The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations Part 39

The subjoined detached pa.s.sages, which open out new fields of inquiry, not only appear to me to establish conclusively this view, but certainly afford most interesting information concerning the ancient race of pole-star worshippers, seafarers, builders and handicraftsmen who, according to Hewitt (p. 25), extended their emigrations not only to Europe but also to America.(153) Hewitt bases the latter a.s.sertion upon the ident.i.ty be perceived "between Akkadian and American mythological traditions."

As the limit of the present inquiry excludes mythology, I cannot discuss here the evidences of similarity produced by Hewitt. I must express regret, however, that he designates a tribe of Pueblo Indians (the Sias, related to the Zunis), as "Mexican" (see vol. II, p. 243, etc.), a term which, in this case, is decidedly misleading. His identification of the truly Mexican, "teo-c.i.p.actli" as a "fish-G.o.d" is unfortunate, as numberless conventionalized drawings in the Codices prove that c.i.p.actli signifies alligator. If the somewhat limited and vague evidence, produced by Mr. Hewitt, appeared to justify his conclusion, how much more must an ident.i.ty of social organization and cult such as I have traced, not only authorize but also render it imperative, that the possibility of pre-Columbian contact should be thoroughly looked into. Disclaiming any desire to formulate hasty conclusions, and merely for the sake of gaining information by looking squarely at facts, I shall now rapidly enumerate some of these which undoubtedly appear to corroborate Hewitt's further a.s.sertion that "the Mayas and Nahuas of Yucatan and Mexico were emigrants of the Magha and Nahusha tribes, who pertained to the race of navigators known by the Greeks as the Phnicians ... and who continued in their new land, America, the worship of the rain G.o.d, to whom, as their fathers in central Asia, they dedicated the sign of the cross" (Hewitt, p. 492).

"The Maghas were the Finnic long-haired race of star- and fire-worshippers who, starting from Phrygia, as the Takkas conquered northern India ... who called themselves the sons of the Northern pine tree, called in Phrygia, as by the Northern Finns, Ma=the mother; also the sons of the mother-G.o.ddess Magha, the socket block whence fire was generated by the fire-drill; who is also worshipped as the mother Maga under the form of the alligator. Consequently the alligator was their totem." In Essay VIII Hewitt states that these "sons of the great witch-mother Maga" lived in Magnesia, whence they emigrated to Thessaly and that theirs was the "city of the Magnetes" referred to by Plato as "the mother of laws." The word mag, however, meant great in Akkadian, hence according to Hewitt the name Makkhu, the high priests or Magi (vol. II, p. 54).

The Maya and Mexican fire altars and sockets and their a.s.sociation with the earth-mother and alligator in the native Codices has been discussed. The Mexican day-sign c.i.p.actli figures an alligator and is a.s.sociated with a female deity. The alligator altar at Copan, is described on p. 228. Were it not for limit of s.p.a.ce additional testimony could be cited here, proving that in Mexico the alligator was a.s.sociated with the mother of the race, the fire-socket, and was a tribal totem.

"As the mother Maga she is the maker or kneader, the mother of the building and constructing races ... they were the first builders of towns.... They adored the G.o.d of the twirling or churning fire-drill....

They employed the name Ku, Ukko, Pukka and Pukan to designate the rain and thunder G.o.d and star-G.o.d who guides the stars in their courses and rules the beginning of the year" (Hewitt, p 438). The Finnic and Esthonian "Ukko is also called Taivahan Napanen, meaning the navel of the heaven and this is called the place of the pole star, the star at the top of the heavenly mountain" (vol. II, p. 155).

Compare Ku in Maya list, appendix III, also Tezcatli-poca or puca=Mexican fire-drill G.o.d, Ursa Major.

"They worshipped Nag or Nagash,=the serpent and fire-drill constellation of Ursa Major, and consequently called themselves also the sons of Naga=the Nahushas. They worshipped the Pleiades=the mother stars...."

The Nahuas traced ancestry to seven stars of Ursa Major and began their religious year at the culmination of the Pleiades at midnight.

"The Nagas united with the navigating Shus or Phnicians ... the red men, who worshipped the ruler of heaven.... These Shus ... called in the North, Hus ... were the Sumerian trading races of the Euphratean delta and Western India, who traced their descent to Khu, the mother bird of the Akkadians, Egyptians and Kus.h.i.tes.... They reverenced the sacred 'shu'

stone, the begetter of fire and of life fostered by heat,... designated as the precious stone, the strong stone, the snake stone, the mountain stone.... The pregnant mountain of the Shu stone was to the Akkadians the central point of the earth. The people who are said in the Rig-Veda to have first found fire by the help of Matarishoan, the fire-socket, and to have brought it to men, and are said to have placed it in the navel of the world ... as the sacred Shu stone."

It should be added here that the Hitt.i.te sign for Ishtar was a triangle enclosing a stone: "the mountain enclosing the stone of life."

About 270 A.D. the Tutul-xius=(_cf._ Kukul) under a great chief or lord Kukulcan reigned at Chichen-Itza ... (p. 206). In Mexico the name for turquoise is xiuitl and the G.o.d of fire is named Xiuh-tecuhtli. Jadeite is designated as chal-chiuitl and is a.s.sociated with Chalchiuitlycue, the mother-G.o.ddess. The spark-producing, flint knife=tecpatl is also employed as a symbol of generation.

"Their kings, like those of Egypt, wore the uraeus serpent as a sign of royal authority and made this the emblem of kingly rank in countries so widely distant from one another as India and Egypt...."

We learn from Prof. A. H. Sayce (Ancient Empires of the East, p. 200), that customs that had originated in a primitive period of Semitic belief survived in Phnician religion and that clear traces of totemism are found amongst the Semites. "Tribes were named each after its peculiar totem, an animal, plant or heavenly body.... David, for instance, belonged to the serpent-family, as is shown by the name of his ancestor Nahshon, and Professor Smith suggests that the brazen serpent found by Hezekiah in the Solomonic Temple was the symbol of it. We find David and the family of Nahash, 'or the serpent,' the king of Ammon, on friendly terms even after the deadly war between Israel and Ammon, that had resulted in the conquest and decimation of the latter."

The name of the culture hero Kukulcan or Quetzalcoatl incorporates the word serpent in Maya and Nahuatl. The conventionalized open serpent's jaw forms the usual head-dress of the lords sculptured on the Central American stelae and bas-reliefs. The existence of totemism in America is too well known to require comment, and the arbitrary method by which it was established by the Incas of Peru, when they founded the new colony, has been described.

"... I have already shown that the snake-father of the snake races in Greece and Asia Minor and of the matriarchal races in India was the snake Echis, or Achis, the holding snake, the Vritra, or enclosing snake of the Rig-Veda, the cultivated land which girdled the Temenos. This was the Sanscrit and Egyptian snake Ahi.... But the Naga snake was not the encircling snake, but the offspring of the house-pole and in this form it was called by the Jews the offspring or Baal of the land. But as the heavenly snake it was the old village snake transferred to heaven, called the Nag-ksetra, or field of the Nags, and there it was the girdling air-G.o.d who encircled the cloud mothers, the Apsaras, the daughters of the Abyss, the a.s.syrian Apsa, and marked their boundaries as the village snake did those of the holy grove on earth. But on earth the water-snake was the magical rain-pole, called the G.o.d Darka, set up by the Dravidian Males in front of every house ..." (p. 194). "They are the Canaanites, or dwellers in the low country, and the Hivites or the villagers of the Bible and the race of Achaeans of Greece. These are the sons of the Achis=the serpent, the having or holding snake, the girdling snake of cultivated land which surrounded the Temenos or inner shrine, the holy grove of the G.o.ds"

(Hewitt, p. 175).

Attention is drawn here to the twin serpents which enclose the Mexican Cosmical Tablet (fig. 56), whose bodies may be seen to consist of a repet.i.tion of the conventional sign for tlalli=land, consisting of a fringed square. Each square in this case encloses a sign resembling that of fire=tletl and the numeral ten. These girdling serpents, whose heads unite, being directly a.s.sociated with land, appear as the counterpart of the Old World Achis, a curious fact when it is considered that they are represented as springing from the sign Acatl (see p. 257).

On the other hand, the heavenly "feathered serpent" of Mexico and Yucatan is distinctly a.s.sociated with the air and the circle; its conception curiously coinciding with that of the "girdling air-G.o.d" mentioned by Hewitt. It is well known that the walls enclosing the court of the Great Temple of Mexico, were covered with sculptured serpents, and at Xochicalco, Mexico, and in Central American ruins (Uxmal, for instance), great sculptured serpents surround the buildings. It is remarkable that the sign Acatl not only figures conspicuously on the Great American Tablet, but also on the allegorical figure of the "Divine Serpent," which may well represent the totemic divinity and ancestor of a snake tribe, a.s.sociated with the word Acatl, possibly conveying their name. The undeniable a.s.sociation, in Mexico, of the serpent with Acatl, curiously agrees with the name of the "sons of Achis, the serpent"=the Achaians: and deserves consideration.

In the Genesis genealogy of the kings of Edom, the land of the red man, the priest king of the Hus or Shus is mentioned "... his people had replaced the Tur, the stone pillar, the Egyptian obelisk by the temple, the home and symbol of the creating G.o.d, who had been the pillar of the house.... But in their eyes the father-G.o.d was not the central pillar but the two door-posts and thence they called the temple gates Babel or the gates of G.o.d.... This gate was guarded by the holy twins.... The doorposts, and night and morning are invoked in the Rig-Veda.... The Magas were the discoverers of magic, mining, metallurgy, handicrafts-the pioneers of scientific research and the first organizers of a ritual of religious festivals."

Twin pillars, sculptured in the form of great serpents, whose names signify twinship, support the entrances to the ancient temples of Yucatan, Central America, and have been found on the site of the Great Temple of Mexico. The Mexican and Maya accounts of the culture hero Quetzalcoatl-Kukulcan state that he and his followers were "great necromancers" and magicians and that they taught handicrafts, metallurgy, and inst.i.tuted calendar, social organization and ritual. A personal, close examination of a large number of old Peruvian and Mexican as well as Coptic textile fabrics, has convinced me moreover of their ident.i.ty of technique.

"The Magas sacrificed dogs,.... They wore long hair,.... They made human sacrifices in order to obtain rain" (Hewitt).

"The Phnician priests scourged themselves or gashed their arms and b.r.e.a.s.t.s to win divine favor.... Human sacrifices were made, to Moloch or Milkom ... the parent was required to offer his eldest or only son as a sacrifice and the victim's cries were drowned by the noise of drums and flutes" (Sayce).

The human sacrifices of Mexico are familiar to all. The native dog and various kinds of birds were sacrificed. The Mexican priests, named papas, wore long hair, practised asceticism, gashed their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, arms and legs and pierced their ears and tongues. On the Palenque bas-reliefs, priests with long hair are sculptured. The human sacrifices of Mexico and those of Egypt, Phnicia and a.s.syria, described by Sayce and Hewitt (pp. 275 and 348), are closely alike. See also Hewitt's account of the blood brotherhood made between the sacrificer and the land on which the blood is poured (p. 196), and the Chichimec blood sacrifice described in the present work, p. 66.

The foregoing are a few noteworthy a.n.a.logies which have impressed themselves upon me during the present course of investigation, in addition to the many undeniable and unsuspected evidences I have found, of an ident.i.ty of star-cult, ritual and social organization in Old and New World civilizations.

It will be seen that the outcome of my researches corroborates the opinions differently expressed by a long line of eminent investigators, who have been constantly discovering and pointing out undeniable similarities and ident.i.ties between the civilizations of both hemispheres.

It seems to me that an acc.u.mulation of evidence now forces us to face and thoroughly investigate the possibility that, from remote antiquity, our continent and its inhabitants were known to the seafarers of the Old World, to whose agency the spread of similar forms of cult and civilization in the New World is to be a.s.signed.

While those who uphold the autochthony of the native civilization may regard such ident.i.ties as accidental, those who are willing to admit the possibility that the Phnicians, the red men of antiquity, whose land was Syria, navigating by the pole-star, may have reached America, will doubtlessly dwell upon the unquestionable fact that the most ancient traces of organized and settled communities actually exist along the coast swept by the equatorial currents. A glance at an ordinary chart exhibiting the ocean currents and trade winds shows that vessels sailing southward from the Canary Islands and caught in the north African current, might, at a certain point, enter the north equatorial current flowing towards the coast of America. Further southward still, off the coast of Guinea, the current bearing this name meets the main equatorial current which sweeps along the coast of Honduras and Yucatan into the Gulf of Mexico.

What is more, ancient well-known tradition a.s.serts that the culture-hero Kukulcan-Quetzalcoatl, with his followers, came to Mexico from the East (_via_ Yucatan) and told the natives of their distant home, named Tlapallan and Huehue tlapallan which, translated, mean "the red land" and "the great ancient red land." Native American tradition unquestionably and unanimously ascribes to single individuals of aged and venerable aspect, or leaders of small bands of men and women of an alien race, the peaceable introduction of a definite plan of civilization, identical in its elements with that known to have existed in India, Egypt and Babylonia-a.s.syria from time immemorial, and said to have been spread to these countries by the Phnicians.

Native tradition, therefore, is seen unanimously to controvert the independent development of the cosmical schemes of government and most advanced forms of civilization which prevailed in America at the Columbian period. This, of course, in no wise excludes the existence of purely native people, with a certain degree of civilization, more rudimentary in form, founded on impressive natural phenomena, which the natives had always been in a position to observe for themselves.

In order to obtain an insight into conditions which might have determined and affected maritime intercourse with distant America, let us now make a rapid survey of the history of the ancient civilizations of the Old World.

This reveals, in the first case, the undeniable fact (one of deepest significance in the light of the present investigation) that the period of a general stirring of men's minds, in countries where pole-star worship had prevailed from time immemorial, exactly coincides with the period to which I alluded on p. 43, during which there ceased to be a brilliantly conspicuous and perfectly immovable pole-star in the northern heavens.

From Mr. Hinckley Allen's work (p. 454), I have since learned that astronomers have closely determined this period, and that Miss Clerke writes of this: "The entire millennium before the Christian era may count for an interregnum as regards pole-stars. Alpha Draconis had ceased to exercise that office; and Alruccabah had not yet a.s.sumed it." Prof. A. H.

Sayce tells us that the Phnician pilots steered by the pole-star in remotest antiquity, and it is a matter of history that "Pytheas of Ma.s.silia, the bold navigator (died about 285 B.C.), showed the Greeks that the pole-star was not at the pole itself." Previous to that date, however, the astronomer-priests must have noted the change in the heavens. On descendants of ancient pole-star worshippers, whose entire religion and civilization were based on the idea of fixity and rotation, the unaccountable change in the order of the universe must indeed have produced a deep impression. Under such conditions it seems but natural that a great awakening of doubt and speculation should take place, that worship should be transferred from stars known to be subject to change, to the unseen, incomprehensible but ever-present eternal power which ruled the universe.

Let us examine some of the records of the great intellectual movement that swept at one time, like a wave, over the ancient centres of civilization.

The eighth, seventh and sixth centuries before our era are marked by the growth of the Ionian philosophy which, as Huxley tells us, "was but one of many results of the stirring of the moral and intellectual life of the Aryan-Semitic population of Western Asia. The conditions of the general awakening were doubtless manifold, but there is one which modern research has brought into great prominence. This is the existence of extremely ancient and highly advanced societies in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile.... The Ionian intellectual movement is only one of the several sporadic indications of some powerful mental ferment over the whole of the area comprised between the aegean and Northern Hindustan...."(154)

Professor Schroeder's statement that, "in the seventh century B.C., the idea of four, _i. e._ five elements, spread in India," is particularly interesting in connection with the date a.s.signed to the birth of the Ionian intellectual movement. Of Pythagoras it is related that, like Solon, "he had visited Egypt, also Phnicia and Babylon, then Chaldean and independent, and founded a brotherhood originally brought together by a religious influence, with observances approaching to monastic peculiarity, and working in a direction at once religious, political and scientific."

According to the learned translator of Cicero's first Tusculan disputation(155) "it is generally accepted that Pherecydes of Syros (one of the Cyclades islands in the aegean sea) was the teacher of Pythagoras.

Pherecydes, who flourished about B.C. 544 is said to have derived his knowledge from the secret books of the Phnicians and from travels of inquiry in Egypt." Through Philolaus (see Grote IV, p. 395, note 2), Pythagorean science was made known to Plato, whose views are quoted on p.

449. Grote states that, about 300 B.C., the Pythagorean philosophy nearly died out. It is a curious fact that this date coincides, approximately, with the destruction of Tyre (Tsar, in Phnician,=the rock), the last stronghold of the Phnicians, "which had defied a.s.syrian, Babylonian and Persian but at last fell," according to Prof. A. H. Sayce, "in July, B.C.

332, before the Greek conqueror Alexander. Thirty thousand of its citizens were sold in slavery, thousands of others ma.s.sacred and crucified and the wealth of the richest and most luxurious city of the world became the prey of an exasperated army. Its trade was inherited by its neighbor Sidon"

(_op. cit._ p. 194). It is obvious that, at this period, bands of fugitives may well have taken refuge in traders' ships and sought safety in flight to distant regions, where they might establish themselves and found colonies on the pattern of Tyre or of Carthage which, in ancient times had also been founded by fugitives and been named "the new city,"

Karthakhadasha (Sayce). While the great historical events which marked the fourth century B.C. seem to have arrested the spread of Pythagorean philosophy, we find that, according to Grote, "in the time of Cicero, two centuries later, the orientalizing tendency, beginning to spread over the Grecian and Roman world, caused it to be again revived, with little or none of its scientific tendencies, but with more than its primitive religious and imaginative fanaticism.... It was taken up anew by the pagan world, along with the disfigured doctrines of Plato. Neo-Pythagorism, pa.s.sing gradually into Neo-Platonism, outlasted other more positive and masculine systems of pagan philosophy, as the contemporary and revival of Christianity" (_op. cit._ IV, 398). Neo-Platonism reached its height under its chief Plotinus (A.D. 205-270) who sought to reconcile the Platonic and Aristotelian systems with Oriental theosophy. His pantheistic and eclectic school was the last product of the Greek philosophy.(156)

It is, at all events, remarkable, that the date tradition a.s.signs to the presence of Kukulcan in Yucatan and the foundation of the quadruplicate state of Mayapan coincides with the dying out, in Europe, of pagan philosophy, one of the features of which had been the elaboration of ideal forms of government based on a numerical and cosmical scheme, the elements of which had apparently been spread by the Phnicians. In Copan and Quirigua we find remnants of long-established, peaceable communities revealing no trace of war-like weapons, and the memorial stelae of whose rulers stand above hidden cruciform vaults, while carved personages are represented as seated in the centre of ornate crosses. In Yucatan, through which land the foreign civilization seems to have reached the plateau of Mexico, there are significant traces of an ancient city, named Zilan, situated on the Atlantic coast; proofs that buildings of cosmical forms were erected; that the state of Mayapan was laid out on the familiar cosmical plan; that repeated migrations took place, and that, from time immemorial, a calendar, on the same numerical basis as that of Mexico, had been in use. The great state of Mayapan, where a remarkable stone cross was found at Cozumel by the Spaniards, is shown to have been figured as a circle within a circle, the whole divided into four parts by cross-lines.

Here, as in Chiapas and Mexico, all divisions of government, population and time are organized on a numerical scheme representing the combination of 45=20 _i. e_. an entire finger and toe count, "a whole man," with the 13 directions in s.p.a.ce. The multiplication of 13 and 20 results in a unit of 260 which, as a cycle of time, represents the complete set of all harmonious combinations of man the miniature image of the living state, with the thirteen directions of s.p.a.ce in the all-embracing Cosmos, composed of four primary elements. In consonance with this we find the existence of 20 (or 45) lords, whose names correspond to those of the 4 chief and 16 minor day-signs of the calendar, and of a lord by election, whose name signifies the thirteen divisions or parts, and who const.i.tuted a microcosmos, a Four in One. In regular rotation the 20 lords, consisting of 4 chief and 44=16=minor rulers fulfilled duties towards the supreme representative who resided in the capital, while they respectively lived in four provinces, the population of which was subdivided into four tribes each of the 20 divisions of the state being again divided into 13 parts.

In a cosmical state like this in which each individual not only felt himself to be a unit and a microcosmos, but also an indispensable part of a living organism, under the form of which the state was symbolized, its inhabitants, leading lives regulated by a calendar based on the phenomenon of circ.u.mpolar rotation, under a chief ruler ent.i.tled the "Four in One,"

a.s.sisted by four sub-rulers, must indeed have felt that they "lived, moved and had their being" in the Teotl or Theos, imagined as the embodiment of the four elements. In this connection it is interesting to learn that "the animal" itself, of Plato, is considered by eminent authorities to have been the tetrad.

In Zuni, where, at the present day, each individual feels himself identified with some part of the body of a quadruped, his clan totem, the conception of the state as "a living animal," is an actual reality. Their pueblo moreover represents a 6+1=7, or a "seven in one," the miniature counterpart of the far distant Ooraon village of Chota Nagpore and of the ancient archaic kingdoms of India, Persia, Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, etc. Anciently the Zunis called themselves the Ashiwi, a name remarkably like that of the Ashvins, derived from the Akkadian ash=six.