Cigarette Card

Wills’s Cigarettes “Wonders of the Past” Cigarette Card #13 “Maya Date Marker”

Produced in 1926 by W. D. & H. O. Wills.

Issued by The Imperial Tobacco Company (of Great Britain & Ireland) Ltd.

Text on reverse of card reads:

“One of the most insistent problems that confront the archaeologist has its seat in the sweltering jungles of Central America. In Guatemala, and overlapping Mexico and Honduras, is a group of sites consisting of the ruins of magnificent temples, and presumably belonging to the Maya race whom the Spaniards found in Yucatan. Numerous giant figures, like this at Copan, show that the sites were occupied from about 200 B. C. to 350 A.D., each of these figures marking a period of five years. Why they were deserted is a complete mystery. These carvings are the more wonderful in having been made without the aid of metal tools.”