Early Man in the Maya Area

The Maya area has yielded little in the way of Early Man, although certain discoveries, like that at Santa Isabel Iztapan (Aveleyra and Maldonado 1953), have unquestionably established hunters of now extinct fauna in the Valley of Mexico. In Guatemala only a peculiarly cut sloth bone suggests human co-existence with Upper Pleistocene fauna (Shook 1951: 93, 96). But, apart from these, one can only note two other finds, both made some years ago, one at Concepcion, Campeche, Mexico, the other in the Peten, Guatemala. These latter ‘discoveries have been treated in a few important studies as containing either sure or probable remnants of a fundamental, early Mesoamerican horizon. I strongly feel that before these particular finds achieve widespread acceptance, in print or otherwise, as except tionally ancient, they should be re-examined especially from the comparative standpoint. The Concepción artifacts and those from the Peten were, for the most part, percussion-flaked flint implements, bifaced, usually with one end rounded, the other relatively pointed, and with unretouched edges, not unlike the Acheulian hand ax of Europe.