INTRA-ATOMIC ENERGY: by H. Coryn, M. D., M. R. C. S.
WILL the turn of Keeley (of motor fame) come for vindication? The turn of the Keeley principle, the disintegration of atoms by sound, and the consequent liberation of their stored energy, undoubtedly will.
In his recent address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science Sir William Ramsay dealt with the self-disintegration of atoms, especially radium atoms, and then went on:
This leads to the speculation whether, if elements are capable of disintegration, the world may not have at its disposal a hitherto unsuspected source of energy. If radium were to evolve its stored-up energy at the same rate that gun-cotton does, we should have an undreamed of explosive; could we control the rate we should have a useful and potent source of energy.... If some form of catalyser [promotor of atomic change] could be discovered which would usefully increase their [such elements as radium] almost inconceivably slow rate of change, then it is not too much to say that the whole future of our race would be altered.
A Scientific American writer follows on naturally:
Iodide of nitrogen, a black powder, is one of the most dangerous of all explosives. When dry, the slightest touch will often cause it to explode with great violence. There appears to be a certain rate of vibration which this compound cannot resist. Some of it in the damp state was rubbed on the strings of a bass viol. It is known that the strings of such an instrument will vibrate when those of a similar instrument, having an equal tension, are played upon. In the present case, after the explosive had become thoroughly dry upon the strings, another bass viol was brought near and its strings sounded. At a certain note the iodide exploded. It was found that the explosion occurred only when a rate of vibration of sixty per second was communicated to the prepared strings. The note G caused an explosion while E had no effect.
The writer goes on to state that damage to stone and brick walls has been traced to long continued violin playing.
It follows, of course, that there must have been continuous playing for years to cause the loosening of masonry or to make iron brittle, but it will do so in time.
The point of interest is the special rate of vibration required to set free the energy locked up in the iodide of nitrogen. It was intra-molecular energy. Sir William Ramsay was referring to the far greater stores of intra-atomic energy, energy within the atoms, holding each one together. The other ties them one to another within the molecule, i. e., holds the molecule together.
But may not the atom too respond to some special rate of vibration producible by sound, lying far among the upper harmonics of any audible tone? This at any rate was Keeley's statement and claim. The causes of his equally unquestionable successes and failure may be worth looking into once more now that a certain high temperature surrounding the subject has died down. Sound may be Sir William Ramsay's "catalyser."
A JAPANESE WRITER'S VIEWS ON MODERN
CIVILIZATION: Contributed by E. S. (Tokyo, Japan)
IN an essay on the future of civilization in Japan, quoted in the Japan Chronicle, Dr. Otsuki says:
There can be little doubt that Western civilization and Japanese civilization will eventually be united.... The harmonizing of the two can be brought about only by mutual concessions; but it seems to me it would be a calamity if we were to concede too much. There are times when one feels as Dr. Nitobe felt when he wrote his Soul of Japan, and as Lafcadio Hearn felt when he described the moral beauty of old Japan; one fears that in their conflict with European civilization our Japanese ideals will be gradually wiped out, that the good and the beautiful as we have known it and loved it, will be sacrificed to the coarser forms of modern utilitarianism....
The blending of the two civilizations
leads us to inquire what is likely to be the future of Western civilization. On this subject there is a great variety of opinion in the West; but of one thing deep thinkers seem sure: the present system of material civilization can only escape from ending in a terrible cataclysm by the addition to it of spiritual and moral elements that will guide, control, and conserve its energy.... Is it not possible that Japan may be able to take a prominent part in this work? Can she not save Europe and America from the dangers that now beset them? If by blending her civilization with theirs she can supply the elements of strength and permanence which are now lacking, then her future as well as that of Western nations will be one of increasing prosperity. But if, while receiving from Europe and America much that is good, she takes also much that is distinctly bad, and in addition to this, she allows her own fine old system of civilization to be blotted out of existence—then her future destiny cannot be contemplated by any patriotic Japanese with anything but grave misgiving and profound grief.
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face of stela B: copan
From Maudslay's Archaeologia
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face of stela P: copan
From Maudslay's Archaeologia
COPAN, AND ITS POSITION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:
by William E. Gates
NO place among all the sites of ancient ruins on the continent of America, arouses a livelier interest in both the observer and the student, than does Copan. Other remains, in Peru, and even in Mexico, are of vaster bulk; but the ensemble of Copan produces upon the mind an effect comparable in Egypt only by that of Thebes. And this evidence grows and is supported at every step by the evidence of such researches and excavations as it has been so far possible to carry on.
All would seem to indicate a gradual addition of new features accompanied by abandonment of older parts. It can readily be seen how a process of this kind carried on for centuries, without any well designed plan to adhere to or any definite idea to carry out, would result in a great complex mass of structures like that of Copan to puzzle and perplex the explorer.
There are other evidences that point to several successive periods of occupation. The river front presents what looks like at least three great strata, divided by floors or pavements of mortar cement. If these floors mark the various levels corresponding to different epochs in the history of the city, the question of the age of the ruins becomes still more complicated; for between each successive period of occupancy there is the period of silence, the length of which can only be inferred from the thickness of the superimposed stratum.—Dr. Geo. B. Gordon, Exploration of Copan, (in Peabody Museum Memoirs).
The ruins of Copan lie on the level plain of a beautiful valley, a mile and a half wide by seven or eight miles long, in Honduras, some twelve miles east of the Guatemala boundary. The site thus marks the eastern limit of the region covered by the ancient Maya remains and inscriptions, as Palenque about marks its western edge, a short distance beyond the Guatemala line, in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The valley of Copan is watered by a swift river which enters and leaves by a gorge, washing the eastern side of the ruins. The force of the annual freshets each year carries away more of this river wall, and by its washings has shown that the entire elevation of 120 feet is of historical or artificial growth, showing the stratification of occupancy mentioned by Dr. Gordon, and yielding fragments of pottery and obsidian down to the water level.
As can be seen by the plan, the ruins form a composite whole, some 2300 by 1400 feet, and the historical development of the site is shown by three independent pieces of evidence. Of these the most striking at first sight is the very apparent growth of the ground plan, pointing to successive additions and enlargements of an original nucleus, just as we see at Thebes. The second evidence is that of excavation, which proves beyond all question, even by the little so far done, that new structures and temples were built upon or into the old. And this evidence is corroborated by the dates on some of the monuments.
The striking unity of the whole group of structures at Copan is therefore a composite unity, the result of long-continued occupation. Structures and temples were built and used; life flowed on around them, and after lapses of time whose length we have no means whatever (save in one case) of even estimating, other buildings were added, and the earlier ones built over, or even covered up by the new. People do not build temples and tear them down to build new ones the next year; nor on the other hand do alien peoples and civilizations expand by a harmonious enlargement the works of those they supersede, but rather change, destroy, or build their own.
The first thing then to be realized about the entire group of structures at Copan is their composite unity; then that this is not the result of a single construction, but of growth and successive additions; then that these periods of enlargement are separated by other, more or less long, periods of continued use and occupation, during which the civilization of the people maintained itself, somewhat modified by time, but not broken or interrupted. And finally, this evidence, together with that of the monumental dates, to which we will come, has so far only to do with the ground plan and the structures we can discover by a few feet of digging on the surface of the plain of Copan; for we have not the slightest means as yet of relating anything we can see at Copan to the various strata of occupation, with intervening silence, marked on the 120 feet of the disintegrating river wall. Those periods of silence may indeed, for everything we can yet tell, be the silence of non-occupation, of civilizations destroyed and forgotten, only to be followed by others. One Copan after another may have been built upon the obliterated site of its predecessor. Whatever evidence there is, read in comparison with similar evidence elsewhere, points to that; a few years ago we disbelieved in a historical Troy, only to find successive Troys, and many like places elsewhere, built one above the other. To deny the like or its probability at Copan, would be foolish.
But to return to the Copan whose remains we can see, one great question is forced upon us at the very outset. That is this: what must have been the state of the American continent, as regards civilization, during the ages into which we are trying to look? And that they were long ages, even for the Copan we have before us, we shall presently see. While all this was going on there, what was the rest of the continent like? Our preconceived notions of savagery or nomadic tribal communities must be thrown entirely to the winds, together with the statement of the historian Robertson, made in 1777, that in all New Spain there is not "any monument or vestige of any building more ancient than the Conquest."
As a first step towards an appreciation of the place of Copan in American history, we must consider the actual state of New Spain (that is, the region from the Rio Grande to Panama, approximately) at the time of the Discovery. The Aztecs were in possession of the valley of Mexico, with an elaborate civilization, fairly comparable if not superior to that of Europe at the same time; but their history only goes back a few hundred years, for they were merely a warlike nation who had come in, probably from the north, and were about comparable to the Manchus in China, or the Goths in Rome. They settled upon and appropriated some (a very small part) of the civilization before them. Around them were various semi-independent peoples whom they had neither destroyed nor entirely subdued, and among whom they had only a primacy of force. To the southwest of Mexico the ancient Zapotec kingdom still existed, a link with the past, towards its end, but still owing nothing to the Aztecs. In Yucatan and Central America were the fragments of the Mayan peoples, broken up into half a dozen main language stocks, and a score of separate dialects. Between the Mayas and those of Mexico there was some intercourse and a little borrowing, with some very ancient traditions probably in common. In culture and mythology, as to which we have limited material for comparison, and in language, as to which we have ample material, they were about as much alike, or as closely related, as the ancient Germans to the ancient Romans. Both were Americans, as the others were Aryans, with a common inheritance of tradition, mythology, and language type; no more.
Beyond all possible dispute, the Mayas were indefinitely the older people. The Aztecs had but a picture or rebus writing, and there is no evidence they ever had more than this. There are slight traces of writing akin to the Maya, among the Zapotecs. But the Mayas had a complete system of genuine hieroglyphic writing, certainly not derived from the Aztec picture-writing, but dissimilar from this in every way, with monuments antedating the period of Aztec history, on which the hieroglyphic forms are fully developed and perfect. The civilization, monuments, and hieroglyphs of Copan, Palenque, and of Tikal in southern Yucatan, are Mayan; but they are not the Mayan of the time of the Discovery.
The period immediately preceding the entry of the Spaniards is a historical period. We have various chronicles written by native hands, princes, priests or recorders, giving us some of the early cosmic traditions, brought down into contemporary times. We have these in Maya for Yucatan, and in Quiché-Cakchiquel for Guatemala. In each case the period of definable history goes back several centuries, but throws no light on the earlier period. In 1500 the triple Quiché kingdom was still a powerful and civilized nation; and if we know less of it than we do of the Aztec it is only because it was more quickly wiped out, because Lake Tezcoco and not Lake Atitlán became the seat of the Spanish capital, and because no efforts were made at the time to preserve the Mayan knowledge and traditions, as was done by a few in Mexico.
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THE HIEROGLYPHIC STAIRWAY: COPAN
(AFTER EXCAVATION, SHOWING ONE-SIXTH OF ORIGINAL HEIGHT)
From Peabody Museum Memoirs
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COPAN: GENERAL PLAN
From Maudslay's Archaeologia
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stela H: copan
From Maudslay's Archaeologia
In northern Yucatan the capital of the last Mayan confederacy, Mayapán, had been destroyed in the middle of the 15th century; Chichén Itzá lasted as a city practically up to that time; and on the island of Tayasal in Lake Petén, southern Yucatan, there was a powerful and flourishing Itzá nation down to 1697. Of the architecture, manner of life, house furnishings, etc. of the different living Maya centers we have reasonably full descriptions left by different Spanish writers of the time. And they do not correspond in the smallest degree, to the monuments and buildings we have left at Copan and other ancient, abandoned sites. We are only able to trace a continuation of the type, and to know that the same hieroglyphic writing we find on the carved monuments of the older places, continued to be used until the Conquest. So that after sifting the various descriptions, we find that even the powerful cities of Tayasal and Utatlán, the Quiché capital, were but villages in comparison. The nearest link is Chichén Itzá, which seems to have been the last really great Maya city. Its architectural remains are indeed in size and extent comparable with the older sites; but in style and in the life of the people displayed by the carved and painted scenes, it is like comparing the Egypt of the Ptolemies with that of Ramessu and Hatshepsu. But Chichén Itzá itself was abandoned as the capital at least a century before the coming of the Spaniards. And to quote from the description of Mr. A. P. Maudslay, from whose great work most of our illustrations are taken, after saying: "I fear that this slight description of Chichén must wholly fail to convey to my readers the sensation of a ghostly grandeur and magnificence which becomes almost oppressive to one who wanders day after day amongst the ruined buildings"; and then after noting various differences between the ruins of Chichén and those of Copan and Quiriguá, he adds:
the absence of sculptured stelae, the scarcity of hieroglyphic inscriptions, and, most important of all, the fact that every man is shown as a warrior with atlatl and spears in his hand; the only representation of a woman depicts her watching a battle from the roof of a house in a beleaguered town, whereas at Copan and Quirigua there are no representations of weapons of war, and at Copan a woman was deemed worthy of a fine statue in the Great Plaza [see illustration, [Stela P]]. I am inclined to think that it must have been the stress of war that drove the peaceable inhabitants of the fertile valleys of the Motagua and Usumacinta and the highlands of the Vera Cruz [Copan], to the less hospitable plains of Yucatan, where, having learnt the arts of war, they re-established their power. Then again they passed through evil times: intertribal feuds and Nahua invasions may account for the destruction and abandonment of their great cities, such as Chichén Itzá and Mayapán, ...
So much for the Maya civilization in the 15th century, and its then centers and capitals. But of Copan, Palenque, Tikal, and Quiriguá, we have not the slightest trace as living cities. Cortes visited Tayasal on his way to Honduras; Alvarado overran and conquered the Quiché kingdoms; but no one even mentioned the existence of any of these older places. Not a tradition about any of them has ever been discovered among the living natives at any time; for all we can see they were then buried, in ruins, in the forests, and forgotten.
In 1576 Diego García de Palacio, Judge of the Royal Audiencia, made a report to King Philip II of his travels, by royal order, in what is now eastern Guatemala and western Honduras. He reached Copan, and describes "ruins and vestiges of a great civilization and of superb edifices, of such skill and splendor that it appears that they could never have been built by the natives of that province." He sought, but could find no tradition of their history, save that a great lord had come there in time past, built the monuments and gone away, leaving them deserted. This, in the face of what we see on the site, means exactly nothing. Palacio's original manuscript, which is still in existence, was forgotten, only to be later discovered, and printed first in 1860. For 259 years Copan was again forgotten, until visited in 1835 by John L. Stephens. Palenque for its part remained entirely unknown until about the middle of the 18th century. For what we know of real value concerning these ruins we are indebted to the works of Stephens, to the archaeological survey and excavations carried on by Mr. A. P. Maudslay, by the Peabody Museum of Cambridge, and to a few less extended visits by other explorers. In 1891, by the enlightened zeal of President Bográn of Honduras, the Peabody Museum acquired the official care of the Copan ruins for a period of years.
As seen upon the plan, Copan consists of a group of pyramids, on the summit of each of which probably once stood a small temple; of terraces and walls; and finally of sculptured pillars or stelae, each of which has or had before it a low, so-called altar. Nearly all of these stelae bear on one face a human figure surrounded by most elaborate symbolism of dress, ornament, and other figures. The faces are dignified and for the most part not grotesque. Above the head is usually a triple overshadowing. The main symbolism is worked out in bird and serpent motifs, and into the dress at different parts of the body, notably the chest, are worked medallions of faces, as if to symbolize different human centers of consciousness in the body. The sides and back of all are covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, whose general characteristic it is to begin with a date, which is followed by the indication of intervals which reach to other dates throughout the whole inscription. This statement holds good for practically all Mayan monumental inscriptions, on stelae or otherwise. And these dates, or most of them, are all we can yet read of these writings. We can, that is, read them in their own terms, but without being definitely able to translate them into our chronology.
The first and greatest work done by the Peabody Museum was in the excavation and partial restoration of the Hieroglyphic Stairway. This stairway is on the west side of mound 26, almost in the center of the plan. It is 26 feet wide, with a three foot carved balustrade on each side. The risers of the steps are carved with a hieroglyphic inscription; at the base is an altar, and the ascent is, or was, broken by seated figures. But fifteen steps are left in place, although an approximate restoration was made by Dr. Gordon of the position of what were probably the upper rows. Originally they must have numbered about ninety, to the top of a pyramid as many feet high; but a landslip at some time, probably since Palacio's time, carried the upper rows down and on over the lower ones, which remained buried until Maudslay's first visit. Palacio mentioned a great flight of steps descending to the river, which the river may have destroyed.
In front of the Stairway stands Stelae M, of which Dr. Gordon closes by saying: "It would seem to have stood in front of the older edifice, that served at last as a foundation for the Hieroglyphic Stairway with its temple, for centuries before the latter was built." And what now is the chronological evidence on these monuments?
Without going into what would be long details to set forth even what is known of the very elaborate Maya methods of time reckoning, it is enough to say that these sculptured dates regularly specify a certain day (indicated by the combination of twenty names with thirteen numbers), and hence recurring only once in 260 days, falling on a certain day of a certain month, in a certain year expressed by four numbers in vigesimal (instead of decimal) progression, so that the successive figures stand for 1, 20, 400, and 8000 years, instead of as with us, 1, 10, 100, 1000. It is a moot point whether the dates include the next stage, of 160,000 years, in the reckoning, or not. And it may be stated by the way, that though the Mayas knew and used the ordinary solar year, their long chronological count was kept in terms of 360 days, the same as we find in co-ordinate use in ancient India, and perhaps significantly identical with the perfect circle of 360 degrees. Whatever the fact, however, as to these higher periods, it is established that nearly all the Maya inscription dates occur within the ninth 400 of the current 8000-year cycle; that is, they are dated between about 3200 and 3600 years after the initial date of that particular period. It is not possible for us to consider these dates other than as the contemporary dates of the monuments themselves; and the great number of them, all over the Maya territory, slightly varying for different sites, points most clearly to a special "building" period of about that extent.
A very few monumental dates go much back of this period. The initial dates of the Temples of the Sun and of the Foliated Cross at Palenque both fall in the 765th year of the same current 8000-year cycle, and that of the Temple of the Cross about five years before that great cycle began. But as these inscriptions then go on to cover long successions of years, these earlier dates are probably historical, but not contemporary. On the other hand, a very few dates come on into the tenth 400; and the only large stela bearing so late a date is at Chichén Itzá, the last great Maya city, so far as our history goes. An analysis of the groupings of these dates on the various monuments of the different sites, and their mutual comparison, gives a good deal of basis to check future historical researches, and at Copan it gives us one definite confirmation, already referred to, of the evidence which the structures themselves afford of successive separated "building" periods, with continued intervening use. Of four consecutive and deciphered dates on the fifteen lower steps of the Stairway, still in position, at Copan, the second and third are respectively 48 and 74 years, and the last, at the lower right hand of our illustration, is 937 years, 44 days later than the first. We can hardly regard this date as a future or prophetic one; it must be, like similar final dates of long inscriptions at Palenque, the contemporary date of the structure. All the other dates at Copan, those as initial dates on stelae, fall within the "building" era of the ninth 400, which we have mentioned as common to nearly all the inscriptions—except one, Stela C, in the middle of the north part of the Great Plaza, whose date is apparently almost contemporary with this final date of the stairway. And these two dates are 730 years later than any other stela date at Copan. Of Stela C, Dr. Gordon says:
The two monuments [the Stela and the Stairway] have certain technical affinities in the carving, as though they might have been the work of the same master.
In short, while we are still far from the end, the story of the monuments and their dates alike so far is that there was a great building period among the most ancient known Maya cities, in what we know as the ninth period, about date 3400 of the current cycle; that Copan shared in this; that then such building ceased, so far as dated monuments go, at Copan for some 730 years. That then the Stairway was rebuilt over a former pyramid, and Stela C erected; that this latter period was a few hundred years later than one Stela we find at Chichén Itzá; that after that silence fell, oblivion for all the southern sites, and internal strife, warfare, and disintegration for the last great Itzá city; then its abandonment; and then finally, on new sites, local dynastic histories, each silent as to these earlier places, yet embracing several hundred years of history, and carrying on even into Spanish times what were still then powerful and, as things went, civilized kingdoms. But they were not Copan.