Stone hammer from New Jersey bearing an undeciphered inscription.
Moreover, if we cross the Atlantic we find the same symbol engraved on the temples of Yucatan, the origin of which is unknown, on a hatchet found at Pemberton, in New Jersey ([Fig. 104]), on vases from a Peruvian sepulchre near Lima, and on vessels from the pueblos of New Mexico. Dr. Hamy, in his “American Decades,” represents it on a flattened gourd belonging to the Wolpi Indians, and the sacred tambours of the Esquimaux of the present day bear the same symbol, which was probably transmitted to them by their ancestors. The universality of this one sign amongst the Hindoos, Persians, Hittites, Pelasgians, Celts, and Germanic races, the Chinese, Japanese, and the primitive inhabitants of America is infinitely strange, and seems to prove the identity of races so different to each other, alike in appearance and in customs, and is a very important factor in dealing with the great problem of the origin of the human species.
We have dwelt much on the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann, but we must add that, like all great discoveries, they have been very vigorously contested.[66] Boetticher, for instance, considers the ruins of Hissarlik to be nothing more than the remains of a necropolis where cremation was practised according to the Assyrio-Babylonian custom.[67] A distinguished and very honest savant, S. Reinach, constituted himself the champion of this theory at the meeting of the Congress in Paris in 1889. Schliemann replied very forcibly, and the meeting appeared to be with him in the matter, as were also a number of men of science who visited Hissarlik in 1888, and we think that in the end history will adopt the opinion of the great Danish antiquarian.
We have now passed in review the chief of the works left behind him by man from the earliest (lays of his existence to the dawn of historic times. We must still show prehistoric man in the presence of death, the universal destroyer, and learn from the evidence of the tombs of the remote past how our ancestors met the common doom.
[1] On this point an admirable book should be consulted, by De la Noë: “Enceintes Préhistoriques,” Mat., 1888, p. 324, in which the author says that positions protected by escarpments bordering the greater party of the circumference of the enceinte were at all times chosen for the erection of fortifications. The absence of water, however, often makes him hesitate in coming to a decision, and leads him to think that the remains where it is absent must have been temples for the worship of deities.
[2] Congrès Préhistoriques, Brussels, 1872, p. 318.
[3] “De Bello Gallico,” book vii., chap. xxiii.
[4] Dupont: “Les Temps Préhistoriques en Belgique,” p. 235.