Page:The Conquest of Mexico Volume 1.djvu/31

 investigation of Maya remains, upon strictly scientific lines, was begun, an investigation which was destined to wreak a sea-change upon the ideas prevailing concerning the culture of Mexico and Central America.

The foundations of Maya studies were laid by the discovery, twenty years after the appearance of Prescott's work, of a manuscript history of Yucatan by Fray Diego de Landa, dated 1566. In 1881 A. P. Maudslay made his first expedition to Central America, the first of no less than seven during the next twenty years, throughout which he explored, cleared forest, measured, photographed, and obtained casts. The publication of his results, completed in 1892, crowned a task justly described by Dr. S.G. Morley, one of the leading authorities on Maya archæology at the present time, as "the greatest archæological investigation ever accomplished in the Maya field," and gave to the world a work which the same authority distinguishes as "the most important publication by which the science has been enriched." The application of Maudslay's researches to Landa's Relacion afforded scholars, such as Förstemann, Goodman, Seler, and Bowditch (to mention a few of the pioneers), material for the works which have revealed not only the nature and extent of Maya culture, with its remarkable chronological system, but also the intimate bearing which it has upon the culture of the Mexican Valley.

Maya culture seems to have had its origin in the tropical country on the Atlantic slope lying between the northern boundary of the Petén district of Guatemala and the extreme north of Honduras. The commencement of its most glorious period, though not yet settled beyond dispute, owing to the difficulty of correlating the native chronological system with our own, is assigned by the most trustworthy authorities to the first or second century of our era. After some three centuries, the older sites were abandoned, and the centre of Maya "civilisation," which had spread both west and north-east, was transferred to Yucatan. In a westerly direction its effect was destined to produce notable consequences. By way of Oaxaca the Maya culture, with its calendar, religion, art, and craftsmanship, reached the Mexican Valley, becoming ever more and more attenuated on the journey; but there it took root, and, fostered by immigrants from the more virile, though less cultured, north, flourished as something almost specifically different. The main authorities whose works were available to Prescott connected the beginning of