Science and history have not yet succeeded in fathoming the secret of the great American civilization that vanished suddenly from Central America, and the mystery of the Mayas remains unsolved. An expedition headed by Dr. H. J. Spinden '06, of the Peabody Museum and the writer Gregory Mason, is now on its way to the Yucatan to explore territory hither to unknown in the hope of finding new clues to the archaeological riddle of the Maya civilization. In this article, reprinted from the New York Times, Mr. Mason describes the problems and hopes of the expedition.

Deep in the thick jungles of Central America are dozens of splendid stone cities abandoned centuries ago. Of the mysterious race which built them, there remain only a few hundred thousand Indians, ignorant of their glorious past.

The lovely architecture of these desolate palaces, the faded paintings on crumbling temple walls, the grace and symmetry of sculpture found on monuments buried under the matted undergrowth of who knows how many years, all stamp the builders of these cities as the creators of the highest civilization that flourished in the New World before the coming of Europeans. "New World?" Outstanding facts in the history of these first Americans have now been traced back to the ancient days when Thales was founding Greek philosophy.

Origin of Mayas Puzzling

Whence came these people, whom we call the Mayas? What was the catastrophe that wiped out the civilizations of their golden age so suddenly that no tradition of them was left among the savage tribes who inherited their territory? In what fashion did the immigrant Mayas retrieve a measure of ancient culture in a new land? When we enter their deserted cities we feel the poignantly tantalizing quality of the mystery that surrounds a magnificent ship discovered in mid-ocean with sails set, gear in order and not a soul on board.

Why was this great ship, bearing no outward sign of wreck or misfortune, so abruptly abandoned? Why were these temples, palaces and astronomical observatories of cunningly carved white limestone suddenly left to the bats, the lizards and the sinister little owls the later Indians called "moan birds" and associated with death? It is conceivable that any rice might forget its humble beginnings in the dawn of history. But how came legend to be so silent about the collapse of a cultivated nation whose greatest cities we can now prove were inhabited in the first six centuries of the Christian era?. One reiterates the query, one gropes for an answer, till the imagination aches.

Once Numbered Millions

It was a widespread civilization as well as a high one, for it left the carved facades of its urban centres over what is now British Honduras, Southeastern Mexico, two-thirds of Guatemala and part of "Spanish Honduras." To this oldest American civilization archaeologists have agreed to give the name Maya(pronounce the first three letters like the pronoun my). This is a name of uncertain origin, connected with a late Yucatan capital called Mayapan. It has been extended to cover a great nation which once numbered many millions.

The Mayar were a true branch of the American Indian race, virtually or entirely uninfluenced by contact with Asia or any other part of the Old World. The earliest of their dates carved in stone which has yet been found corresponds to 98 B. C. in our calendar. Harvard University recently announced Dr. Spinden's discovery that the beginnings of the annual calendar and the Venus calendar of the Mayas must be carried back to dates between 613 and 530 B. C.

Mayas Superior to Incas

It seems fair to give the Mayas the palm for culture existing in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans A comparison with the Incas presents some difficulties, but as Dr. Spinden points out. "The Peruvians had no system of hieroglyphic writing and no carefully elaborated calendar." They were thus unable to conserve intellectual gains. But the Mayas had a well developed system of hieroglyphs, mostly ideographic, that is consisting of abbreviated pictures of the thing intended or of an object associated with it.

Their calendar is now an open book and can be proved more accurate than the Julian Calendar of the Spanish conquerors the same calendar that Greece and Russia abandoned only a few years ago. Moreover, the extraordinary astronomical science of the Mayas seems to have been built up without telescopes. Astronomical sighting lines marked with monuments were used to measure the true length of the year.

Of the Maya proficiency in painting Dr. Spinden says, "In foreshortening they greatly excelled the Egyptians and Assyrians."

Religion Resembles that of Egyptians

One of the most interesting things about these first Americans is that they were very religious. All their arts seem to have sprung from the religious impulse or to have been developed in interpreting it. Their gods and culture heroes had the physical attributes of reptiles, birds or lower mammals, although they were often somewhat partly humanized, like the beast gods of Egypt.