ere
cannibals and sacrificed men and women to idols, some of which were
identical with those of Mexico. The Mayas had no conception of property
in land; their buildings were great communal houses, like pueblos; in
some cases these so-called palaces, at first supposed to be scanty
remnants of vast cities, were themselves the entire "cities;" in other
cases there were doubtless large composite pueblos fit to be called
cities.

[Footnote 145: This writing was at once recognized by learned
Spaniards, like Las Casas, as entirely different from anything
found elsewhere in America. He found in Yucatan "letreros de
ciertos caracteres que en otra ninguna parte," Las Casas,
_Historia apologetica_, cap. cxxiii. For an account of the
hieroglyphics, see the learned essays of Dr. Cyrus Thomas, _A
Study of the Manuscript Troano_, Washington, 1882; "Notes on
certain Maya and Mexican MSS.," _Third Report of the Bureau of
Ethnology_, pp. 7-153; "Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices,"
_Sixth Report_, pp. 259-371. (The paper last mentioned ends
with the weighty words, "The more I study these characters the
stronger becomes the conviction that they have grown out of a
pictographic system similar to that common among the Indians of
North America." Exactly so; and this is typical of every aspect
and every detail of ancient American culture. It is becoming
daily more evident that the old notion of an influence from
Asia has not a leg to stand on.) See also a suggestive paper by
the astronomer, E. S. Holden, "Studies in Central American
Picture-Writing," _First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_,
pp. 205-245; Brinton, _Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Yucatan_,
New York, 1870; _Essays of an Americanist_, Philadelphia, 1890,
pp. 193-304; Leon de Rosny, _Les ecritures figuratives_, Paris,
1870; _L'interpretation des anciens textes Mayas_, Paris, 1875;
_Essai sur le dechiffrement de l'ecriture hieratique de
l'Amerique Centrale_, Paris, 1876; Foerstemann, _Erlaeuterungen
der Maya Handschrift_, Dresden, 1886. The decipherment is as
yet but partially accomplished. The Mexican system of writing
is clearly developed from the ordinary Indian pictographs; it
could not have arisen from the Maya system,