This looks at the Spanish conquest of the Inca, following Cortes' conquest of the Aztecs. From Chapter 1:"In general it may be said that the Maya culture occupied the peninsula of Yucatan, portions of the states of Tabasco and Chiapas in Mexico, Guatemala, and the northern part of Honduras. That branch of the Mayas who called themselves the Itzas and who form the chief subject of this work occupied the southern portion of Yucatan and the greater part of what is now the Department of Peten in Guatemala.A few decades ago it was the fashion to credit the aboriginal peoples of America with a civilization of enormous antiquity. But the whole trend of modern scientific investigation tends to prove that the American continent was one of the last parts of the world to be settled and that, at the time of the Spanish conquest, the aboriginal cultures were certainly not more than three thousand or so years old. Even this estimate should be understood to include centuries of migratory shiftings and centuries of development along lines which eventually led to the erection of the earlier types of high culture in Middle and South America. Roughly speaking, the time of Christ coincides with the period at which the earliest high cultures in this hemisphere began to flourish."