CHAPTER XVI
CHRONOLOGY OF CULTURES
In the course of these discussions it may have occurred to the reader that our culture classification is purely extensive, or horizontal, and ignores the chronological, or vertical relation. It is this chronological relation that underlies the great classifications in Old World archæology, especially that triumph of synthetic research in Europe, the determinations of the sequential relations among the several epochs in Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures. In this book we have so far been concerned with the distribution of trait-complexes rather than with their chronological sequence. Such a comprehension of the gross culture geography of the New World is logically necessary to its analytic treatment, but it is, after all, merely preliminary. It so far forms the chief content of our subject for the very good reason that it is a new science and as such has had barely more than time to get even once around the distribution problem; but now that such a general view has been attained, interest promises to center upon the time relations between the respective types of culture.
Mexico, Peru, and Yucatan have histories[1] from which, as a vantage ground, respectable chronologies have been established. Of these, the last is the most extended, for the very good reason that the Maya have left to us a number of dated inscriptions.[2] While these have come down to us in terms of the curious and highly original Maya calendar, yet modern scholars have been able to correlate them with our own reckoning. This correlation is, of course, not absolute, so the exact dates of one investigator do not quite agree with those of another, but still all have the same sequence. The following brief list based upon Morley's readings[3] will give an adequate idea of the age of Maya culture.
