length of the one used for the same purpose in the older cities. The following quotations from early Spanish chroniclers explain this practice and indicate that the inscriptions presented on these time-markers were of an historical nature:
There were discovered in the plaza of that city [Mayapan] seven or eight stones each ten feet in length, round at the end, and well worked. These had some writings in the characters which they use, but were so worn by water that they could not be read. Moreover, they think them to be in memory of the foundation and destruction of that city. There are other similar ones, although higher, at Zilan, one of the coast towns. The natives when asked what these things were, replied that they were accustomed to erect one of these stones every twenty years, which is the number they use for counting their ages.[[24]]
The other is even more explicit:
Their lustras having reached five in number, which made twenty years, which they call a katun, they place a graven stone on another of the same kind laid in lime and sand in the walls of their temples and the houses of the priests, as one still sees to-day in the edifices in question, and in some ancient walls of our own convent at Merida, about which there are some cells. In a city named Tixhualatun, which signifies "place where one graven stone is placed upon another," they say are their archives, where everybody had recourse for events of all kinds, as we do to Simancas.[[25]]
It seems almost necessary to conclude from such a parallel that the inscriptions of the southern cities will also be found to treat of historical matters.
Second. When the monuments of the southern cities are arranged according to their art development, that is, in stylistic sequence, they are found to be arranged in their chronological order as well. This important discovery, due largely to the researches of Dr. H. J. Spinden, has enabled us to determine the relative ages of various monuments quite independent of their respective dates. From a stylistic consideration alone it has been possible not only to show that the monuments date from different periods, but also to establish the sequence of these periods and that of the monuments in them. Finally, it has demonstrated beyond all doubt that the great majority of the dates on Maya monuments refer to the time of their erection, so that the inscriptions which they present are historical in that they are the contemporaneous records of different epochs.
Third. The dates on the monuments are such as to constitute a strong antecedent probability of their historical character. Like the records of most ancient peoples, the Maya monuments, judging from their dates, were at first scattered and few. Later, as new cities were founded and the nation waxed stronger and stronger, the number of monuments increased, until at the flood tide of Maya prosperity they were, comparatively speaking, common. Finally, as decline set in, fewer and fewer monuments were erected, and eventually effort in this field ceased altogether. The increasing number of the monuments by ten-year periods is shown in plate [4], where the passage of time (i. e., the successive ten-year periods) is represented from left to right, and the number of dates in each ten-year period from bottom to top. Although other dated monuments will be found from time to time, which will necessarily change the details given in this diagram, such additional evidence in all probability will never controvert the following general conclusions, embodied in what has just been stated, which are deducible from it:
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGYBULLETIN 57 PLATE 4
