Undoubtedly America bears witness to a venerable past; and without admitting the claims of some recent authors who are of opinion that when Europe was inhabited by wandering savages, whose only weapons were roughly hewn of stone, America was already peopled by men who built cities, raised monuments, and had attained to a high degree of culture, we must admit that their civilization and social organization can only have become what it was by degrees. * * * To erect the monuments of Mexico and Peru, the yet more ancient ones of Central America—the singular resemblance of which, in some particulars, to the temples and palaces of Egypt, strike the archaeologist—must have required skilled labor, a numerous population, and an established priesthood, such as could have developed only during the lapse of centuries. * * * To sum up: multitudes of races and nations have arisen upon the American continent and have disappeared, leaving no trace, but ruins, mounds, a few wrought stones, or fragments of pottery.[[4]]
In the New World, mysterious mounds and gigantic earth-works arrest our attention. Here we find deserted mines, and there we can trace the sites of ancient camps and fortifications. The Indians of the prairies seem to be intruders on a fairer civilization. We find here evidences of a teeming population. In the presence of their imposing ruins, we can not think that nomadic savages built them. They give evidences rather of a people having fixed habitations, and seem to imply the possession of a higher civilization than that of the Indians. These questions demand solution; but how shall we solve the problem? Save here and there a deserted camp, or a burial mound, containing perhaps articles of use or adornment, all traces have vanished. Their earth-works and mounds are being rapidly leveled by the plow of modern times, and the scholar of the future can only learn from books of their mysterious builders. In Mexico, and further south, we find the ruins of great cities. To the student of antiquity, these far surpass in interest the ruined cities of the Nile or Euphrates valley. Babylon of old, with its walls, towers, and pleasure resorts, was indeed wonderful. In our own land cities, if not as ancient, yet fallen in more picturesque ruin, reward the labors of the explorer. Uxmal, Copan, and Palenque, invite our attention. Here are hieroglyphics in abundance, but no Rosetta Stone supplies the key by whose aid a Champollion can unravel the mystery.[[5]]
Closely enveloped in the dense forests of Chiapas, Guatemala, Yucatan, and Honduras, the ruins of several ancient cities have been discovered, which are far superior in extent and magnificence to any seen in Aztec territory. * * * Most of these cities were abandoned and more or less unknown at the time of the conquest. They bear hieroglyphic inscriptions apparently identical in character; in other respects they resemble each other more than they resemble the Aztec ruins—or even other and apparently later works in Guatemala, and Honduras. All these remains bear evident marks of great antiquity. Their existence and similarity, the occupation of the whole country at some remote period by nations far advanced in civilization, and closely allied in manners and customs, if not in blood and language. Furthermore, the traditions of several of the most advanced nations point to a widespread civilization introduced among a numerous and powerful people by Votan and Zamna, who, or their successors, built the cities referred to, and founded great allied empires in Chiapas, Yucatan, and Guatemala; and moreover, the tradition is confirmed by the universality of one family of languages or dialects spoken among the civilized nations, and among their descendants to this day.[[6]]
That the population of Central America (and in this term I include Mexico) was at one time very dense, and had attained to a high degree of civilization, higher even than that of Europe in the time of Columbus, there can be no question; and it is also probable, as I have shown, that they originally belonged to the white race.[[7]]
Finally, from all we can gather from this momentous subject, we are compelled from the overwhelming amount of evidence to admit that mighty nations, with almost unbounded empire, with various degrees of improvement, have occupied the continent, and that, as in the old world, empire has succeed empire, rising one out of the other, from the jarring interests of the unwieldly and the ferocious mass—so also in this.[[8]]
The foregoing is perhaps sufficient for the purpose of establishing the mere fact of the existence of extensive and highly developed civilization in America, especially as many of the quotations on some of the other divisions of the subject will also bear upon this point. I now take up the matter of the chief centers of those old civilizations.
II.
Chief Centers of Ancient American Civilization.
The following is from Baldwin's "Ancient America":
It has been said, not without reason, that the civilization found in Mexico by Spanish conquerors consisted, to a large extent, of "fragments from the wreck that befell the American civilization of antiquity." To find the chief seats and most abundant remains of the most remarkable civilization of this old American race, we must go still farther south into Central America and some of the more southern states of Mexico. Here ruins of many ancient cities have been discovered, cities which must have been deserted and left to decay in ages previous to the beginning of the Aztec supremacy. Most of these ruins were found buried in dense forests, where, at the time of the Spanish conquest, they had been long hidden from observation.[[9]]
Marcus Wilson, in speaking of the central location of the ancient American civilization and its probable "radiating points," says:
It is believed that the western shores of this continent, and perhaps both Mexico and Peru—equally distant from the equator, and in regions the most favorable for the increase and the support of human life, were the radiating points of early American civilization; from which, as from the hearts of empire, pulsation after pulsation sent forth their streams of life throughout the whole continent. But the spread of civilization appears to have been restricted, as we might reasonably expect to find it, to those portions of the continent where the rewards of agriculture would support a numerous population. Hence, following the course of the civilization, by the remains it has left us, we find it limited by the barren regions of upper Mexico, and the snows of Canada on the north, and the frosts of Patagonia on the south; and while in Mexico and Peru are found its grandest and most numerous monuments, on the outskirts they dwindle away in numbers and in importance. [[10]]
In the Central American region of the western continent are found ruins of what are pronounced by all scholars to be the highest civilization, and the most ancient in time, of any in the New World. There it arose, flourished, and tottered to its fall. Its Glory had departed, its cities were a desolation, before the coming of the Spaniards. * * * * * The most important ruins are in the modern states of Honduras, Guatemala, Chiapas, and especially Yucatan, the northern portion of this peninsula being literally studded with them. The river Usumacinta, and its numerous tributaries flowing in a northern direction through Chiapas, is regarded as the original home of the civilization whose ruins we are now to describe. From whence the tribes came that first settled in this valley is as yet an unsettled point. We notice that we have here another instance of the influence that fertile river valleys exert upon tribes settling therein. The stories told us of the civilization that flourished in primitive times in the valley of the Euphrates and the Nile are not more wonderful—the ruins perhaps not more impressive—than are the traditions still extant, or the material remains fallen in picturesque ruins, of the civilization that once on a time held sway in the Usumacinta valley.[[11]]
Wherever there was a center of civilization, that is, wherever the surroundings favored the development of culture, tribes of different stocks enjoyed it to nearly an equal degree, as in central Mexico and Peru. By them it was distributed, and thus shaded off in all directions.[[12]]
A brief description of some of these ruins of Central America cannot fail at this point to be both instructive and interesting. I begin with the description of Copan which, by mutual consent of authorities, we may regard as one of the most famous, as also the most ancient, of American ruins.[[13]]