Page:The American Indian.djvu/280

228 calendar systems, and astronomical knowledge. A great deal of these specialized traits of culture passed to the Aztec, but one feature in particular seems to differentiate Maya culture: viz., the absence of copper tools. Their culture was essentially a stone age culture, which used copper and gold, particularly the latter, only for ornament. In the smelting and casting of gold they were very skilful. Thus we have in the ancient Maya a fine example of the height to which a people may rise with only tools of stone and wood. While the later Aztec culture was in foundation a stone culture, it went somewhat farther than the Maya in the development of copper tools, but not so far as did the Inca of Peru.

The present state of native culture in the Central American States is quite the reverse of what the archæology would lead one to expect. This is particularly true of the Maya area in which quite primitive and loosely organized groups of people are found still speaking Maya languages. One of these groups, known as Lacandones, has been carefully studied and may be taken as the general historic type for the whole of Central America. Its characteristics are: agriculture, hunting and fishing, carried on about in the same proportion as in the Amazon country; maize, potatoes, a yucca, calabashes, tobacco, corn, etc., raised; cotton raised and spun; some pottery; bees domesticated; bows and stone-pointed arrows; water drums; gourd rattles; the ceremonial life simple, consisting in the main of an annual renewing ceremony and numerous offerings, from all of which women are excluded. Strange to say, no knowledge of the calendar system and writing of the Maya period survives, for Maya intellectual culture being exclusive to the priestly class, either passed over to the Aztec conquerors or into oblivion.

Aztec culture embodied traits similar to those of the Maya. They had a highly organized government and maintained armies; a gentile social order with gens land rights; intensive agriculture, maize, beans, peppers, gourds, cotton, fruits; intoxicating drink, or pulque, from maguey plant; were skilful builders; made ornaments of gold, silver and copper, cast in molds of wax, clay and charcoal; made some tools of copper