Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 1999
I conclude that Hanns Prem's article in this issue is correct in the assessment that the Canek Manuscript is a forgery. This evaluation resulted from extensive communication with Prem and from additional research suggesting that the author of the Canek Manuscript used a 1917 publication by Philip Ainsworth Means and the writings of Sylvanus G. Morley as aids in constructing the text of the document. The forger's references to the Itza capital as Tayasal and to the Tayasal peninsula follow modern, not seventeenth-century, conventions, an error that reinforces Prem's conclusions. The discovery of a family of forgeries, of which the Canek Manuscript is a particularly convincing one, should make future researchers wary of single documents that differ significantly from others of the Colonial era.