The position of the Huaxtec now arises. In them we have a Maya-speaking people, practising certain definitely Maya customs such as tooth-filing and -inlay, and inhumation as opposed to cremation, yet apparently without a script. As far as their art is concerned, the sculptures of the Panuco valley bear a closer resemblance to those of the Maya, especially to certain stelæ at Piedras Negras, than the Aztec. The isolation of this definitely Maya branch would seem to imply that the Maya in the earliest days of all must have spread from Guatemala up the east coast of Mexico as far as Tampico, penetrating into Chiapas, and possibly Oaxaca, and colonizing the Mexican valley, where they found a primitive people akin to the earliest population of Michoacan. In times subsequent to what I may call this proto-Maya movement there took place in the southern fertile region a great cultural development, culminating in the organization of a calendar, the invention of a script, and the construction of the ruined “cities.” The culture developed here spread, as I have indicated on p. 361, but slowly, since the land was by no means overpopulated, and life was easy. For some reason it took a westerly course, _via_ Oaxaca, and never reached the Huaxtec, who remained confined to the coast by the eastern cordillera and held little communication with their western neighbours. In later times, at any rate, they were cut off from the southern Maya by the stream of migration which passed from the valley of Mexico and its neighbourhood eastward, and they may well have been isolated at an earlier period by some similar movement in this direction. At any rate an early tendency towards migration on these lines is seen in the legends of the Tutal Xiu, who left Nonoual in the second century, probably under pressure exercised by tribes to the west. The chief objection to this theory of the origin and development of the Maya culture, as far as I can see, is that in Guatemala and Honduras no certain traces of a proto-Maya culture have as yet been discovered, but that the civilization springs, as it were, full-blown from the earth. The answer would be that the finest ruins have focussed all attention up to the present, and that earlier manifestations of the culture have not been sought, while the difficulties afforded by environment and climate place serious obstacles in the way of systematic excavation. Further, the art itself affords many indications that it is based upon wood-carving, and the conditions are not favourable to the survival of any remains save those constructed in stone.