and called Mexican. The Maya writing may again be divided into two classes—the Inscriptions carved in stone or moulded in stucco, and the Codices or Manuscripts. Of these Codices there are four only known to students preserved in the museums and libraries of Paris, Dresden, and Madrid, and all four are in a more or less damaged condition. Between the glyphs of the carved inscriptions and the codices it may be stated roughly that there is not more difference than might naturally be looked for between a carved and written script.