A significant result of a critical comparison of the celestial kingdoms of Peru and Mexico is the perception that, in the former, as in Egypt, a hereditary sovereignty was exercised by male and female sacerdotal rulers of a “divine line of descent.” On the other hand we find, in Mexico, a state of affairs in exact accordance with Montezuma's account of the behavior of his predecessors towards the lord who had led them and presided over the foundation of the Mexican empire. During his absence they, his vassals, established democratical principles and when he returned, having intermarried with women of the country and founded new cities, they refused to recognize his authority and let him depart. From Montezuma himself we learn that, although they thus emancipated themselves from their former lord, they continued to regard themselves as dependent and owing allegiance to the mother-city whence they had come. Until the time of the Conquest, however, they [pg 541] were governed by rulers whom they elected, and who had risen in rank merely by virtue of their moral and intellectual distinction.

It is indeed deeply suggestive and impressive to realize that, in antiquity as in modern times, the American Continent seems to have been sought, as a place of refuge, by men whose ideals have been state institutions founded on democratic principles. The ancient polities of Mexico and Peru and, what is more, the archaic Pueblos of to-day, alike furnish examples of conditions, such as undoubtedly existed in Mediterranean countries in ancient times and inspired Greek statesmen and philosophers to plan ideal polities, and must have preceded the creation of the Jewish and early Christian spiritualized ideal of a New Jerusalem, pervaded throughout by the Divine Spirit. In conclusion, there are a few points which I recommend to the consideration of students. Different writers have, as Prescott summarizes, with certainty discerned in the highest American civilizations, a Semitic or an Egyptian or an Asiatic origin.

This remarkable combination of features, distinctively characteristic of the said civilizations, actually existed amongst the Phœnicians who, as Professor Sayce relates, were allied to the Semitic race, were affected by contact with their cousins the Arameans or Syrians, penetrated to the coast of India, derived their art from Babylonia, Egypt, and later from Assyria, and “knew how to combine together the elements it had received and to return them, modified and improved, to the countries from which they had been borrowed.” In the case of India and China it is an established and accepted truth that an active communication existed between these countries and Asia Minor, which was carried on by a race of seafarers and colonists. When it is realized that, through them, distant regions became known and accessible, and that at one time in the history of Greek philosophy, for instance, statesmen, philosophers and mathematicians alike rivalled each other in planning ideal states, based on the identical principle: the harmonizing of human life with Nature's laws; it seems but rational to infer that, at different times, bands of enthusiasts, adopting one numerical scheme in preference to another, and led perhaps by its inventor or disciples, set out in search of distant countries where they could undisturbedly establish “celestial kingdoms” according to their ideal plan. To such an enterprise as this I venture to assign the establishment of the celestial kingdom of China, drawing [pg 542] attention to Biot's statement, cited on p. [298], that year cycles (i. e. the sociological and chronological system since in use) were introduced there from India, after the Christian era. This being the case, contrary to the claims of a much greater antiquity by Chinese scholars, the present form of the “celestial kingdom” appears to date from the arrival in China, from Persia, of Semitic emigrants, during the first century of our era (see p. [303]), and to have undergone a certain re-modelling in the first half of the sixth century, after the arrival of a band of Syrian Christians (p. [304]).

Pointing out that these dates would make it appear as though the cyclical systems of India and Eastern Asia had been formulated under the direct or indirect influence of Greek philosophy, I observe that the date of their introduction and establishment assigns them to approximately the same period which produced the numerical scheme adopted by Constantine, Maya and Mexican calendrical and chronological scheme. At the period when Constantine established New Rome and instituted four divisions of the empire, each divided into thirteen yielding a total of fifty-two prefectures, there lived in Byzantium a philosopher and rhetorician (315-390 A.D.) whose name was Themistius and who filled the office of prefect of Constantinople. It is well known that the attempt thus to organize the empire proved fruitless and that the proclamation of Christianity as the religion of his empire by Theodosius I (379 A.D.) inaugurated a prolonged persecution of pagan religion and philosophy (see p. [530]).

Is it inadmissible to consider at least the possibility that, disappointed and driven from their land, some of those who clung to the ancient ideal, and were acquainted with the perfected scheme of state organization instituted by Constantine during the lifetime of Themistius, carried it at a later period, to the “hidden land” of the West and established it there, where it was preserved intact until the time of the Spanish Conquest? Is it by accident only that one of the names of the capital of ancient Mexico, as preserved in the writings of Cortés and Bernal Diaz is Temistitan, literally “land of Temis,” the Nahuatl language not furnishing any meaning to the latter word? Can it be that, just as the word Teotl, resembling Theos, is found on Mexican soil, employed with the same meaning as in Greek, the name Temistitan means “the land of established law, order and justice” dedicated to the Greek Themis, just as New Rome was dedicated to Sofia=Wisdom? Or [pg 543] did some sort of connection exist between the name of the Mexican capital, the system on which it was established and the philosopher Themistius?

Is it by chance merely that the state calendar of Temistitan was based on 4×13=52 divisions, and that Themistius of Byzantium, a member of that school of philosophy which had evolved numberless plans and numerical schemes for ideal states, should have held one of the 4×13=52 prefectures during Constantine's reign? In order to make the most rapid advance towards a solution of the great problem of the origin of American civilizations, I venture to suggest that Orientalists and Americanists should combine and freshly study it from opposite points of view. One side might be taken by those who incline to admit the possibility that a few Phœnician traders discovered the American continent in ancient times and that, subsequently, those to whom they imparted their discovery and their successors, the daring Greek navigators, conveyed thither, at intervals, bands of refugees or enthusiasts who braved danger and death, in the hope of reaching the blessed land where, free from persecution, they could found ideal democracies or divine polities.

Besides studying and adding to the numberless similarities which have been cited by so many different authorities and to which I have added a modest contribution, let them produce evidence showing the improbability that the identical forms of cult, religion, social organization, calendar cycles and numerical schemes should have been independently evolved two or more times by distinct races. On the other hand, let those who hold the view that American civilization was purely autochthonous, advance grounds for the supposition that it developed a school of philosophical speculation and that America produced its Empedocles and its Plato. Let them also formulate the psychical law which caused the American race to formulate the four elements, recognized as such by the philosophers of India and Greece, and not the five of Chinese philosophy; and to evolve numerical schemes applied to social organization, identical with those current in India, Western Asia and the Mediterranean countries, but different from that employed in China and Japan. It will also be incumbent upon them not only to disprove American traditions, which record the introduction of a higher civilization and plans of social organization by strangers, but also to demonstrate that, although in ancient times, Phœnician [pg 544] traders carried on an active traffic with Britain, daring the perils of the Bay of Biscay, they could not possibly have ventured across the southern Atlantic, even in the most favorable seasons. It has remained a source of sincere regret to me that circumstances prevented my attending the Orientalist Congress which met at Rome, in October, 1899, under the presidency of the illustrious Count Angelo de Gubernatis, to whom credit is due for having first suggested and planned that a section of the Congress should devote itself to the discussion of prehistoric contact or connection between the Old and New Worlds.

With an apology for my non-attendance and consequent failure to aid in organizing the section and carrying out a plan which met with my enthusiastic approval, I venture to submit the present investigation to the President and officers of the Orientalist Congress with the earnest hope that it may contain material and suggestions for fruitful discussions during the next Congress held, and that these may be carried on in a section devoted to the consideration of facts relating to prehistoric America and its relation to the Old World.

Summary and Conclusion.

In the preceding pages the view is advanced that the ancient cross-symbol or swastika was first used by man, presumably in circumpolar regions, as a record of the opposite positions assumed, by circumpolar constellations, in performing their nocturnal and annual circuit around Polaris. Employed as a year sign in the first case, the cross or swastika later became the symbol of the Four Quarters, of quadruplicate division and of a stable central power whose rule extended in four directions and controlled the entire Heaven.