MAYAN (mii'yan) STOCK. A group of cog nate tribes o• nations occupying the States of Vera Cruz, Yucatan, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas, in Mexico, with the greater part of Guatemala and a small portion of Salvador, and exhibiting in their ancient native culture the highest aboriginal development found upon the American continent. The stock includes six lan guages, with nearly thirty dialects, the princi pal nations being the Huastee of northern Ve•a Cruz; the Maya proper of Yucatan peninsula, with the Itza and Lacandon, speaking the same language, across the Guatemala frontier; the Tzental, in Tabasco and Chiapas; the Pokom, in the Vera Pas district, central Guatemala ; the Main, on the Chiapas-Guatemala frontier; and the Quiche and Cakehiquel. speaking dialects of one language, in southern and western Guatemala and northern Salvador. Their combined popula tion is probably not far short of two million.
According to all historical and traditional evi dence, the Mayan tribes emigrated from the far north at a very early period, probably not far from the beginning of the Christian Era. As they advanced along the shore of the Mexican Gulf they left the Huastec as a detached colony at the north of the Pfinuco River on the northern fron tier of the present State of Vera Cruz, while the rest proceeded southward into Chiapas and Yuen tan, and thence still southward into Guatemala. The date of their arrival in Yucatan seems to have been as early as the nu bile of the fifth century. Guatemala was probably occupied not long afterwards, as the Quiche c•hroniel-s are said to go back more than eight hundred years before the Conquest, or to about 700 A.D. The great ruined cities of Uxmal and Chichc•n-Itzu date hack from twelve to fourteen centuries, while Palenque antedates all American historical records.
Physically the Mayan peoples arc dark, short, broad-hemled, and museular. In pre-Columbian times they had attempted a high grade of civil ization. Agriculture was their main depend ence, corn being the principal crop, to which were added beans, peppers. and cacao, the last, together with pieces of copper. being used among the Maya proper as the ordinary standard of value. Bees were domestieated for their honey and wax. Cotton was spun for and dyed and woven into fabrics which rivaled silk in delicacy. The lands were held in common by each village and were parceled out by the chiefs on a basis of a certain corn production per year to each family. lion, silver, and cop per were used for ornamental purposes, but ordinary metal tools were unknown. The Maya of the coast region had large seagoing canoes, with which they carried on regular trade with Cuba and voyaged north and smith along the Gulf coast and the Caribbean shore. Descent generally in the male line. and peel] village coin 'tinnily was governed by a chief who derived his authority front the hereditary ruler of the tribe or previnee. A century before the coming of the Spaniards the whole peninsula of Yucatan was under one compact governmental authority, while the greater part of Guatemala was divided be tween the sovereignties of the Quieli@ and the Ca kelt iquel.
The Mayan peoples were remarkable above all other cultured American nations for their arenterture, their calendar, and their hierogly phic system. Of their architecture, as exempli fied in the great ruins of Palenque, Uxmal, Mayapan, and Chichen-Itze, with hundreds of lesser cities and isolated temples scattered through the tangled tropical forests, it is unnecessary to speak at length here. The material was usually
a hard limestone. imbedded in firm mortar, well cut and exactly fitted, and lavishly ea rved on every part with mythieal and historical figures and hieroglyphic inseriptions. Their hiero glyphic records and rituals were carved or painted upon the walls of their temples and palaver or written in books of folded sheets of maguey paper. The explanation of these hiero glyphs is 'me of the most important problems in Anwriean areneology. From the rounded out lines of the characters, somewhat resembling peb bles or skulls in shape. they ha ye been described as ealculiform. In spite of wholesale destruction by the Spanish missionaries and authorities, a few of those ancient sacred hooks still remain for study and interpretation, notably the Codex Troano, the Codex PVITSillinlq. and the Dresden Codex, besides a number of others in the Maya language, but in Latin characters, compiled by natives of the VW:Jinn peninsula later than the Conquest, and usually grouped under the title of -Books of Chilan Balam." From these books our knowledge of the Maya past is chiefly de rived. The tfuien. of Guatemala have also their sacred book. the Pnpol Volt, of which a transla tion has been made by the Brassenr he Bourbourg. The calendar system of the Maya, which was praetically the same among the neigh boring tribes of the same stock, was more elab orate and exact than that of the Aztec tribes. Their year, beginning on dilly 11)th, when the sun crossed the zenith. consisted of 3fi5 dfly.4, divided into eighteen months of twenty days each, the days hieing grouped into weeks of five days each. At the end id' the year there was an interval of five 'nameless days' be foe the beginning of the new year. The years were grouped into katuna of twenty years each, the eompletitin of Klett sueeessive kraut, twine signalized by the placing of a eomme alive inseribed stone in the wall of the principal temple of the city. Thirteen katune made up an ahau katun, or great cycle of 26n years, There was also a lesser cycle of fifty two years, similar to that of the Aztec. and 'I'm Moils attention has been given to the Maya languages, owing to the literary tendency, col tural superiority, and numerical strength of the people using them. Compared with other Indian languages they arc comparatively simple in structure. The Maya itself forms one of the few Anwriean languages which have enough vitality not only to hold their own, but even to force themselves on European settlers and supplant their own speech. In Yucatan whole families of in white blood are found who know no Spanish, using the Maya exclusively. The earliest Maya grammar is that of Father Villalpando, punished about 1353. The first dietionary is also by him, published in 1571. There is also the .Maya Spanish Dictionary of Perez, 1S77. with about 20,000 words, and the manuscript Dictionary of the Convent of )lotel, in three large quarto vol umes, in the Carter Brown Library of Provi dence. The best synopses of Mayon culture and chronology are: Itrinton, Chronicles of the Mayas; id., Annals of the Cakchiquels; id., Es says of an A merieanist. Se(' (111CIIEN-1TZ.A, ; KtTUN; PottoL V nit.