I believe that this center of transition lay somewhere in Central Asia, to the north of the great Himâlayan range. That this region was a sort of alembic, a melting-pot (as America is today) for various peoples of an ancient world-wide culture, as broad at least in its scope as the term Aryan is today. That this culture displayed the ideographic traits we have discussed, and that it has left more or less definite traces at different places in the world. That it covered the two Americas, in whatever continental form they may then have existed, leaving us there “les débris échappés à un naufrage commun.” That coincident with a new and universal world-epoch, as wide in its cultural scope as the difference between the ideographic and literal, there was finally formed a totally new vehicle for the use of human thought, the inflectional, literal, alphabetic. That this vehicle was perfected into some great speech, the direct ancestor of Sanskrit, into the forms of which were concentrated all the old power of the ancient hieroglyphs and their underlying concepts. For Sanskrit, while the oldest is also the mightiest of Aryan grammars; and no one who has studied its forms, or heard its speech from educated native mouths, can call it anything but concentrated spiritual power. That the force which went on the one hand into the Sanskrit forms, was on the other perpetuated on into the special genius of Chinese, in which, as we know it, we have a retarded survival, not of course of outer form so much as of method and essence. And in Tibetan, in spite of all that is said to the contrary, I suspect that we have a derivative, not from either Chinese or Sanskrit as we know them, but by a medial line from a common point.[63-*] Of course the time for such changes must have been enormous; but whatever it was, it was no greater in its realm as time, than were the mental differences in theirs. And they both are equally human data.
Certain other facts point to the American or Atlantic source and center of this ancient epoch. They are briefly that all around the Mediterranean basin we find traces of a vanished culture, unknown to our history, and living only in tradition and some archaeological remains. And of this culture various investigators, each approaching it from his particular favorite locality, have constructed for us as many different “Empires,” by theories each supported by various details of analogies. One calls them Tartars, another Hittites, another Pelasgians, and so on. And all of them, in each of the theories, have as a fact a great many unexplained characteristics, different from those of our historical nations. Some of these characteristics, most markedly the Basque, but also not a few at greater distance, have definite American similarities. It might not be a far guess that these fragments represent an eastward movement, which later in the history of the Aryan development met and was pushed back westward again by the fully formed and dominant Aryan race from its Central Asian center. This is the future province of Archaeology.
And I am convinced that the widest door there is to be opened to this past of the human race, is that of the Maya glyphs. The narrow limitations of our mental horizon as to the greatness and dignity of man, of his past, and of human evolution, were set back widely by Egypt and what she has had to show, and again by the Sanskrit; but the walls are still there, and advances, however rapid, are but gradual. With the reading of America I believe the walls themselves will fall, and a new conception of past history will come.
[41-*] See Memoranda on the Chilam Balam Calendars, C. P. Bowditch, 1901. The obscurities of the Chronicles render the questions connected with Ahpula’s death exceedingly difficult. For instance, the immediate context in the books of Mani and Tizimin make the date 1536, as given in numerals, an impossible one. But, if the date as given in Maya terms is to be accepted at all (and it certainly is too specific to be rejected), then by the long count such a date must have been either 1502, 5350, or 12,786 years after the date of Stela 9, Copan. Mr. Bowditch favors the lower figure, chiefly because it is the lower, and thus puts Stela 9 at A. D. 34. To get this date the longest possible distance from Ahpula’s death to the end of the katun must be used—that is, “6 tuns short” must be taken to mean “almost 7 tuns short.” I can only say here that if, in correcting the figures 1536, as demanded by the immediate context, we make the simplest possible correction, and put them one katun earlier, 1516, and then take as the unexpired time to the end of the katun the shortest of the three terms given as possible, or 5 tuns 139 days, bringing the end of Katun 13-Ahau on Jan. 28, 1522, we not only bring the end of Katun 11-Ahau within the year 1541, as is most positively stated by the practically contemporary Pech Chronicle, but we also bring in line nearly all the important events of the Chronicles, from the fall of Mayapan, ca. 1450, the coming of the Spaniards, and the smallpox, in 11-Ahau (1521 to 1541), the conversion to Christianity in 9-Ahau, down to Landa’s death (1579) in 7-Ahau; as well as many outside references. Any other combination requires harsher emendations somewhere else. But the above choice of the term of 5 tuns 139 days, thus seemingly called for, means that Stela 9 at Copan is dated, by the long count, 5350 years before Ahpula’s death, or B. C. 3824. Whether this is right, is a question for the future.
[42-*] “In ethnology however one troubles oneself little with the detail of linguistic structure. It is held quite sufficient to gather from different peoples and collate a couple of hundred vocables, into whose actual nature all insight is lacking, and then upon dubious, often purely superficial and apparent similarities, to deduce linguistic affinities. Or else, as is now most in fashion, the claims of linguistic research towards the solution of ethnological questions are reduced to a ‘most modest share’ in comparison with other fields ‘somewhat more in line with natural sciences’—meanwhile pointing for justification to the absurdities set forth as the results of too far-fetched linguistic deductions.... The errors and sophistries charged against ethnological linguistics are rather an accidental result of the individuality of single investigators, than essential to the subject. They are at least scarcely greater than those to the credit of recent Anthropometry. A brief glance at the strange changes of opinion in the latter field during the last three decades, in spite of all its boasted figures, shows how little ground it has to throw stones. Serious students, such as Wallace and Dall, whose critical ability in Zoomorphology no one can deny, and who do not rest content with a few skulls of doubtful provenance, gathered à la Hagenbeck, have come to a wholly negative view of the value of Craniometry.”—Dr. Otto Stoll, Maya-Sprachen der Pokom-Gruppe, I, vii, ix.
[43-*] Our present day speculators never seem to think for a moment that these things may conceal, and thereby preserve, some real meaning, or be more than nonsense. The theory of mythological interpretation pushed to such extremes as in the “animistic” explanations of Weber, Keightley, and others, and not absent from the writings of some Americanists (namely, that it was all nothing but ridiculous or concocted fancy, taken soberly) is bad enough, and argues little breadth or insight, when applied to the myths of a single people, considered alone. Applied to comparative mythology, in the state of things today, it is simply impossible. The plain fact is, that such identities as these must indicate one of two things: a common tradition, locally modified by circumstances; or a fact in nature or history, symbolically expressed in different ways according to the times and modes. And it most probably indicates both of these. It is indeed hard to account for the extent, and the weight given to some of these “myths,” now that we are coming to a better appreciation of the scope and greatness of ancient civilizations—everywhere—except they do correspond to actual facts in nature and history. And it might be worth our while to get at some of these.
[45-*] We might just as well acknowledge, once for all, that in spite of its present-day currency in England and America, and its pre-emption of the field of “science for the people,” the theory of man’s physical and mental descent from the anthropoids, is not only not proved, but is vehemently denied by an equally able and scientific, and withal more logical, body of researchers than those who form its supporters. To fabricate a missing link in a chain (or even, as with Haeckel, several links), whose only authority is acknowledged to be its necessity in order to complete the evidence for the theory, and then to declare the theory proved because the fabricated link fits perfectly the gap it was created for, is equally vicious scientifically whether the fabrication be the work of a physicist of renown or a linguistic theorizer. Let it simply be agreed, as it now is by all science, that the evolution of form is a universal and well evidenced principle, working out through the various well established and comprehensible incidents, such as natural selection, adaptation to environment, and so on—yet this statement of the fact is not an explanation of its cause. And every scientific and logical requirement will be equally, and better, met by regarding all forms, whether physical, linguistic, or of any kind, as coming, or rather brought, into being by the force of a consciousness which needs them as the vehicles of its expanding activity. That this is absolutely true in language, anybody can see. That it is true in every department of daily life about us, everybody does see. That it should be equally true in biology and physics, would not affect the standing or verity of a single observed fact.
There was, along about the beginning of the Christian era, and for some time before and after, a very curious movement, which seemed to spread itself over nearly the entire world, east and west. It is told of the early Aztecs that “they destroyed the records of their predecessors, in order to increase their own prestige.” It is related that writing once existed in Peru, but was entirely wiped out, and the Inca records committed to quipus alone. The “burning of the books” under Tsin Chi Hwangti in B. C. 213 sought to do the same for China. The times of Akbar witnessed much of the same in India. And in Europe almost nothing was left to tell the tale of the great pre-Christian eastern empires and systems of thought; so that from the establishment of State Christianity under Constantine, and the final settlement of the Canon at the Council of Nicaea, an impenetrable veil was drawn over the achievements and greatness of the Past, and all connexion therewith broken off. It was some time after this that we find the heliocentric theory, as well as that of other habitable worlds, denied (in Europe), because “it would deprive the Earth of its unique and central eminence.” Just as we also today are served up with prehistoric savage and animal ancestors, to the greater glory of our own present-day magnificence. But it really is in sober truth only a question of mental perspective which does not affect the facts of history, biology, archaeology or language in the least. It is only a question of which end of the telescope we look through.
[49-*] It is exceedingly interesting to trace the course of criticism since the appearance of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s great work, Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts (Berlin, 1836). Dr. Brinton gave it most unqualified approval; (see especially his monograph read before the American Philosophical Society in 1885, and printed the same year). Prof. H. Steinthal (Grammatik, Logik und Psychologie, 1855) calls the subject of “inner form” the most important one in linguistic science, and von Humboldt’s treatment of it his greatest contribution to that science. And so on. But the work has nevertheless received little attention from a large number of writers, most of them declaring it “unclear.” These two views, when one studies the various writers, seem to follow closely upon the standpoints from which each approaches the study. Those who study language (perhaps one should here say, languages) as a phenomenon, a set of external forms, an act, a thing done, get little use out of von Humboldt’s work. Those who see it as a human “activity,” an energy, get much. This is quite apparent in one of the clearest and ablest linguistic works which has recently appeared, Dr. Adolf Noreen’s Vårt Språk (in 9 vols., still in course of publication, Lund, 1903 and later), a work of far wider linguistic value than appears from its title. Dr. Noreen, however, dismisses von Humboldt’s work, and the subject of “inner form,” with a few pages, and the results are apparent in several interesting points. In the first place, in the course of an acute and critical analysis, wherein he shows that the purpose of speech is not simply expression of thoughts or ideas, but the communication to some other person of the knowledge of the ideas so held by the speaker, he goes on to say: “the same knowledge of A’s wishes could be as well communicated by his saying ‘I want you to come’ as by his saying just ‘Come.’” This is quite true; but the energic effect is quite different. Language is the bridge from man to man, and it is also a creative activity of man. Of course Dr. Noreen, in a later volume, where he most lucidly analyses the terms ‘words,’ ‘forms,’ and ‘concepts,’ etc. (ord, morfem, semem, etc.), and corrects many errors of definition made by his predecessors, acknowledges the difference between the two forms; still his whole admirable work, analytical and critical as it is, is devoted to this phase of language as a mere phenomenon, a set of forms which serve as a medium of communication. From this standpoint, we know all there is to know about language when we have classified its forms. But from the other, the study is ever leading us into the regions and depths of man’s consciousness, his creative activity as it goes out to the world; and the true definition of language, from this position, “can hence only be a genetic one.” (von Humboldt, Gesammelte Werke, VI, 42)
It is further not unworthy of note that, except where directly required in treating of verbal categories, nearly all of the enormous number of illustrations which Dr. Noreen chooses for his points, are nouns, names of things, and vary rarely verbal forms, words of action and doing. But it is simply a fact that all the potency of language is in the verb, and almost all there is of language, in a philosophic sense, lies there. The verb is the bridge of communication and action upon external things, just as is language itself, going out of man. And it is also noteworthy that the recognition of this position of the verb, together with these other matters of which we are speaking, seems nearer at hand and clearer to those students who are led beyond Aryan languages to the study of American and Asiatic, especially Central and Northern Asiatic. For instance, G. v. d. Gabelentz, Die Sprachwissenschaft, and other works.