The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan

by Channing Arnold; Frederick J. Tabor Frost

The others of the "indigenous" school have proved halfhearted and vague. If you insist upon their coming to the point and saying whence the builders really came, they try to parry your insistence by asking a question in their turn—"Whence came the African Negroes?" To this the correct reply, according to Professor E. Morse, is "From Africa, of course." "Originally?" "Yes, originally: they constitute the African or Negro sub-species of Man." This is a mode of arguing which is fundamentally unsound for the excellent reason that the cases of the African and American races are not analogous. For even if the aboriginal peoples of America could be assumed to be as strictly indigenous in their habitat as the negroid peoples are generally held to be in theirs, you have still to explain an isolated outburst of civilisation in Central America marking off an extraordinarily restricted area, comparatively speaking, from the vast continental expanses north and south. But the ethnical problems of the Negro and the American are not even so far analogous; for, as all the world knows, the generally accepted theory as to the American race is that it must be ultimately referred to the Mongoloid division of mankind, and that the New World was in prehistoric times peopled from Asia.

But if this view, supported as it is by a physical resemblance in some cases so remarkable as to quite stultify the suggestion of coincidence, were upset, you would still be confronted with the unanswerable question: If American architecture is of home-growth, why was it restricted to one very small area? For the proposition that it is indigenous almost demands the postulate that it evolved at such an early date in some form or other as to allow time for it to spread far into the north and south of the New World. If any deduction is possible from its singular localisation, it is surely that it was introduced from outside and at so comparatively recent a date before the arrival of the White race in the Americas as not to have permitted time for it to spread far.[12]

Everything then points to the exotic nature of American architecture. Whence came its originators? Our postulates enable us to narrow the inquiry to Egypt, Japan, China, India, Ceylon, and the Malay Peninsula. Let us take these possibilities in this order.

Egypt has been a great temptation to many, and in truth it is difficult, when you are first face to face with such very Egyptian-looking statues as the Atlantean figures which we found at Chichen, and which are described on p. 98, to resist the thought that there must be some connection between the stone marvels of the Nile Valley and the palaces of Yucatan. But putting aside the extraordinary difficulties in the way of mapping a possible route by which the connection between the two peoples could be effected, all available evidence is against you. The buildings of the two races are unlike in structure and design, in ornamentation and decoration; and if this dissimilarity could be explained away, and an attempt made to link the two ethnically, there is not a shred of evidence, physically, mythologically, philologically, or such as might be derived from a community of manners and customs, to help out the effort.

With Egypt gone, we have to deal with the different parts of Asia mentioned. Asia has been popular with many theorisers. Lured on by the recollection that the greatest ethnologists agree that America was peopled from Asia via the Behring Straits, they see no difficulty in the Mayan architects coming that way too. Indeed these Straits are a very tempting spot: the narrow neck of land where the two continents almost join. It is less than 36 miles across between East Cape, Asia, and Prince of Wales's Cape, America; and on those rare days when the atmosphere permits (it is almost always foggy thereabouts), one can see across with the naked eye. Between the two capes are three small (now uninhabited) islands, and the deepest part of the channel is but 30 fathoms (180 feet). Before Behring's expedition to this region in 1728 it was thought that the continents did actually join; for Deschnev, the Russian who is said to have sailed these waters in 1648, was regarded as an inventor of fables when he stated that a passage existed.

The affinity of the Eskimos to the Japanese has long been a favourite theme of ethnologists, and Dr. Torrell, who devoted much time and study to this question, thinks he has proved past all dispute that the two peoples are kinsmen. But be this as it may, and whether one accepts or not the peopling of the Americas from Asia via the Behring Straits, it is as good as impossible to maintain that the builders came into America by this route. Were this so, we should most certainly find traces of their march south to the chief field of their activities. The most fanatical of the theorists must surely admit that the fact that we do not is an insuperable objection to their theory. That a migrating race of architects passed through the whole length of North America and kept their art a profound secret till they reached the centre of the New World, is literally unthinkable.

No; if America was peopled from Asia, it was in times so remote that the inhabitants of Asia did not themselves know the art of building. The age of American Man has been a keenly debated question. Nothing has yet been found which can be reckoned a proof that he existed previous to the present geological epoch. Dr. Lund, who has devoted much time to the problem, states that he found but one trace of man among those of the extinct mammalia, and this was dubious, for there were signs that the strata where they were discovered had been disturbed within some recent period during which the human remains had possibly been buried. But American Man must at least be prehistoric; and being so, he is all too early, if he was to bring the knowledge of building with him. And if it is urged that the mysterious architects came in well within historic times, after the New World was already peopled by their kinsmen, the lack of traces of them and their art is more than ever a full answer. That the builders came from Asia we are convinced; but they came direct to Central America by sea.

Taking Japan as first of the Asiatic countries from which the builders may have come, there is much made of the close similarity of the objects found in the shell-heaps of North America and the upper Amazon on the one hand, and on the other those of North and South Japan, especially those of Omori. The pottery is much alike: you have the crenellated fillet and the cord markings. But these features of prehistoric pottery have been shown to exist among many peoples. Again, there is a close resemblance in the stone implements found; but Sir John Evans in his Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain points out that stone implements are identical in most lands. He instances those of the Nile Valley, which are so precisely like those found in the Kentish oolite that the most experienced archæologist could not tell them apart. But if there is nothing in this positive evidence, there is much in the negative evidence available. The architecture of Japan is derived from the Chinese, and is of a comparatively recent date. It is in all ways dissimilar to that of Central America. Further, that the Japanese early possessed the potter's wheel is proved by their ancient mortuary vessels. There was not a potter's wheel in America. Again, the Japanese ritual of the third and fourth centuries, as contained in the Kojiki and Nihonji, have no analogy with Mexican ritual. Again, in Japan and Korea we find bronze mirrors and bells unknown in America, and an early knowledge of tempering steel in Japan is quite lacking in the land of the Mayans.

What about China? Here there are vague resemblances between the buildings of the two peoples; but at most they are those features in which one might trace a similarity between the productions of any two building races. As in Japan, ritual and customs are all distinct from those found among the Mayans. Those who would have us believe that Central American civilisation was of Chinese origin have been much influenced by that fable promulgated by the Chinese historian Li Yen, who lived in the seventh century. He states the existence of a country which he calls the "Land of the Fusang," and which he declared lay 40,000 li eastward of China. Li Yen had the tale from a Buddhist priest Hwui Shan; but the curious point is that the latter described himself as a priest coming from the "Land of the Fusang," and says nothing as to how he got there, or how he became a Buddhist in this unknown country. In an article in vol. lv. of New Annals of Voyages entitled "Researches regarding the Country of the Fusang," H. J. von Klaproth points out that this could not have been Mexico because of the horses and carts mentioned, and these were of course unknown in Mexico in pre-Conquest times. He says Japan was the place, and this he supports by showing that it was early called Fusang (beautiful). The distance as given by Li Yen is, according to Klaproth, no difficulty, as the "li" was a very variable measure, quite apart from the fact that the priest would have no accurate means of measuring. His 40,000 li may be on a par with the mulberry trees thousands of feet high and the silkworms 7 feet long which form part of his fairy tale, as Professor E. Morse points out in his pamphlet Was Middle America peopled from Asia?