The scheme, which, although not fully matured, we have reason to believe a real one, of sending an expedition to some of the original Mexican provinces for a thorough exploration, at the cost of a wealthy citizen of New York, the results to be printed in the North American Review, may be regarded as one of the fruits of the “Renaissance.”
S. F. Haven,
For the Committee.
Introductory Remarks.
In the ensuing discussion an attempt is made to explain the so-called “Katunes of Maya history.”
The Manuscript which bears this name is written in the Maya language, and its discovery is of comparatively recent date. At its first publication in 1841 it could not fail to attract the attention of all those who were engaged in the study of ancient American history, because it unveiled a portion of the history of Yucatan, which had been till then entirely unknown and seriously missed. At that date only a scanty number of data, loosely described, and referring to an epoch removed from the Spanish conquest of the Peninsula by only a few decades, had appeared as the sole representatives of a long past, in which the builders of the ruined cities undoubtedly must have lived an eventful life, not to be counted by a few generations, but by a long and hardly calculable number of centuries. This vacuum of time the manuscript promised to fill out. Though it did not offer a history conceived in the common acceptation of the word, the brief epitome of events which it presented, began by telling us of the arrival of foreigners from distant lands, who, step by step succeeded in conquering the Maya soil and who were brought into significant connection with the name as well as the fall of cities now lying in ruins over the whole country.
As to the authenticity of the events reported, they have been received by many students with a confidence and faith rarely manifested when discoveries of such importance are brought to light. As to the form in which they were presented, the author seemed to exhibit neither the skill of a professional nor the clumsiness of an occasional forger. If on the one hand the gaps he left betrayed a defective memory, this circumstance should be held rather as an indication of his credibility. The material from which his information was derived, we might add, was extensive, and much of it was probably lost when he gave the account at a later period of his life.
The events communicated being in themselves of the highest interest, rose in importance from the fact that they were arranged in successive epochs. A chance was thereby given to calculate the long space of time that intervened between the arrival of the ancient and of the modern conquerors. This difficult task was attempted by the fortunate discoverer himself, Señor Juan Pio Perez, of Yucatan, accompanied by a learned discussion on ancient Maya chronology. His calculation furnishes the sum of 1392 years, the first initial date to be assigned to the year 144 A. D., and the last to 1536 A. D.
When, some years ago we undertook to examine the argument of Señor Perez we were not at all astonished by the great antiquity of the date he had drawn from the Maya Manuscript. For, nearly at the same time, we had reached similar results in an attempt made to utilize certain records which Ixtlilxochitl (1590), and Veytia (1760), (Kingsborough Collection, Vols. 8 and 9), have left regarding the earliest chronology of the Nahuatl tribes. By adopting a more rational method of computation than these Mexican writers had followed, we were unable to withstand the conclusion, that the Nahuatl people who were immediate territorial neighbors of the Mayas, considered the year 258 A. D. the earliest date of their arrival on and occupancy of the Mexican soil. Thus we had reached in this line of investigation very nearly the same results with the Nahuatl as Señor Perez with the Maya chronology, and the suspicion began to dawn upon us that these two neighboring people might, possibly, have stood in a still closer than a mere territorial connection.
These results, however, were only of a very problematical nature. They were derived from written reports, which, after all, could not be regarded as unquestionable authority. But they received a strong confirmation from a discovery we made later on the so-called Mexican Calendar Stone. In our discussion of this monument we believe that we have given ample proof of the fact, that its principal zone contains a sculptured record, showing a series of numerical symbols, from the computation of which the year 231 A. D. resulted as that which the Nahuatls had accepted as the first date of their national era.