Part 2

A Catholic cathedral occupies the place of the Teocalli, but at what cost! Ten thousand souls without the knowledge of an Evangel; the canals of the New World Venice turned into a Golgotha; the beautiful lake of Tezcuco turned into a salt marsh, the hanging gardens and fountains of princes into cactus beds, and the history of a people blotted from the face of the earth!

The modern traveler, as he looks at the changed scenes in the Valley of Mexico, may truthfully say:

“Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand Signed in thy spoil, and crimsoned in thy lethe.”

III. The Mound-builders in Central America. ──────

“Thou unrelenting Past! Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain— And fetters, sure and fast, Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

“Far in thy realm withdrawn, Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom; And glorious ages gone, Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

“Full many a mighty name Lurks in thy depth, unuttered, unrevered: With thee are silent fame, Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared.”

While the Mayas of Yucatan and Central America spoke a different language from the Astecs, certain analogies in building and invention warrant us in considering them at this point. The oldest civilization in America was in Yucatan, Honduras and Guatemala, and, according to Bancroft, the oldest city in the western world is Copan, which was in ruins, deserted, and overgrown by a dense tropical forest, at the time of the Spanish Conquest, three hundred and sixty years ago.

The Mayas of Yucatan, according to their traditions, first arrived there 793 B.C. from “Tulapam.” We don’t know where “Tulapam” was; but they must have come by sea, because the natives of Yucatan to-day speak a language exactly similar to that spoken by the extinct aborigines of Cuba, Hayti and Jamaica, when the Spaniards first arrived there. North of Guatemala stand the ancient ruins of Palenque, the Mecca of Central America, whose facaded palaces and stuccoed temples are full of hieroglyphics and bas-reliefs, beautiful in ruins, telling the sad history of a vanished race who here offered sacrifice to Quetzalcohuatl, the nature god of the Mayas.

Nepenthe rules here supreme. A tropical forest has torn asunder her pyramids, while trees nine feet in diameter have shot up in the midst of her buildings, and nine feet of vegetable mold fill the inner courts above the pavement, where sacerdotal processions, possibly before the birth of Phœnician commerce, swung their censers and performed their mysterious rites.

A few words concerning Uxmal and its ruins will answer for the rest of Yucatan. The walls of this temple were nine feet thick, and the rich, sculptured facades are the finest in America. The sculptured portion covers twenty-four thousand square feet, while the terraced mound supporting the house contained over sixty thousand cubic yards of material; and we must remember that these people had neither metallic tools nor beasts of burden.

Nothing but the feeling of profoundest awe must fill the modern traveler, as he emerges from the depths and gloom of a tropical forest, and comes face to face with the massive walls of the pyramid of Copan, containing twenty-six million cubic feet of stone brought from a distant quarry, and whose base is six hundred and twenty-four feet by eight hundred and nine feet, with a tower one hundred and eighty-two feet, built of huge blocks of stone, surmounted by two huge trees rooted in its mold.

Within its ruins were found fourteen statues, the largest thirteen feet four inches tall, and all covered with bas-reliefs and hieroglyphics whose workmanship is equal to that on the Egyptian pyramids.

In front of the statues stand huge altars six feet square, divided into thirty-six tablets of hieroglyphics, which tell to the world their history; but they speak in an unknown tongue, so the traveler must surmise if these were the emblems of the Mayan pantheon, or the palace of a pre-Adamite man.

The curtain falls, the traveler returns, and the æons commence again their ceaseless cycles around mysterious Copan.

IV. The Lost Atlantis. ──────

“Man’s steps are not upon thy paths; thy fields Are not a spoil for him; thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth’s destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send him, shivering in thy playful spray, And howling to his gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dash him again to earth—there let him lie.”

Whence sprang the Mound-builders? It is evident, after reading the foregoing, that a people who could reach such a degree of civilization, must have received an impetus from without, which makes us conclude that the Mound-builders migrated to America.

“The Story of Atlantis,” as recorded by Plato in his _Timæus_, has been regarded as a myth, but seems destined to become genuine history. The translation of the Greek philosopher is as follows:—“Among the great deeds of Athens, of which recollection is preserved in our books, there is one which should be placed above all others. Our books tell that the Athenians destroyed an army that came across the Atlantic Sea, and insolently invaded Europe and Asia, for this sea was then navigable, and beyond the straits where you place the Pillars of Hercules, there was an island larger than Asia (Minor) and Libya combined. From this island one could pass easily to other islands, and from these to the continent which lies around the interior sea. The sea (Mediterranean) on this side the strait of which we speak, resembles a harbor with a narrow entrance; but there is a genuine sea, and the land which surrounds it is a veritable continent. In the Island of Atlantis reigned three kings, with great and marvelous power. They had under their dominion the whole of Atlantis and other islands, and some parts of the continent. At one time their power extended into Libya, and into Europe as far as Tyrrhenia, and, uniting their whole force, they sought to destroy our whole country at a blow; but their defeat stopped the invasion and gave independence to all the countries this side the Pillars of Hercules. Afterward, in one day and one fatal night, there came mighty earthquakes and inundations which engulfed the warlike people. Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea, and then that sea became inaccessible, so that navigation on it ceased, on account of the quantity of mud which the engulfed island left in its place.”

Plutarch, in his “Life of Solon,” relates that the Lawgiver learned this story of Atlantis from Egyptian priests.

Diodorus Siculus relates:—“Over against Africa lies a very great island, in the vast ocean, many days’ sail from Libya westward. The soil there is very fruitful, a great part whereof is mountainous, but much likewise champaign, which is the most sweet and pleasant part, for it is watered by several navigable streams, and beautiful with many gardens of pleasure, planted by divers sorts of trees and an abundance of orchards. The towns are adorned with many stately buildings and banqueting-houses, pleasantly situated in the gardens and orchards.”

Theopompos, who wrote in the fourth century B.C., tells substantially the same story, which was given by Silenus to the ancient king Midas, recorded by Aristotle. The Gauls possessed traditions on this subject, which were collected by the Roman historian Timagenes, who lived in the first century before Christ. This record states that three distinct peoples dwelt in Gaul (France): (1) The indigenous population, (2) The invaders from a distant island (Atlantis), (3) The Aryan Gauls.

Marcellus, also, in a book on the Ethiopians, speaks of seven islands lying in the Atlantic Ocean near Europe, which we may undoubtedly identify with the Canaries; but he adds: “The inhabitants of these islands preserve the memory of a much greater island, Atlantis, which had, for a long time, exercised dominion over the smaller ones.”

Now all these ancient writers clearly state that a continent existed west of Africa, which was destroyed by a great cataclysm. The tribes in Central America and Mexico, in Venezuela, British and Dutch Guiana, distinctly describe these cataclysms, one by water, one by fire, and a third by winds. Catlin, in his “Lifted and Subsided Rocks of America,” describes the tradition of such a cataclysm.

The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, in his “Quatre Lettres sur le Mexique,” and “Sources de l’Histoire Primitive du Mexique,” has translated the “Teo Amoxtli,” which is the Toltecan mythological history of the cataclysm of the Antilles. The festival of “Izcalli” was instituted to commemorate this terrible calamity, in which “princes and people humbled themselves before the Divinity, and besought him not to renew the frightful convulsions.”

It is claimed that, by this catastrophe, an area larger than France became engulfed, including the Lesser Antilles, the extensive banks at their eastern extremity, the peninsulas of Yucatan, Honduras and Guatemala, and the great estuaries of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. With Yucatan and Guatemala went down the splendid cities of Palenque and Uxmal, and others whose sites and inhabitants are now in the ocean bed.

In verification of these ancient traditions, our modern geographies tell us that Old Guatemala was destroyed by a water volcano in the sixteenth century, and again in the eighteenth by an earthquake. The sea-shells on both sides of the Isthmus of Panama are alike, and according to geographical distribution of animals, this could only come about by the Isthmus having been once submerged, and after remaining so long enough for the intermixture of species, being raised; and the submarine fossils found on the Isthmus prove the hypothesis.

According to Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, the oldest Mexican records date back to nine hundred and twenty-five years before Christ, when a strange people came among them. In opposition to Winchell’s hypothesis of a northwest Mongolian migration to Mexico, I wish to prove that the Mound-builders were the people who came after the cataclysms, and that they came from the continent of _Atlantis_.

And what hope have I to establish such affinity? “_Dans les pays les plus différent_,” says Benjamin Constant, “_chez les peuples de moeurs les plus opposées, le sacerdoce a dû aû culte dés éléments et des astres, un pouvoir dont audjour d’hui nous concevons à peine l’idée._”

The nearest lands west of Africa, where Plato located the continent of Atlantis, are the Canary Islands, the nearest being about fifty miles from Africa, and the whole group extending about three hundred miles, and separated from the continent by a channel more than five thousand feet deep. Of all oceanic islands (not continental) discovered by Europeans, _the Canaries alone were inhabited_. Here were found the Guanches, now extinct, who, at the time of their discovery, were not aware that a continent existed in their neighborhood, for, on being asked by the Spanish missionaries how they had come to their archipelago, they answered: “God placed us on these islands, and then forsook and forgot us.” Now who were these Guanches? Their islands have never been connected with Africa, because the channel between them is a mile deep, and Wallace, in his “Island Life,” has proved that any island surrounded by water over five thousand feet deep is of volcanic origin, and that is just the clue we are seeking. If craniometry is a reliable science, the Guanches were not savages, but _superior to the Egyptians_! According to Prof. Flower’s measurements, the skull of the English of low grade contains 1,542 cubic centimeters, the Guanches 1,498, Japanese 1,486, Chinese 1,424, Italians 1,475, and the Ancient Egyptians 1,464. That a remnant of a race found on an island in mid-ocean should have a better developed brain than many continental nations who have made history, is significant. We should expect such a people to conquer their neighbors, just as is recorded by Plato. And now as to their dispersion. When Columbus set sail from Palos in 1492, he steered directly for the Canary Islands for repairs. When he left the Canaries, without any effort of his own the trade winds carried his vessels straight to the West Indies. These winds blow in this direction _all_ the time. In December, 1731, a ship started from Teneriffe with a cargo of wine for one of the Western Canaries, and, having only six men on board, they were unable to manage the ship, and the trade winds carried them straight to Trinidad, on the Island of Cuba, of course. While Atlantis was sinking, some of the inhabitants escaped on rafts and boats, and, being exactly at the same point at which Columbus and the ship’s crew started in the path of the trade winds, there was nothing to do but wait, and they were carried to the West Indies, through the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, to Yucatan and Mexico. We can easily see now why the oldest civilization of the New World is in Central America. Some of these emigrants stopped in the West Indies, for the aborigines spoke the same language as the Mayas of Yucatan to-day. Some stopped in South America, for Dr. Lund, the eminent Swedish naturalist, in the bone caves of Minas Gerais, Brazil, found human skulls exactly like those of the Mound-builders.

The sudden destruction of these people recalls the beautiful lines from Richardson’s Geology, on “The Nautilus and the Ammorite:”

* * * * *

“They sailed all day, through creek and bay, And traversed the ocean deep; And at night they sank on a coral bed, In its fairy bowers to sleep.

“And the monsters vast, of ages past, They beheld in their ocean caves; They saw them ride, in their power and pride, And sink in their deep sea graves.

* * * * *

“And they came at last, to a sea long past; But as they reached its shore, The Almighty’s breath spoke out in death, And the Ammorite breathed no more.”

V. Deductions. ──────

We now proceed to discuss the relation of the Mound-builders to the inhabitants of _Atlantis_, or their immediate neighbors, the Egyptians. Dr. Waitz, in his “Anthropology of Primitive Peoples,” observes: “The first elements of civilization, as far as history reaches, always appear as communicated from one people to another; and of no people can it be proved how, where and when they have become civilized by their own inherent power.” Now, Winchell in his genealogical charts, represents the entire peopling of the Pacific Slope from Alaska to Chili by Mongoloid branches, and the world knows that the civilization of the Chinese is and has always been a _petrified fossil_. The race is absolutely devoid of civilizing qualities. Their state is founded upon the worship of the shades of their ancestors. Their exalted egotism has for ages resisted every attempt to force advancement among them, and the only thing that we can call development among them is atavism.

To say that such a people gave rise to the Esquimaux, is to verify all history; to say that they are the source of the Astec civilization and Inca sun-worship, is to perpetuate an anthropological paradox.

Empiricism alone holds but a secondary place in establishing scientific truth, and all _à priori_ reasoning _must_ hold precedence, when analogy and affinity would supplement the existing links of discontinued evidence.

Separated by a channel only fifty miles wide, we may with justice assume that the civilization of Atlantis and Egypt was very similar. Egypt is the only land of the ancient world where pyramids are found. On a direct line of the trade winds, in Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and the Ohio Valley, we find other pyramids. In Egypt we find the temple emblazoned with hieroglyphics chiseled in the solid rock, describing the history of one of the oldest civilizations in the world. In Uxmal, Mexico, Copan and Palenque are tablets, friezes, bas-reliefs, facades and hieroglyphics; though inferior to the Egyptians’ in mimetic art, still of the highest order, considering this to be the product of the Neolithic Age.

The Egyptians were the only people of the Old World who embalmed their dead. According to the French historian, Lucien Bart, the Zapotecs and Chichimecs of the Mexican Valley embalmed their chiefs, and if we may believe this author, the caves of the Cordilleras are vast museums, as full of interest as the catacombs of Rome.

That the Americans mummified their dead, is proven by mummies having been found in Peru and the northwestern part of Patagonia. Dr. Aq. Reid has found others which prove the relation of Peruvian civilization to that of Patagonia.

One of these mummies has been deposited in the museum of Ratisbon, Bavaria, and another was sent to the Smithsonian Institute. (_vid._ Aq. Reid, Smithsonian Annual Report, 1862, pp. 87, 426.) This mummy led to the remark of Alexander Winchell: “The humid atmosphere of Patagonia leads to the inference that the mummification of the dead was practiced under the influence of some controlling motive, which must have been inherited from ancestors dwelling in a more propitious clime, and from which even the dripping meteorology of Patagonia was insufficient to eradicate.” The Egyptians were accurate astrologers and astronomers. They accurately calculated eclipses and the reappearances of stars whose reappearance would require over a thousand years, and the pyramids are set to the cardinal points. Less than a hundred years ago, the great Calendar Stone of the Astecs was dug up, in the City of Mexico. It is of a solid piece of porphyry, and weighs fifty tons. It was brought many leagues, across a broken country, without beasts of burden, and Bustamente states that ten thousand men were employed in its transportation. The Calendar Stone was buried when Cortez sacked the city of Tenochtitlan, and in itself constitutes a history. From it we learn that the Astecs were astrologers, astronomers, and calculated eclipses, and knew the solstices of the sun. They divided the year into eighteen months of twenty days each, and like the ancient Egyptians, had five complementary days to make out the three hundred and sixty-five, and every fifty-two years they threw in twelve and one-half days for leap year. Like the Persians and Egyptians, a cycle of fifty-two years, or “an age,” was represented by a serpent, so prominent in ancient mythology. Their astrological year was divided into months of thirteen days each, and there were thirteen years in their indications, which contained each three hundred and sixty-five periods of thirteen days. It is also curious, that their number of lunar months of thirteen days, contained in a cycle of fifty-two years, with the intercalation of thirteen (twelve and one-half) days, should correspond exactly with the number of years in a great Sothic period of the Egyptians, viz:—fourteen hundred and ninety-one.

Is it reasonable to suppose that this strange affinity with Egyptian civilization was accidental? or that a Turanian branch independently evolved itself into a counterpart of Hamitic Berbers? Hardly.

The ideographic paintings of the Astecs or Mound-builders preserve traditions of the creation of the world, a universal flood, confusion of tongues and dispersion of men, and that a single man and woman saved themselves in a boat which landed near Mount Colhuacan, and that all their children were born deaf, and remained so till a dove one day, from the top of a tree, taught them each in a different tongue. All Astec traditions, without exception, insist that they came from a far-off island called Aztlan (Atlantis). Dr. Lapham, in his “Antiquities of Wisconsin,” locates “Azatland” in Wisconsin, on account of the large number of _effigy_ mounds found there, and Dr. Foster, in his “Prehistoric Races,” figures these mounds called “Azatland,” but the Astec painting published by Gemellé Carera, in his _Giro del Mondo_, has hieroglyphics representing their departure from Aztlan in canoes and on rafts, after the confusion of tongues, and a teocalli, or temple, by the side of a palm-tree. Now we all know palms do not grow in Wisconsin, but they do grow in Africa.

Max Müller, the world’s greatest authority in philology, says, that of all indices to the mysteries of the ancient world, language is the most satisfactory, and the _only_ evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historic periods.

If we class the languages of the world into groups according to cognation, we find the Aryan languages comprising the Indian, Persian (Sanskrit), Hellenic, Latin group (Italian, Wallachian, Provencal, French, Portuguese and Spanish), Slavonic (Russian), Teutonic (English), and the Keltic or Welsh, of which the oldest is the Sanskrit and Zend.

The Semitic group comprises the Hebrew, Phœnician, Assyrian and Arabic, while the Babylonian and Chinese stand alone. The Aryan and Semitic form a class known as _the inflectional_, and are the only languages of the world that are adapted to and possess a literature, and that have advanced the progress of the world in religion, arts, or sciences.

Though springing from a common center, they have grammatical structures that prevent the one being derived from the other. The Semitic branched southward and westward, and was the language of the Chaldee, Arab, Hebrew and Egyptian, the latter sometimes classed as Hamitic. The Chinese is an _inorganic_ language, _monosyllabic, and destitute of all grammar_. The nouns have no number, declensions or cases, and the verbs are without conjugation through moods, tenses and persons. All Mongoloid races that reached North America must have done so by Behring’s Strait, and all such races or descendants would undoubtedly have a trace of their parental language. If the Mound-builders or Astecs were derived from Mongoloids, we should expect a monosyllabic language, but, on the contrary, “The Astec language has more diminutives and augmentatives than the Italian, and its substantives and verbs are more numerous than in any other language.” Another proof of its wealth is, that when missionaries first went among them, they found no trouble in expressing abstract ideas like religion, virtue, etc.

The Sanskrit word God is _Devan_; the Latin, _Deus_; the _Greek_, _Θεός_, and the Astec word is _Teotl_. Whether this similarity in sound and spelling was accidental or constitutional, I know not, but comparative philology recognizes radical rather than phonetic affinities.