Too much importance must not, of course, be given to these linguistic analogies; at the same time we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that these broken fragments of language, traceable to India, Babylonia-Assyria, Egypt and Greece, are found, in America, clinging tenaciously to a set of cosmical ideas and a scheme of organization identical in both hemispheres.
It has been surprising to me, for instance, to learn, by carefully collecting facts, that whereas Professor Sayce tells us that the supreme god of the Phœnicians was named Yeud or Ekhad, the supreme god of the Mexican Chichimecs (literally, Red race) was named Youalli-Ehecatl, which signifies, literally, night-air or wind. I likewise ascertained that, whereas the word yau or yu signifies the source or origin in Chinese, is linked to a character forming a cross and is homogeneous with Yaou Sing, a star in Ursa Major, described as “revolving,” the Mexican name for the pole-star god was Yaual or Yohual Tecuhtli, the lord of the circle or of the night.
Again there is a remarkable similarity between the Mexican yaualli=circle and the verb yoli or yuli=to resuscitate or vivify; the Chinese ui=to turn around, and the Scandinavian yul, yeul or yol = wheel, also the festival of the winter solstice, when nature seemed to resuscitate. Whereas the significance of the above Mexican, Chinese and Scandinavian names, is clear, no meaning has, to my knowledge, been attached to the Semitic name for the supreme god, which, as Professor Sayce informs us, was pronounced Yahu or Yaho or Yahve (see Appendix, list [i]).
Other striking resemblances are found between the names for handicraftsman and master-builder in widely distant countries. Thus, in Phrygia, we have the Daktuloi, the builders who erected monuments decorated with cross-symbols arranged so as to form a geometrical design, such as represented in fig. [72], 2. In Oaxaca the Toltecatl=builders and handicraftsmen, erected the walled temple and cruciform structures at Mitla, and decorated them with geometrical designs.
Reliable authorities teach us that “the Hittites were the northern minyan or menyan=measurers, a building race” (Hewitt); that Aha-Mena, the first historical ruler of Egypt, was a builder; that the name of Amun, the god of the Ammonites, signified “the builder.” Dictionaries reveal that, in America, Maya-speaking people designated a master builder or handicraftsman as ah-men, or [pg 533] menyah which, in Nahuatl, became amanteca. In Yucatan the name for North was Aman or Xaman; the building race of civilizers seems to have been associated with that region, which the Arabians named Shamaliyy. In the Babylonian-Assyrian Shamash, the Sanscrit Brahman and the Egyptian Amen-ra, we seem to have but different forms of the same word, which recurs in the Akkadian-Sumerian Sama, or an=the revolving heaven (see Appendix, list).
It is to philologists that I refer the question whether the resemblances, in sound and meaning, of certain words I have found associated, in widely sundered countries, with the universal cosmical set of ideas, are merely accidental or whether they furnish indication of a remote common origin or of contact at a later period. It will interest me particularly to learn their opinion as to the oldest forms of the words; and whether there is really no clue to the meaning of the Hebrew Yahu and the Phœnician Yeud-Ekhad. One is tempted to inquire whether the Chichimecan Youalli-Ehecatl was not the same and whether this and other analogies do not constitute evidence tending to establish that Mexico was a Phœnician colony in which during centuries of isolation the archaic forms and meanings of Phœnician words were preserved.
It is my hope that these lists will be carefully examined and explained by competent authorities, to whose judgment they are respectfully submitted. Whether they will be accounted for in one way or another, these lists will be found to establish the existence of striking resemblances which, by themselves, might not carry weight, but which unquestionably gain in significance when found in conjunction with cosmical conceptions, social organization, forms of architecture and cross-symbolism, which appear universal.
A few words here concerning the undoubted general resemblances that exist between the Chinese and Japanese, and Central American methods of organization—resemblances which even extend to certain words directly traceable to Western Asiatic influence in the case of the Eastern Asiatic civilizations. The existence of marked differences between the Chinese and Maya-Mexican numerical systems and determination of elements, appears to exclude the possibility that dominating Asiatic influences could have reached America via China and Japan after the still existing, crystallized forms of government and calendar had been established in the latter countries. As far as I can judge, the great antiquity attributed, by Chinese historians, to the establishment of the governmental [pg 534] and cyclical schemes, still in use, appears extremely doubtful. Referring the question to Sinologists, I venture to ask whether it does not seem probable that the present Chinese scheme dates from the lifetime of Lao-tze, in the sixth century B.C., a period marked, as I have pointed out, by the growth of Ionian philosophy, one feature of which was the invention of numerical schemes applied to “divine polities” and ideal forms of government. Future investigation may, perhaps, prove that “the powerful mental ferment” alluded to by Huxley, as spreading between the eighth and ninth centuries B.C., over the whole of the area comprised between the Ægean and North Hindustan, was caused by the growth and diffusion of plans of ideal states, which would naturally suggest and lead to the formation of bands of enthusiasts, who would set out in search of districts where they could carry out their principles and ideals.
Personally, I am strongly inclined to assign the origin of the Chinese and the Mexican schemes, which are identical in principle, to the same source, and to believe that they were carried in opposite directions, at different periods, by seafarers and colonists, animated by the same purpose. Favorably established in distant regions, both grew and flourished during centuries, constituting analogous examples of an immense, submissive, native population living under a highly perfected, artificial, numerical, scheme of religious government, preserved intact and enforced by a ruling caste, who possessed superior knowledge and claimed divine descent.
It is, of course, to Chinese and Japanese scholars and to archaeologists, some of whom constitute the able staff of the Jesup Expedition, who are investigating the question of Asiatic contact, that I look for further information and enlightenment as to prehistoric contact between China and America.[157]