which had been deserted before the coming of the Spaniards. These were the work of the Maya, a people whose name is far less familiar to the general public than that of the Aztec, but who, as I hope to show, evolved a culture of their own when the Aztec were yet primitive nomadic hunters, and who furnished the latter people with the materials for that civilization which so astonished the followers of Cortes.
The actual area with which this book deals is, roughly, that portion of Mexico which lies between the tropic of Cancer and the northern strip of Honduras. It is divided naturally into two portions, a northern and western, and a southern and eastern, by the depression which cuts across the isthmus of Tehuantepec. The natural division corresponds very conveniently with the archæological; to the north and west lies the seat of Mexican culture, to the south and east, of the Mayan; but it must be remembered that the Maya-speaking people extended at the conquest practically throughout Vera Cruz, though they had by that time fallen under Aztec influence. I propose therefore to divide this book into two corresponding sections, dealing first with the "Mexican" area, and later with the "Mayan." Both from the chronological and cultural points of view the Mayan area should come first, but, as will appear later, we are dependent to so great an extent upon our knowledge of Mexican civilization for our interpretation of Mayan archaeology, that it will be more convenient to give the Mexican priority.
The main geographical features of the Maya country are given at the commencement of the section dealing with its archaeology. The region immediately under consideration is shaped rather like an inverted pear, and consists in the main of a plateau bordered by two converging chains of lofty mountains, which are skirted exteriorly by a strip of low-lying coast. The uniformity of the plateau is broken in many places by
