Our foremost authorities on Maya history, including Dr. S. G. Morley of the Carnegle Institute. Dr. Spinden of Harvard, and the British archaeologists Maudslay and Joyce, are agreed that Maya culture suffered eclipse before the coming of the Spaniards. There was an early collapse in the seventh century A. D., and a later one in the fifteenth century. The most likely causes of these collapses are civil war, exhaustion of the soil, climatic change and the appearance of disease.

The Europeans from whom we Americans are descended first heard of the great stone-built cities of the tropical New World from the Spanish conquerors. Columbus, on his fourth and last voyage, in 1502, just missed becoming the discoverer of Yucatan when he failed to follow a canoe believed to have been filled with Yucatans, which he met off the coast of what is now Honduras.

Cordoba Saw City in 1517

In 1517, another Spaniard, Cordoba, touched the east coast of Yucatan, near Cape Catoche and Mujeres Island and saw "a large town standing back from the coast about two leagues . . .and . . idols. . .nearly all of them with figures of tall women, so that we called the place the Punta de Mugeres" (Women's Point). Juan de Grijalva a year later sailed from Cuba to the Island of Cozumel. After claiming that land for his sovereign with the usual blithe arrogance of his age, Grijalva crossed to the visible eastern shore of Yucatan, where his historian describes sighting "three large towns separated from each other by about two miles. There were many houses of stone, very call towers and buildings covered with straw . . .the next day toward sun-set we perceived a city or town so large that Seville would not have seemed more considerable nor better."

Tulum is Finest Ruin

Perhaps unfortunately for present knowledge, Grijalva decided not to land, but modern archaeologists believe that that last "city or town" was Tulum (or Tuloom), the finest ruined city now known on the east coast of Yucatan, whose white walls top a cliff directly over the restless waters of the Caribbean.

Then, in 1519, came Cortez, who stopped in Yucatan only long enough to pick up the shipwrecked priest, Jeronimo de Aguilar, before proceeding along the coast to Vera Cruz, whence he marched inland. The discovery of great wealth in upland Mexico, and later in Peru, turned the attentions of the Spanish conquistadores from Yucatan, where little gold was to be had. The conquest of the hot lowlands, inhabited by the valiant Mayas, was long delayed. The Indians have never given up the struggle for independence and in the eastern part of the Yucatan peninsula, called Quintana Roo, they have retained a practical independence in several small states.

Some of the priests, and especially Landa, the second Bishop of Yucatan left accounts of the old Indian life, but their writings were locked up in archives and escaped attention.

The first real awakening of outside in Yucatan and Guatemala came with the reports from the American explorer, John L. Stephens, and his companion, the English artist, Francis Catherwood. Between 1839 and 1842 these two men visited and, with admirable exactitude, described "forty-four ruined cities or places in which remains or vestiges of ancient populations were found."

At the risk of appearing flippant, it may be said that the Mayas have never had a first-class press agent. While the works of Stephens found many readers, they were overshadowed by the publication of Prescott's fascinating "Conquest of Mexico." Prescott dwelt on the semi-barbaric culture of the Aztecs. He failed to stress the fact that the Mayas had an older and higher civilization, and to this day, if you speak of "ruined cities in Mexico," the average layman will respond. "Oh, yes, you mean the Aztecs." The fact is that the Mayas were far superior to the Aztecs in art, in science, in most of the refinements which make what we loosely call civilization.

Nearly all our present information has been gained since Stephens's time, that is, within the last ninety years. And most of our knowledge of the glyphs has been hammered out within the past thirty years by arduous study of the inscriptions on monuments and of the texts of three Maya books, or "codiees," as the experts call them, which fortunately escaped the Spanish zeal for destroying what were considered "writings of the devil."

No Rosetta Stone Found

No Rosetta Stone has been discovered to make the decipherment easier by permitting comparison of the hieroglyphs with another language. Nor is it likely that such an said to interpretation will be found, although it is quite possible that more codices will be discovered.

Hunting for ruined cities in the unmapped jungle is somewhat like hunting for a needle in a haystack. The chances of success are increased because of the fact that the country was more thickly populated than most countries of our modern world. The civilization of the Mayas was built up on an abundant reservoir of man power supported by the fertile vegetable growth of the tropics. Our admiration for them must increase when we reflect that their magnificent temples of worship alone were probably made with man power alone, man power wielding tools of stone.

Very little intensive archaeological work has yet been done in the Maya area. If the riddle is to be solved it will be done by energetic labor in the field and not by armchair theorizing and fireside dreaming. It is not beyond the limits of possibility that more codices more ancient books, will some day be found in sealed chests or chambers.