istically perfect. Probably the central and western
districts of San Salvador were originally peopled by the same race of
Mayas, and these tracts of country were later settled by the
Mexican-speaking Pipiles.

A characteristic feature of the extensive ruins of Zacualpa is that the
pyramids and ramparts have perpendicular steps which are higher than
they are broad, and this peculiarity may be attributed to the influence
of the Maya tribes, who are related to the Mams of Guatemala.

_Decipherment of the Mayan Hieroglyphs._--The key to the decipherment,
so far as this has progressed at present, was furnished by the _Historia
de las Cosas de Yucatan_, a work written by Diego de Landa, the first
bishop of the country. This professed to give, with much other more or
less doubtful information, the full account of a calendar system
analogous to that of the Mexicans, which was said to have been used by
the Mayas (see MEXICO). The signs for each of the 20 days and for the 18
weeks of 20 days are figured by Landa. The first step was to compare
these with the hieroglyphic characters contained in the few Mayan
picture manuscripts (Codex Troano, Cortesianus, Peresianus, Dresden
Codex) which have survived the destructive fanaticism of the Spanish
missionaries. Forstemann's acute analysis detected that the bars and
dots which occur along the margin and in the body of the pictorial
scenes represented numerals, dots standing for each integer up to five,
while for five a bar was used. Next, it was found that the order in
which these numeral-signs are placed is regular, and that there are
never more than five in a group. It was established that the first sign
in such a group is that for the numeral 1 (_Kin_), the next that for 20
(_Uinal_), the third for 18 X 20 (_Tun_), the fourth for 18 X 20 X 20
(_Katun_), and the fifth for 18 X 20 X 20 X 20, that is to say, a cycle.

Had the available material for study been confined to the manuscripts,
little more progress would have been made beyond establishing subsidiary
details in the actual calendar. But when a similar analysis was applied
to the numerous monuments discovered and figured by Maudslay and others,
some important results of a general bearing were obtained. It was found
that many of the hieroglyphs of various forms upon the stones were also
of numeral value, and, what was of great importance, that they all
referred back to a single starting-point. This starting-point or zero is
no d