In all these the Pueblos lead. The non-Pueblo tribes skirting the Plains and Plateaus occupy an intermediate position, as, doubtless, do the tribes to the southwest, from which it appears that, after all, we have but one distinct general type of culture centering in this area.
10. The Nahua Area. We have just seen how the Pueblo type of culture centered in the upper Rio Grande Valley and how its varying characteristics extend down into Mexico. It is clear from the historical data of the Spanish conquest that when Cortez landed on the Gulf Coast there was one center of culture for the whole stretch of country between the Rio Grande and Lake Nicaragua, and that its most typical representative was the Aztec group round about the City of Mexico. Yet, the Tarascan, the Zapotec and the Mixtec were almost equally typical, while somewhat less typical were the Totonac, and the Otomi.
Some centuries before the discovery of America, the center of the area was in Yucatan, among the Maya, whence it seems to have shifted to the northern tribes we have just noted. Within the bounds of this older center are found the most impressive ruins in the New World (p. 100). While we cannot connect any one ruin with a specific surviving Maya group, it is certain that the builders of all of them were members of the Maya stock. The attainment of this result is one of the most important triumphs of our science, for had we been unable to so connect these ruins with the Maya, we should find the whole Mexican-Central American problem extremely baffling.
The Spaniards found the Maya in eighteen or more independent tribal groups, no longer living in pretentious cities, but no doubt representing the original social units forming the ancient Maya federation. That they were still of a culture type comparable to the Aztec group, is indicated by extensive agriculture (maize, peppers, beans, cacao, etc.), the domestication of bees for the honey and the wax, weaving of cotton so fiine that the Spaniards mistook it for silk, large canoes, and trade with Cuba, hieroglyphic books, a gentile organization with animal names, etc. Archæological research has revealed their former ascendency in architecture, art,
