Ancient civilizations of the Andes / by Philip Ainsworth Means.

  • Means, Philip Ainsworth, 1892-1944.
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ancient civilizations of the Andes / by Philip Ainsworth Means. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    At first, during the period of Maya colonization—chiefly in a northerly direction, towards the upper part of Yucatan— material and intellectual culture bade fair to maintain them¬ selves at a high level. But, for causes at which we can only guess—climatic conditions, wars, pestilence, who knows what? —there followed, in the new habitat, between 690 and 990, three centuries of decided cultural decline. It was a period analogous in quality to the so-called Dark Ages in Europe. From 990 to 1200, however, there was, in northern Yuca¬ tan, a notable recrudescence of cultural strength, and during more than two centuries new cities, fully as splendid as the now abandoned capitals of the south had been, were founded, grew, and flourished, forming the New Empire of the Mayas. It was a time of peace, prosperity and artistic productiveness. But at the end of the period internecine strife between the various cities and between their ruling dynasties sprang up, greatly weakening the Maya people as a whole, a fact of which the powerful Toltecs of Mexico made use in order to establish their hegemony over Yucatan. Lasting from 1201 to 1458, the Toltec period was filled with brilliant achievement, but it contained the materials for eventual explosion, and after 1458 the Maya-Toltec culture of Yucatan burst into many hostile parts, inaugurating a second decline in civilization which lasted until the Spaniards entered the country.11 The significance for us of the facts presented in this all too long digression may be summed up under various heads, as follows: 1. The archaic cultural phase, succeeding to the primitive, hunter-and-fisher phase of culture brought into America by the original migrants from Asia, was very widely distributed throughout the Western Hemisphere, and in various regions it lasted into modern times, albeit in others it was superseded by more advanced types of culture. Because of its catholic character we are constantly finding representatives of its in¬ dustries in widely separated regions. An artifact of archaic type from one region will often closely resemble one of analo¬ gous kind from far away; but a resemblance of that sort does