Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 122

ANCIENT CENTRAL AMERICA AND MEXICO
we now call an indiarubber ball. The "devilish scrolls," as the Spanish fanatical priests described the Mexican manuscripts (which were diligently destroyed by the archbishop Zumarraga), and the tablets, slabs and monoliths carved with "hieroglyphics" showed that the natives were acquainted with writing.
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The conquerors were obviously puzzled by the many strange, mainly truncated, pyramids the great pyramid of Cholula measures 1,440 feet upon its base, its height is 200 feet, the area on its summit measures more than an acre-and the mysterious courts and quadrangles, with carved stone halls about them ("mansions in skies," as some explorer called them), found on the high slopes and table lands of Mexico. The sculptured façades of "palaces" and pyramid-temples, ruined and abandoned in the dense, tropical forests of Yucatan, and particularly the sculptured stelae of great beauty and individuality protruding strangely from the jungle, have excited the imagination of romantic travellers and explorers.
The accounts of the conquerors show that the Spaniards were vastly impressed with the evidences of the wealth of the native rulers and the advanced culture of the priestly classes; we know now, however, how highly coloured those accounts were, and that the exaggeration was due partly to the wish of the adventurers to impress their monarch and their people at home, and partly to their great ignorance. Indeed, the native peoples who showed a certain development in some respects, were barbaric in others; their temples were the scenes of cruelties and human sacrifices; no animal had been domesticated; no iron tools were used, although iron abounds in America; their weapons were those of savages; they did not employ the wheel either in pottery-making or for vehicles.
However, the study and pseudo-study of those civilizations, or rather semicivilizations, the problems connected with the origins of those peoples, their languages, and their possible affinities with the various European and Asiatic races, have agitated European scholars and wealthy amateurs for centuries. No part of the world has formed the subject of so many wild theories, and few present so many riddles to solve. Theories and analogies have been adduced pointing to every other continent, even to those which have never existed, as the long sought place of origin. Thus, the most fantastic theories have been suggested; the legendary continent of Atlantis, and the supposed vigorous and cultured race who were reputed to inhabit it, is the most popular among them. Some explorer tried hard to prove that not only were the Mexican and the Egyptian civilizations connected, but that the Mexican was the original of the Egyptian. Lord Kingsborough expended a fortune to prove, in eight volumes, the supposition of the Spanish historian Garcia that the natives of America are no less than the descendants of the Ten Tribes of Israel. Many other peoples (Carthaginians, Libyans, Assyrians, Persians, Japanese, Australasians, Hindus, Eskimo, Mongolians, Tatars, Irish, Welsh and others) have been successively considered as candidates for the paternity of the Mexican races. Unscientific writing on the subject has continued until the present day.
STUDY OF ANCIENT MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA
The time is not within sight when a complete and generally agreed elucidation of all the problems connected with this fascinating subject can be put forward; the chronological questions, for example, are certainly not to be explained with ease. Nevertheless, it must not be supposed that Mexican archæology has been neglected. Famous Americanists (British, North- and Central-American, German, French, Italian, and others) have devoted thereto years of hard study and research, and many splendid results have been achieved. The labours of painstaking investigators (explorers, archaeologists, ethnologists, linguists) and the results