The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 5, Primitive History. Hubert Howe Bancroft

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ marriage customs, system of education, manner of hunting, fishing, and making war, in their games and sports, in their mourning and burial customs, and in their manner of treating the sick.248 García knew a man in Peru who knew of a rock on which was what looked very much like a Greek inscription. The same writer says that the Athenians waged war with the inhabitants of Atlantis, and might therefore have heard of America. That the Greeks were navigators in very early times is shown by Jason's voyage in search of the Golden Fleece. Both Greeks and Americans bored their ears and sang the deeds of their ancestors; besides which, many words are common to both peoples.249 Like García, Mr Pidgeon also knew a man – a farmer of Montevideo, in Brazil – who in 1827 discovered in one of his fields a flat stone, upon which was engraven a Greek inscription, which, as far as it was legible, read as follows: "During the dominion of Alexander, the son of Philip, King of Macedon, in the sixty-third Olympiad, Ptolemaios." Deposited beneath the stone were found two ancient swords, a helmet, and a shield. On the handle of one of the swords was a portrait of Alexander; on the helmet was a beautiful design representing Achilles dragging the corpse of Hector round the walls of Troy. "From this discovery, it is evident" – to Mr Pidgeon – "that the soil of Brazil was formerly broken by Ptolemaios, more than a thousand years before the discovery by Columbus."250 Brasseur de Bourbourg seeks to identify certain of the American gods with Greek deities.251 Jones finds that the sculpture at Uxmal very closely resembles the Greek style.252

      The vastness of some of the cities built by the civilized Americans, the fine roads they constructed, their fondness for gladiatorial combats, and a few unreliable accounts that Roman coins have been found on the continent, constitute about all the evidence that is offered to show that the Romans ever visited America.253

THE ANCIENT ATLANTIS

      The story of Atlantis, that is, of a submerged, lost land that once lay to the west of Europe, is very old. It was communicated to Solon, according to Plutarch, by the Egyptian priests of Psenophis, Sonchis, Heliopolis, and Saïs; and if we may believe Plato, Solon did not hear of the events until nine thousand Egyptian years after their occurrence. Plato's version is as follows:

      "Among the great deeds of Athens, of which recollection is preserved in our books, there is one which should be placed above all others. Our books tell that the Athenians destroyed an army which came across the Atlantic Sea, and insolently invaded Europe and Asia; for this sea was then navigable, and beyond the strait where you place the Pillars of Hercules there was an island larger than Asia (Minor) and Libya combined. From this island one could pass easily to the other islands, and from these to the continent which lies around the interior sea. The sea on this side of the strait (the Mediterranean) of which we speak, resembles a harbor with a narrow entrance; but there is a genuine sea, and the land which surrounds it is a veritable continent. In the island of Atlantis reigned three kings with great and marvelous power. They had under their dominion the whole of Atlantis, several other islands, and some parts of the continent. At one time their power extended into Libya, and into Europe as far as Tyrrhenia, and, uniting their whole force, they sought to destroy our countries at a blow; but their defeat stopped the invasion and gave entire independence to all the countries this side of the Pillars of Hercules. Afterward, in one day and one fatal night, there came mighty earthquakes and inundations, which ingulfed that warlike people; Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea, and then that sea became inaccessible, so that navigation ceased on account of the quantity of mud which the ingulfed island left in its place."254

      It is only recently that any important signification has been attached to this passage. It was previously regarded rather as one of those fabulous accounts in which the works of the writers of antiquity abound, than as an actual statement of facts. True, it had been frequently quoted to show that the ancients had a knowledge more or less vague of the continent of America, but no particular value was set upon the assertion that the mysterious land was ages ago submerged and lost in the ocean. But of late years it has been discovered that traditions and records of cataclysms similar to that referred to by the Egyptian priests, have been preserved among the American nations; which discovery has led several learned and diligent students of New World lore to believe that after all the story of Atlantis, as recorded by Plato, may be founded upon fact, and that in bygone ages there did actually exist in the Atlantic Ocean a great tract of inhabited country, forming perhaps part of the American continent, which by some mighty convulsion of nature was suddenly submerged and lost in the sea.

BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG'S THEORIES

      Foremost among those who have held and advocated this opinion stands the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg. This distinguished Américaniste goes farther than his fellows, however, in that he attempts to prove that all civilization originated in America, or the Occident, instead of in the Orient, as has always been supposed. This theory he endeavors to substantiate not so much by the Old World traditions and records as by those of the New World, using as his principal authority an anonymous manuscript written in the Nahua language, which he entitles the Codex Chimalpopoca. This work purports to be on the face of it a 'History of the Kingdoms of Culhuacan and Mexico,' and as such it served Brasseur as almost his sole authority for the Toltec period of his Histoire des Nations Civilisées. At that time the learned Abbé regarded the Atlantis theory, at least so far as it referred to any part of America, as an absurd conjecture resting upon no authentic basis.255 In a later work, however, he more than retracts this assertion; from a sceptic he is suddenly transformed into a most devout and enthusiastic believer, and attempts to prove by a most elaborate course of reasoning that that which he before doubted is indubitably true. The cause of this sudden change was a strange one. As, by constant study, he became more profoundly learned in the literature of ancient America, the Abbé discovered that he had entirely misinterpreted the Codex Chimalpopoca. The annals recorded so plainly upon the face of the mystic pages were intended only for the understanding of the vulgar; the stories of the kings, the history of the kingdoms, were allegorical and not to be construed literally; deep below the surface lay the true historic record – hidden from all save the priests and the wise men of the West – of the mighty cataclysm which submerged the cradle of all civilization.256 Excepting a dozen, perhaps, of the kings who preceded Montezuma, it is not a history of men, but of American nature, that must be sought for in the Mexican manuscripts and paintings. The Toltecs, so long regarded as an ancient civilized race, destroyed in the eleventh century by their enemies, are really telluric forces, agents of subterranean fire, the veritable smiths of Orcus and of Lemnos, of which Tollan was the symbol, the true masters of civilization and art, who by the mighty convulsions which they caused communicated to men a knowledge of minerals.257

      I know of no man better qualified than was Brasseur de Bourbourg to penetrate the obscurity of American primitive history. His familiarity with the Nahua and Central American languages, his indefatigable industry, and general erudition, rendered him eminently fit for such a task, and every word written by such a man on such a subject is entitled to respectful consideration. Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that the Abbé was often rapt away from the truth by excess of enthusiasm, and the reader of his wild and fanciful speculations cannot but regret that he has not the opportunity or ability to intelligently criticise by comparison the French savant's interpretation of the original documents. At all events it is certain that he honestly believed in the truth of his own discovery; for when he admitted that, in the light of his better knowledge, the Toltec history, as recorded in the Codex Chimalpopoca, was an allegory – that no such people as the Toltecs ever existed, in fact – and thereby rendered valueless his own history of the Toltec period, he made a sacrifice of labor, unique, I think, in the annals of literature.

      Brasseur's theory supposes that the continent of America occupied originally the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, and extended in the form of a peninsula СКАЧАТЬ