Abstract
NOTWITHSTANDING numerous attempts continued over a long period of years to trace the prehistoric civilization of Central America to its origins, the ancestral forms, especially of the culture of the Maya, remain obscure. It is now reported that a substantial advance towards a solution of this problem has been made by a joint archaeological expedition to Yucatan of the Peabody Museum and the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, which has excavated a stratified site on the Ulua River, known locally as the “Beaches of the Dead”. This site, the second only of the recorded stratified sites in this part of the world, lies on the fringe of the Mayan area. It has been known since 1929, when Mrs. Dorothy M. Popence was lowered by ropes into the channel which has been cut by the river through the deposits to collect skeletal material which had been washed out with potsherds and other debris from the culture-bearing strata. Dr. W. D. Strong, who is in charge of the expedition, now reports to the Smithsonian Institution the discovery at a depth of twenty feet of house-floors, refuse heaps and pottery fragments incised or painted in monochrome with designs which, though less elaborate, suggest an early Mayan type. Overlying this culture is a deposit of sterile clay, six and a half feet thick, and above this again is a deposit of burials and potsherds typically Mayan in character. The intervening cultural and chronological gap is partially filled by a culture from a site on the tributary Comayagua River, where an apparently transitional stage affords pottery of Mayan type that seems to shade into the “Beaches of the Dead” style. On the evidence of its precedence in time and its similar but simpler character, it is suggested that the “Beaches of the Dead” type may be ancestral to the Maya style. Posthumous distortion has destroyed the evidential value of the skeletal material, beyond an indication of a general physical resemblance to the type of the Maya people.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Cultural Origins in Central America. Nature 138, 1045–1046 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/1381045c0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1381045c0