of local artists, and above all for the relative tractability of the local materials. The evidence of architecture is more valuable, and, to speak generally, supports the dates as given by the glyphs, though the possibility of greater conservatism at some sites, as compared with others, must not be overlooked. On the whole the best results must necessarily accrue from a careful consideration of all three, with due allowance for a natural tendency to quote dates relating to past and often mythical history.
With respect to certain similarities presented by the attributes of the figures depicted at certain sites, allusion has been made above to the hand appearing as part of the head-dress at Copan, Piedras Negras and Palenque (p. 227), to the jaguar-man at Tikal, Seibal, Piedras Negras and Quirigua (p. 343), and to the fish and flower, also shown as a head-dress, at Naranjo, Palenque, Chichen Itza and on the Nebaj vase (p. 310). Attention will be called later to a peculiar interlaced ornament, also borne on the head, by figures at Copan, Piedras Negras, Menché and Naranjo, and found again at Xochicalco, Teayo and in the Mexican valley (p. 355). One more may be mentioned, the head-dress representing a heron with a fish or frog in its beak, seen at Palenque (Fig. 61; p. 297) and twice at Seibal, an ornament which recalls the Quiché legend of how they sent eastward to a country, most probably to be identified with the Usumacinta valley, to obtain royal insignia, and received amongst other objects the plumes of the heron.
Of the Yucatec sites the most important is that of Chichen Itza. The remains here are considerable, though they conform to no definite plan save that the same arrangement of building round rectangular courts prevails. The buildings themselves are typically Maya, though structurally they exhibit a certain advance upon those of the central area, and Maya glyphs are found throughout, with certain important
