Maya decline. “A difference, it is true,” says Thomas,[70] “in the forms and ornamentation, and, to a certain degree, an advance toward a more perfect type, can be traced, but no examples, so far as the writer is aware, of the first rude beginnings or the original forms have been found. Some comparatively rude are found painted on pottery, scratched on shells or other soft material, but these belong to what may be termed demotic writing and are not primitive forms. Comparing the characters of the various inscriptions which have been discovered and those found in the few remaining pre-Columbian manuscripts, the result is as follows: _First_, it is apparent that the characters in the manuscripts have been adapted from those of the inscriptions. In other words, inscriptions preceded the manuscripts; hence we must look to the former for the older forms. What appear to the writer to be the oldest forms of the glyphs yet discovered are seen in those of Palenque and some of the inscriptions found by Charnay at Menche (Lorillard City), though others discovered by him at this same place belong to the later and more ornamental type, discovered in the Peten region, that is those carved in wood discovered by Bernouilli at Tikal, a type also found at Copan and Chichen Itza, but in none of the inscriptions at Palenque.” For my part, I cannot see that Thomas has exactly proved that the manuscripts were later than the stone-carved inscriptions, but his knowledge of the subject is so great and his methods so cautious that I am glad to give his statement in this connection. [Illustration: FEMALE HEAD IN TRACHYTE From slope north of Temple 22—Copan. ] The Maya glyphs probably developed out of something like the Mexican or Aztec writing; and the step was not a very long one from writing of the character of the Lenapé _Walam Olum_ to that of the Aztec, and again it was not a long step from the ordinary picture-writing to the _Walam Olum_, so that it would seem that in these various writings we have an interesting series of steps from the crudest attempts at records, nearly, if not quite, to the highest, for it must be borne in mind that the step from the Maya glyphs to a true phonetic alphabet would be even shorter than any of the others. It is not impossible that something of the kind may yet be discovered. While the Mayas had made little progress in mechanical inventions, their progress in architecture, art, writing, and in astronomy is a proof that they were a thinking people, and, had conditions continued favourable to their progress, the Spaniards would have found them not easy to vanquish. The prominent and striking quality of the calculiform style has had a tendency to obscure the point that there may have been another system in vogue, more simple, more modern, in short purely phonetic. Perfected phonetic characters are simple characters and are likely not to attract notice, especially when attention has been fixed on other forms.