Brinton contradicts the assertion of Waldeck “that the language (of the Mayas) has undergone such extensive changes that what was written a century ago is unintelligible to a native of to-day. So far is this from the truth that, except for a few obsolete words, the narrative of the Conquest, written more than three hundred years ago by the chief, Pech, could be read without difficulty by any educated native.” Thus it seems probable that the Amerind languages extant have been spoken nearly as we know them to-day for a great many centuries, and that modifications crept in slowly; so slowly that the language roots and grammatical construction of the various stocks are so distinct that they form the safest guide now available in the classification of the various branches of the Amerind race; and furthermore that, judged by these tests, these languages have no relationship to any other group. Powell places more reliance, as a test, in the lexical elements,—that is, in the _language roots_,—than in the grammatical structure, as the latter is constantly changing. “The roots of a language,” he maintains, “are its most permanent characteristics, and while the words which are formed from them may change so as to obscure their elements or in some cases even to lose them, it seems that they are never lost from all, but can be recovered in large part.” If there should be advanced the criticism that these Amerind languages had little or no literature, and therefore are not equal to languages so recorded, as a test of affinity, it may be noted that the largest number of languages throughout the world have produced no literature. Max Müller says: “It is a mere accident that languages should ever have been reduced to writing.” However this may be, such an accident appears to be in the line of regular human development, and when a people arrive at the right point in their mental evolution they invent a means of recording their thought. It seems, therefore, to be rather a state of mind than an accident. The Mayas of this continent had reached the point for speech recording and, following the natural order, they invented a system and made books of record.