BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGYBULLETIN 57 PLATE 26
INITIAL SERIES ON STELA N, COPAN, SHOWING ERROR IN MONTH COEFFICIENT
The number in the above list coming nearest to the number recorded in this text (9.16.10.0.0) is the next to the last, 9.16.4.17.0. But in order to reach this value of the date 1 Ahau 8 Zip (9.16.4.17.0) with the number actually recorded, two considerable changes in it are first necessary, (1) replacing the 10 tuns in A4 by 4 tuns, that is, changing 2 bars to 4 dots, and (2) replacing 0 uinals in A5 by 17 uinals, that is, changing the 0 sign to 3 bars and 2 dots. But these changes involve a very considerable alteration of the original, and it seems highly improbable, therefore, that the date here intended was 9.16.4.17.0 1 Ahau 8 Zip. Moreover, as any other number in the above list involves at least three changes of the number recorded in order to reach 1 Ahau 8 Zip, we are forced to the conclusion that the error must be in the terminal date, not in one of the coefficients of the period glyphs. Let us therefore assume in our next trial that the Initial-series number is correct as it stands, and that the error lies somewhere in the terminal date. But the terminal date reached in counting 9.16.10.0.0 forward in the Long Count will be 1 Ahau 3 Zip, as we have seen on the preceding page, and this date differs from the terminal date recorded by 5—1 bar in the month coefficient. It would seem probable, therefore, that the bar to the left of the month sign in A15 should have been omitted, in which case the text would correctly record the date 9.16.10.0.0 1 Ahau 3 Zip.
The student will note that in all the examples above given the errors have been in the numerical coefficients, and not in the signs to which they are attached; in other words, that although the numerals are sometimes incorrectly recorded, the period, day, and month glyphs never are.
Throughout the inscriptions, the exceptions to this rule are so very rare that the beginner is strongly advised to disregard them altogether, and to assume when he finds an incorrect text that the error is in one of the numerical coefficients. It should be remembered also in this connection that errors in the inscriptions are exceedingly rare, and a glyph must not be condemned as incorrect until every effort has been made to explain it in some other way.
This concludes the presentation of texts from the inscriptions. The student will have noted in the foregoing examples, as was stated in Chapter II, that practically the only advances made looking toward the decipherment of the glyphs have been on the chronological side. It is now generally admitted that the relative ages[[238]] of most Maya monuments can be determined from the dates recorded upon them, and that the final date in almost every inscription indicates the time at or near which the monument bearing it was erected, or at least formally dedicated. The writer has endeavored to show, moreover,
that many, if indeed not most, of the monuments, were "time markers" or "period stones," in every way similar to the "period stones" which the northern Maya are known to[[239]] have erected at regularly recurring periods. That the period which was used as this chronological unit may have varied in different localities and at different epochs is not at all improbable. The northern Maya at the time of the Spanish Conquest erected a "period stone" every katun, while the evidence presented in the foregoing texts, particularly those from Quirigua and Copan, indicates that the chronological unit in these two cities at least was the hotun, or quarter-katun period. Whatever may have been the chronological unit used, the writer believes that the best explanation for the monuments found so abundantly in the Maya area is that they were "period stones," erected to commemorate or mark the close of successive periods.