Footnote 143: For an excellent account of ancient Mexican knives and chisels, see Dr. Valentini's paper on "Semi-Lunar and Crescent-Shaped Tools," in Proceedings of Amer. Antiq. Soc., New Series, vol. iii. pp. 449-474. Compare the very interesting Spanish observations on copper hatchets and flint chisels in Clavigero, Historia antigua, tom. i. p. 242; Mendieta, Historia ecclesiastica indiana, tom. iv. cap. xii.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 144: It often happens that the followers of a great man are more likely to run to extremes than their master, as, for example, when we see the queen of pueblos rashly described as "a collection of mud huts, such as Cortes found and dignified with the name of a city." Smithsonian Report, 1887, part i. p. 691. This is quite inadmissible.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 145: This writing was at once recognized by learned Spaniards, like Las Casas, as entirely different from anything found elsewhere in America. He found in Yucatan "letreros de ciertos caracteres que en otra ninguna parte," Las Casas, Historia apologética, cap. cxxiii. For an account of the hieroglyphics, see the learned essays of Dr. Cyrus Thomas, A Study of the Manuscript Troano, Washington, 1882; "Notes on certain Maya and Mexican MSS.," Third Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 7-153; "Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices," Sixth Report, pp. 259-371. (The paper last mentioned ends with the weighty words, "The more I study these characters the stronger becomes the conviction that they have grown out of a pictographic system similar to that common among the Indians of North America." Exactly so; and this is typical of every aspect and every detail of ancient American culture. It is becoming daily more evident that the old notion of an influence from Asia has not a leg to stand on.) See also a suggestive paper by the astronomer, E. S. Holden, "Studies in Central American Picture-Writing," First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 205-245; Brinton, Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Yucatan, New York, 1870; Essays of an Americanist, Philadelphia, 1890, pp. 193-304; Léon de Rosny, Les écritures figuratives, Paris, 1870; L'interprétation des anciens textes Mayas, Paris, 1875; Essai sur le déchiffrement de l'écriture hiératique de l'Amérique Centrale, Paris, 1876; Förstemann, Erläuterungen der Maya Handschrift, Dresden, 1886. The decipherment is as yet but partially accomplished. The Mexican system of writing is clearly developed from the ordinary Indian pictographs; it could not have arisen from the Maya system, but the latter might well have been a further development of the Mexican system; the Maya system had probably developed some characters with a phonetic value, i. e. was groping toward the alphabetical stage; but how far this groping had gone must remain very doubtful until the decipherment has proceeded further. Dr. Isaac Taylor is too hasty in saying that "the Mayas employed twenty-seven characters which must be admitted to be alphabetic" (Taylor, The Alphabet, vol. i. p. 24); this statement is followed by the conclusion that the Maya system of writing was "superior in simplicity and convenience to that employed ... by the great Assyrian nation at the epoch of its greatest power and glory." Dr. Taylor has been misled by Diego de Landa, whose work (Relation des choses de l'Yucatan, ed. Brasseur, Paris, 1864) has in it some pitfalls for the unwary.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 146: Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, 2 vols., New York, 1841.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 147: It occurred in the drawings of the artist Fréderic de Waldeck, who visited Palenque before Stephens, but whose researches were published later. "His drawings," says Mr. Winsor, "are exquisite; but he was not free from a tendency to improve and restore, where the conditions gave a hint, and so as we have them in the final publication they have not been accepted as wholly trustworthy." Narr. and Crit. Hist., i. 194. M. de Charnay puts it more strongly. Upon his drawing of a certain panel at Palenque, M. de Waldeck "has seen fit to place three or four elephants. What end did he propose to himself in giving this fictitious representation? Presumably to give a prehistoric origin to these ruins, since it is an ascertained fact that elephants in a fossil state only have been found on the American continent. It is needless to add that neither Catherwood, who drew these inscriptions most minutely, nor myself who brought impressions of them away, nor living man, ever saw these elephants and their fine trunks. But such is the mischief engendered by preconceived opinions. With some writers it would seem that to give a recent date to these monuments would deprive them of all interest. It would have been fortunate had explorers been imbued with fewer prejudices and gifted with a little more common sense, for then we should have known the truth with regard to these ruins long since." Charnay, The Ancient Cities of the New World, London, 1887, p. 248. The gallant explorer's indignation is certainly quite pardonable.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 148: Some of his remarks are worth quoting in detail, especially in view of the time when they were written: "I repeat my opinion that we are not warranted in going back to any ancient nation of the Old World for the builders of these cities; that they are not the work of people who have passed away and whose history is lost, but that there are strong reasons to believe them the creations of the same races who inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or some not very distant progenitors. And I would remark that we began our exploration without any theory to support.... Some are beyond doubt older than others; some are known to have been inhabited at the time of the Spanish conquest, and others, perhaps, were really in ruins before; ... but in regard to Uxmal, at least, we believe that it was an existing and inhabited city at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards." Stephens, Central America, etc., vol. ii. p. 455.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 149: Charnay, The Ancient Cities of the New World, p. 260.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 150: Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. ii. p. 348.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 151: Charnay, op. cit. p. 209. "I may remark that [the] virgin forests [here] have no very old trees, being destroyed by insects, moisture, lianas, etc.; and old monteros tell me that mahogany and cedar trees, which are most durable, do not live above 200 years," id. p. 447.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 152: The reader will find it suggestive to compare portions of Schliemann's Mycenæ and M. de Charnay's book, just cited, with Morgan's Houses and House-Life, chap. xi.[Back to Main Text]