Land without chimneys; or, the byways of Mexico

by Alfred Oscar Coffin

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 consonants most used are l, t, x, z; next the sound of tl and tz. L is of most frequent occurrence, but is never found at the beginning of a word. The Aztec language, sweet and harmonious to the ear, has no sharp or nasal sounds; the penultimate of most of its words is long. The language is rich, exact and expressive, as is proven in the “Natural History” by Dr. Hernandez, who describes twelve hundred plants, two hundred birds, many quadrupeds, reptiles, insects, metals, etc., and was able to call each by a separate name, given by the Indians. Poets and orators there were by the hundred, and their written inaugurals make as interesting reading as we hear from many of our legislators, many of which were translated by the French scholar, Lucien Biart, who died since these pages were begun.

If Max Muller is correct, then there can be no kinship between the Mongols and Aztecs, and if they ever had communication with other people, it must have been from the east. The Sanskrit word for God, is Devan; the Latin, Deus; the Greek, Oeoo; and the Aztec, Teotl. This similarity of sound and spelling might be purely accidental, and on the other hand, it might have something of a long kinship to identify it. The Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration of souls was a ruling passion with the Aztec. This may have been the fruition of all polytheistic religions, or it might have been the retention of primordial culture, for we know the Egyptian embalmed his dead, lest the dissolution of the body would destroy the soul also.

The greatest desecration that could befall the ancient Greeks and Romans was the refusal of burial, because the soul of him thus uncared for wandered thenceforth as a disembodied ghost.

We read in Homer’s Iliad how the dead Patroclus comes to the sleeping Achilles, and tries in vain to grasp him with loving arms, but the soul, like smoke, flits away below earth. How Hermotimos the seer used to go out of his body, till at last, the soul, coming back from a spirit journey, found that his wife had burnt his body on a funeral pile, and that he had become a bodyless ghost. How Odysseus visits the bloodless ghosts in Hades, and the shadows of the dead in Purgatory wondered to see the body of Dante there, which stopped the sunlight and cast a shadow.

How, in Virgil’s Æneid, the love-maddened Queen Dido could wish no greater curse to befall Æneas, than that his body should lie unburied on the plain, and even the old boatman, Charon, in Hades, refused to ferry across the River Styx the shades of any who lacked burial while on earth.

This idea of the phantom life of souls as shades and shadows, constitutes the higher philosophy of the transcendental metaphysics of the ancient Greeks, whose exponent was Pythagoras. Religious fervor was strong in the Aztec, and from his devotion to formality, Atlantis must have been the home of ceremonial religion. The words Atlas and Atlantic have no satisfactory etymology in any language known to Europe. These are not Greek and cannot be referred to any European language, but in the Nahuatl or Toltecan language we find the radical a, atl, which signifies water, man and top of the head. From these come a series of words, such as atlan, on the border of, or amid the water, from which comes the adjective Atlantic. Therefore the Atlantic Ocean must have received its name from the continent Atlantis before the cataclysm. We have also Atlaca, to combat, to be in agony. It also means to hurl, to dart from the water, and in the preterit makes Atlaz. From the island of Atlantis, the Atlas mountain in northern Africa would seem to the inhabitants to be hurled out of the water, hence its name was probably given by these same people, as the word occurs in no other language.

On the map of Mexico today are more than a hundred towns with the same combination of letters of atl or lan which shows that the combination is an essential part of the Aztec language. There are many traditions that are receiving light from the nineteenth century that crystalizes them into accepted history. For twenty-six centuries has the siege of Troy stood out in profile as the model epic of the world, but, on account of its antiquity, of doubted veracity. Now Dr. Schlieman’s excavations seem destined yet to find the funeral pyre of Patroclus, surrounded by the remains of Trojan captives. And even later, the French archaeologist M. Marcel Dieulafay has brought to light the ancient city of Susa, and we may even now behold the Palace of Artaxerxes Mnemon, whose foundations were laid by Xerxes I. 485 B. C.; and now after twenty-three centuries, the student may take his Bible in his hand, turn to the Book of Esther and read, while the guide in the ancient capital of Persia points to the spot where Mordecai sat, to that corner where Haman was hanged, and to this court where the lovely Esther was crowned queen, and whence the sorrowing Vashti departed, as the unfortunate Hebe, cup-bearer of Jove, before the victorious Ganymede.

Plato records the sad fate of Atlantis nearly five hundred years B. C., and Solom had recorded it in a poem two hundred years earlier. Plato says the expedition against Egypt took place during the reign of the Athenian Kings, Cecrops and Erectheus, and, according to the “Marble of Paros,” these Kings ruled 1582 B. C. and 1409 B. C., which is not a great deal earlier than the siege of Troy. Though this is very ancient history, we have as much right to believe Plato’s history as Homer’s, if it can be well established.

The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg is the greatest authority on the translation of Aztec literature, and he maintains that the oldest certain date in the Nahuatl or Toltecan language reaches back to 955 B. C., and as the Toltecs dwelt some time in the country of Zibalba before they dispossessed the Colhuas, their migration must have begun more than a thousand years B. C. The Colhuas were the remnant of those who had escaped the terrible calamity of Atlantis. To those who reject the theory here offered, I would say the field is large and inviting to any whose insight into the past can help solve the problems of the origin of the ancient Mexicans.