New Witnesses for God (Volume 2 of 3)

by B. H. Roberts

CHAPTER XXVII.

INDIRECT EXTERNAL EVIDENCES—AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES. Continued.

I.

Antiquity of American Ruins

We have now before us a subject on which the authorities on American Antiquities are most divided, and I shall not attempt in this writing to reconcile them or dispute the position of either class; but after a few quotations from these authorities shall leave the question of the antiquity of American ruins found in Central America and elsewhere as I find it, an open question. "There is nothing in the buildings to indicate the date of their erection—that they were or were not standing at the commencement of the Christian era," says H. H. Bancroft, in speaking of the cities and other monuments of Yucatan—and it is a remark which could with equal propriety be made of nearly all the ruined cities of America. "We may see now, abandoned and uncared for," he continues, "they may have resisted the ravages of the elements for three or four centuries. How many centuries they may have stood guarded and kept in repair by the builders and their descendants, we can only conjecture."^[[1]] Later, in the same work, our author discusses the question of the age of Palenque and other ruins in the following manner:

I confess my inability to judge from the degree of art displayed respectively in the peninsular ruins and those of Palenque, which are the older; I will go further, and while in a confessional mood, confess to a shade of skepticism the ability of other writers to form a well-founded judgment in the matter. Authors are, however, unanimous in the opinion that Palenque was founded before any of the cities of Yucatan, an opinion which is supported to a certain extent by traditional history, which represents Votan's empire in Chiapas and Tabasco as preceding chronologically the allied Maya empire in the peninsula. If the Yucatan cities flourished, as I have conjectured, between the third and tenth centuries, Palenque may be conjecturally referred to a period between the first and eighth centuries. I regard the theory that Palenque was built by the Toltecs after their expulsion from Anahuac in the tenth century as wholly without foundation; and I believe that it would be equally impossible to prove or disprove that the palace was standing at the birth of Christ.^[[2]]

Following this passage, Mr. Bancroft gives a valuable collection of opinions in his notes where he represents M. Violett-le-Duc as expressing the belief that Palenque was built probably some centuries before Christ by a people in which "yellow blood predominated, although with some Aryan intermixture; but that the Yucatan cities owe their foundation to the same people at a later epoch and under a much stronger influence of the white races." Dupaix he represents as believing that the buildings were reared by a flatheaded race that has become extinct, and who, after writing his narrative, made up his mind that Palenque was antediluvian or at least that a floor had covered it. Lenoir he represents as saying that, according to all voyagers and students, the ruins of Palenque are not less than three thousand years old; while Catlin, a French writer, in a French periodical for March, 1867, he represents as asserting that the ruined cities of Palenque and Uxmal have within themselves the evidence that the ocean has been their bed for thousands of years, but the material is soft limestone and presents no water lines. Foster, the author of Pre-Historic Races (pp. 398-9), is represented as regarding the ruins of Palenque as the work of an extinct race, and then he proceeds with a number of citations for a more modern origin. The valuable notes will be found in Bancroft's Native Races, vol. IV, pp. 262-3.

Prescott, in his treatise on the origin of Mexican civilization, offers the following reflections on the antiquity of American ruins:

It is impossible to contemplate these mysterious monuments of a lost civilization, without a strong feeling of curiosity as to who were their architects, and what is their probable age. The data on which to rest our conjectures of their age, are not very substantial; although some find in them a warrant for an antiquity of thousands of years, coeval with the architecture of Egypt and Hindostan. But the interpretation of hieroglyphics, and the apparent duration of trees, are vague and unsatisfactory. And how far can we derive an argument from the discoloration and dilapidated condition of the ruins, when we find so many structures of the Middle Ages dark and mouldering with decay, while the marbles of the Acropolis, and the gray stone of Paestum, still shine in their primitive splendor? There are, however, undoubted proofs of considerable age to be found there. Trees have shot up in the midst of the buildings, which measure, it is said, more than nine feet in diameter. A still more striking face is the accumulation of vegetable mould in one of the courts, to the depth of nine feet above the pavement. This in our latitude would be decisive of a very great antiquity. But, in the rich soil of Yucatan, and under the ardent sun of the tropics, vegetation bursts forth with irrepressible exuberence, and generations of plants succeed each other without intermission, leaving an accumulation of deposits, that would have perished under the northern winter. Another evidence of their age is afforded by the circumstance, that, in one of the courts of Uxmal, the granite pavement, on which the figures of tortoises were raised in relief, is worn nearly smooth by the feet of the crowds who have passed over it; a curious fact, suggesting inferences both in regard to the age and population of the place. Lastly, we have authority for carrying back the date of many of these ruins to a certain period, since they were found in a deserted, and probably dilapidated state by the first Spaniards who entered the country. Their notices, indeed, are brief and casual, for the old conquerors had little respect for works of art; and it is fortunate for these structures, that they had ceased to be the living temples of the gods, since no merit of architecture, probably, would have availed to save them from the general doom of the monuments of Mexico.^[[3]]