on the ground. Since the former begins with 1492 and thus arbitrarily cross-sections the cultural career of the natives, we may expect a large part of the readily accessible archæological data to refer to the historic cultures. On the other hand, we have just grounds for assuming that the prehistoric period was of much greater duration than the historic. One of our problems, therefore, will be to discover if the archæological data can be analyzed so as to reveal earlier independent cultures in any of these areas, if such there were. Unfortunately, this task must await more searching field-work, as our discussion of chronology has suggested; so all that can be hoped for now is the mere formulation of the problem.
The most direct approach to this will be a comparative study of the respective distribution maps. For convenience, we have superimposed the archaeological and culture area maps (Fig. 101), the historic areas in Arabic, the prehistoric, or archæological areas, in Roman enumeration. At first glance, the respective boundaries may seem bewildering, but closer inspection shows many areas to have common centers. Reading from north to south, we have the following coincident pairs: XI–5, X–4, IX–2, VIII–3, VII–9, VI–1, XVIII–15, XXI–12, XXIII–14, XXIV–13. Thus, ten of the fourteen historic culture areas coincide with prehistoric archæological centers. Of the remaining, XII–6, may well be added to the above, since it is rather a graphic factor that gives the impression of divergence.
Turning now to Area 10, we find it embracing archæological centers for XIV, XV, and XVI. Area XIII lies between or on the margins of 9 and 10, but need not be considered here, for reasons previously stated (p. 260). Area XVI is the old Maya region and is, therefore, somewhat earlier than the type culture of historic Area 10. In like manner, XV is the center of Zapotecan culture, which also seems to be older than the type of Area 10, or XIV.
Likewise, for Area 11 we have three archæological centers, XVII, XIX, and XX. While we cannot yet state the chronological relations of these, yet, from the artifacts alone, we see
