Page:Mexican Archæology.djvu/435

Rh of these is the assumption that the initial dates on stelæ refer to the erection of the monuments in question. In considering this question I would omit Palenque, which is obviously, from the architectural and artistic point of view, one of the latest ruins in the central Mayan area. Further, the dates do not occur on stelæ, but for the most part on mural tablets in temples, and may well be "mythical," and based upon calculations into past time made at a period when the art of chronology, if such a phrase be permitted, had attained a great development in the hands of a specialist priesthood. At other sites the fact that the dates form more or less connected series, and correspond on the whole to the development of architecture, lends a certain probability to the theory that they are "historical" and the theory receives some support, in a negative way, from the extreme difficulty of assigning them any other reasonable function. The other link, which I frankly admit is far weaker, consists in an attempt to correlate them with the dating of the books of Chilan Balam, and this I will now explain. I have tried to show that the buildings at Chichen Itza may be divided into three main classes, corresponding in a rather remarkable manner to the principal epochs of Tutul Xiu tradition; and I have pointed out that what may be considered the earliest group is distinguished by a date in the "Jong count" characteristic of the central Mayan region. I have also explained that there is reason to believe that Chichen was inhabited before the arrival of the Tutul Xiu, and the presence of the early Maya in Yucatan is supported by the "long count" date at Tulum. It seems probable that the Tutul Xiu themselves did not use the long count, but reckoned time, as in the books of Chilan Balam, by the "short count," i.e. by the initial day of the katun alone. It is an interesting fact that in more than one of the versions we find a statement that, after their arrival at Chichen Itza,