"W. Scott-Elliot - Atlantis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elliot W Scott)

of the vast opposite continent (America) and those alone."[1]
The Phoenicians apparently were the first nation in the Eastern Hemisphere to
use a phonetic alphabet, the characters being regarded as mere signs for sounds.
It is a curious fact that at an equally early date we find a phonetic alphabet
in Central America
[1. Families of Speech, p. 132.]
amongst the Mayans of Yucatan, whose traditions ascribe the origin of their
civilization to a land across the sea to the east. Le Plongeon, the great
authority on this subject, writes: "One-third of this tongue (the Maya) is pure
Greek. Who brought the dialect of Homer to America? or who took to Greece that
of the Mayas? Greek is the offspring of the Sanscrit. Is Maya? or are they
coeval?" Still more surprising is it to find thirteen letters out of the Maya
alphabet bearing most distinct relation to the Egyptian hieroglyphic signs for
the same letters. It is probable that the earliest form of alphabet was
hieroglyphic, "the writing of the Gods," as the Egyptians called it, and that it
developed later in Atlantis into the phonetic. It would be natural to assume
that the Egyptians were an early colony from Atlantis (as they actually were)
and that they carried away with them the primitive type of writing which has
thus left its traces on both hemispheres, while the Phoenicians, who were a
sea-going people, obtained and assimilated the later form of alphabet during
their trading voyages with the people of the west.
One more point may be noticed, viz., the extraordinary resemblance between many
words in the Hebrew language and words bearing precisely the same meaning in the
tongue of the Chiapenecs--a branch of the Maya race, and amongst the most
ancient in Central America.[1]
The similarity of language among the various savage races of the Pacific islands
has been used as an
[1. A list of' these words is given in North Americans of Antiquity, p. 475.]
argument by writers on this subject. The existences of similar languages among
races separated by leagues of ocean, across which in historic time they are
known to have had no means of transport, is certainly an argument in favour of
their descent from a single race occupying a single continent, but the argument
cannot be used here, for the continent in question was not Atlantis, but the
still earlier Lemuria.
Similarity of Ethnological Types
Atlantis as we shall see is said to have been inhabited by red, yellow, white
and black races. It is now proved by the researches of Le Plongeon, De
Quatrefages, Bancroft and others that black populations of negroid type existed
even up to recent times in America. Many of the monuments of Central America are
decorated with negro faces, and some of the idols found there are clearly
intended to represent negroes, with small skulls, short woolly hair and thick
lips. The Popul Vuh, speaking of the first home of the Guatemalan race, says
that "black and white men together" lived in this happy land "in great peace,"
speaking "one language."[1] The Popul Vuh goes on to relate how the people
migrated from their ancestral home, how their language became altered, and how
some went to the east, while others travelled west (to Central America).
[1. See Bancroft's Native Races, p. 547.]
Professor Retzius, in his Smithsonian Report, considers that the primitive
dolichocephalae of America are nearly related to the Guanches of the Canary
Islands, and to the population on the Atlantic seaboard of Africa, which Latham