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Antiqua
Antiqua; Auszeichnung: Kursivierung.
It cannot but excite astonishment, that, at the conclusion, of the
fifteenth century, there should have been found, in a world which we
denominate the new, the very same kind of antiquarian remains, the
same religious notions, and forms of architecture, as seem to belong
to the earliest ages of civilization in Asia. It is with the characteris-
tics of nations, as with the internal structure of the plants that are
spread over the face of the earth. The stamp of the original stock
remains indelible, notwithstanding the numberless modifications pro-
duced by climate, soil, and various other incidents.
In the first period after the discovery of America, the attention of
the Europeans was more particularly directed to the gigantic edifices
of Corzco, to the high roads through the midst of the Cordilleras, to
the lofty graduated pyramids, to the religious rites, and symbolical
writings of the Mexicans. Descriptions of different provinces of
Mexico and Peru were then as frequent as are, in our days, the ac-
counts of the vicinity of Port Jackson, in New Holland, or the Island
of Otaheite. It is absolutely necessary to have been upon the spot,
in order to appreciate justly the noble simplicity and the character of
truth and fidelity which pervade the narrations of the earliest Spanish
travellers: and, in perusing their works, we lament only the want of
graphic illustrations, which would have given us more satisfactory
ideas of many monuments, partly demolished by fanaticism, and partly
fallen to decay through culpable neglect.
The ardor for those American investigations diminished after the
commencement of the seventeenth century. The Spanish colonies,
whose territory alone had been inhabited by civilized nations, were
shut against foreigners; and when, more recently, the Abbé Clavigero
published, in Italy, his work on the ancient history of Mexico, doubts
were raised concerning many facts which were formerly confimed by
numerous eye-witnesses, frequently persons by no means amicably
disposed towards each other. Celebrated writers, who received less
pleasure from the harmony of nature than from her contrasts, have
represented America as one vast swamp, unfavourable to the propaga-
tion of the animal species, and not till of late inhabited by races of
men not surpassing the South Sea islanders in civilization. An unli-
mited scepticism had banished sound criticism from the historical dis-
quisitions on the Americans. The fictions of a Solis and some other
travellers who had never quitted Europe, were blended with the faith-
ful and simple relations of the earliest visitors of the New World; and
it was deemed the duty of a philosophic historian to protest, in the
first place, against all that the missionaries had observed.
Towards the end of the past century, a happy alteration took place
in regard to the opinions entertained respecting the civilisation of na-
tions, and the causes that alternately promote and obstruct its progress.
We became acquainted with nations whose manners, institutions, and
arts, are almost as different from those of the Greeks and Romans, as
the original forms of the extinct species of animals from those which
cutta has thrown a brilliant light over the history of the Asiatic na-
tions. The monuments of Egypt have, of late, been partly described
with admirable correctness, and partly compared with those of the
most distant regions; and my researches concerning the native tribes
of America appear at an epoch, when that which does not approach
to the style and manner of which the Greeks have left us inimitable
models, is nevertheless deemed well worthy of attention.
In the description of the historical monuments of America, I have
endeavoured to observe a due mean between two routes alternately
pursued by those literati who have entered into the discussion of such
monuments, languages, and national traditions. The one adopting
hypotheses which, though brilliant, rest on tottering foundations, have
deduced general conclusions from a small number of insulated facts.
They found, in America, Chinese and Egyptian colonies, Celtic
dialects, and the alphabet of the Phœnicians. While we yet remain
in the dark respecting the origin of the Osci, the Goths, and the
Celts, they pretended to pronounce decisively on the origin of the
tribes of the New World. Other writers, on the contrary, amassed
materials, without ever raising themselves to any general notions: a
proceeding from which the history of nations can derive as little bene-
fit as the different branches of the natural sciences. I shall deem
myself fortunate if I shall be thought to have equally avoided both
these extremes. A small number of tribes, far distant from one ano-
ther, as the Etruscans, the Egyptians, the Tibetians, the Aztekians,
exhibit striking co-incidences in their buildings and religious institu-
tions, in their division of the year, in their returning periods of time,
and in their mystical representations. The historian ought not to
overlook these coincidence, for which it is just as difficult to account
as for the resemblance between the Sanscrit, Persian, Greek, and
German idioms; but while he rises to general ideas, he should know
how to stop at the point where we are abandoned by certain facts.
Agreeably to these principles, I will attempt to state the results de-
duced from the data which I have been enabled to collect concerning
the native tribes of America.
An attentive examination of the geological relations of the New
World, and a consideration of the equilibrium of the waters spread over
the surface of the earth, forbid the assumption that the new and the
old continents rose at different times from the bosom of the deep.
On both hemispheres we perceive the like series of rocky strata lying
one above another, and probably the granite, gypsum, and sand-stone
formations in the mountains of Peru, had their origin at the same pe-
riod as the corresponding strata in the Alps of Switzerland. The
whole globe has apparently been visited by the same catastrophes.
On the summits of the Andes, at an elevation exceeding that of
Mont Blanc, are found the petrified muscles of the ocean. Fossile
bones of elephants are scattered over the equatorial regions, and,
what is remarkable, they are met with, not only under the palms in
the torrid valleys of the Oronoko, but on the highest and coldest
plains of the Cordilleras. In the new as in the old world, whole crea-
give place to those which now people the earth, the air, and the
waters.
No grounds exist for presuming that America was first peopled by
men at a much later period than the other continents. The luxuriant
vegetation, the breadth of the rivers, and the partial in-undations are
powerful obstacles to the migration of nations in tropical countries.
Extensive tracts of northern Asia are as thinly peopled as the savan-
nahs of New Mexico and Paraguay, and we should by no means pre-
suppose that the countries first inhabited must necessarily be the most
populous.
The question relative to the origin of the population of America can
no more belong to the province of history, than those concerning the
origin of plants and animals, and on the distribution of organic germs,
to the natural sciences. History, when it goes back to the most an-
cient periods, exhibits to us almost all the parts of the globe inhabited
by people who look upon themselves as aborigines, because their an-
cestry is unknown to them. Amidst a variety of tribes who succeed-
ed and intermingled with one another, it is impossible to decide with
certainty from which of them the population first proceeded, and to
define the limits beyond which the empire of cosmogonal tradition
commences.
The tribes of America, with the exception of those that are nearest
to the polar circle, belong all to one single race, which is distinguish-
ed by the form of the skull, complexion, very scanty beard, and
straight hair. The American race exhibits striking analogies with
that of the Mongol tribes, which comprehends the descendants of the
Hiong-nu, so famous under the denomination of Huns, the Kalkases,
the Calmucks, and the Burattes. Recent observations have even de-
monstrated, that not only the inhabitants of Oonalashka, but several
South American tribes also, denote, by the osteological characters of
the skull, a transition from the American to the Mongol race. If the
sable African race, and the numberless tribes which inhabit the in-
terior of Asia and its north-eastern regions, and to which systematic
geographers have given the indefinite appellation of Tartars or
Tschoudes, should ever become better known to us, the Caucasian,
Mongol, American, Malay, and Negro races will be less widely se-
parated than they have been, and we shall recognize, in this great
family of man, one single original, which has undergone various modi-
fications from circumstances that we shall, perhaps, never be able to
penetrate.
The native tribes of the new world, though all of them are allied
by very essential characteristics, yet, on the other hand, present, in
their moveable features, in their more or less dark complexion, in
their shape and size, varieties not less striking than the difference
which we perceive between the Arabs, Persians, and Slavonians of
the Circassian race. The hordes, however, which rove about in the
burning plains of the equinoctial regions are by no means of a darker
colour than the mountaineers, or the inhabitants of the temperate
zone; whether it be that in man, as in most animals, there is a cer-
tain period of life beyond which the influence of climate and food is
ceptible till the expiration of many centuries. From all that has
been observed, however, it results, that the Americans, like the Mon-
gol tribes, have a less flexible organization than the other Asiatic and
European nations.
The American race, though less numerous than any other, is dis-
persed over the greatest portion of the globe. It extends, through
both hemispheres, from 68° N. L. to 55° S. L. It is the only one
that, at the same time, inhabits the scorching vallies bounded by the
ocean, and the ridges of mountains elevated more than 200 fathoms
above the Peak of Teneriffe.
The number of the languages which distinguish the indigenous na-
tions from one another seems to be still greater in America than in
Africa, where, according to the recent researches of Messrs. Seetzen
and Vater, they exceed 140. In this respect the whole of America
resembles the Caucasus, Italy before the conquest of the Romans,
and Asia Minor at the time when the Cilicians, of Semitic origin, the
Phrygians, of Thracian descent, the Lydians and the Celts dwelt
here together within a small compass. The formation of the earth,
the extreme luxuriance of the vegetable kingdom, and the dread of
the intense heat of the vallies entertained by the inhabitants of the
tropical regions, impede mutual intercourse and create an astonish-
ing diversity of American dialects. This diversity is not so great in
the savannahs and forests of the north, which are traversed by hunters,
on the banks of the great rivers, along the coasts of the ocean, and
wherever the Incas have introduced their theocracy by force of arms.
When we speak of more than a hundred languages, on a continent
whose total population is not equal to that of France, we term those
different languages which have the same affinity to one another as,
I will not say the German to the Dutch, or the Italian to the Spanish;
but as the Danish to the German, the Chaldee to the Arabic, the
Greek to the Latin. As a person becomes more and more familiar
with the labyrinth of American languages, he perceives that many of
them belong to one and the same family, while a great number of
others remain insulated like the Basque among the Europeans, and
the Japanese among the Asiatic languages. This insulation is per-
haps only apparent, and it may be presumed that those languages
which seem to defy all ethnographic classification, are allied to others
either long extinct, or peculiar to nations whom no travellers have
hitherto visited.
Most of the American languages, even those whose groups differ
from one another in the same manner as the dialects of German,
Celtic, and Slavonian origin, exhibit a certain resemblance in their
general organization, which if it does not indicate one common stock,
at least denotes a very close analogy in the intellectual faculties of
the American nations from Greenland to the streights of Magellan.
Very minute enquiries, conducted according to a method before
unknown in etymological studies, have proved, that there is a small
number of words common to the language of the Old and New
World. In 83 American
and Vater, have been found about 170 words which seemed to have
semblances are by no means accidental or an imitative harmony, and
perhaps resulting only from the uniform structure of the organs which
renders the first articulated tones of children pretty nearly the same
in all parts of the world. Out of 170 words, in which this similarity
is perceived, three fifths seem to claim affinity with the languages of
the Mantchous, Tungusians, Mongols, and Samojedes, and the other
two-fifths with Celtic and Tschoudian dialects, and with the Basque,
Coptic, and Congo languages. Those words were found out on a
comparison of the whole of the American languages, with the whole
of the languages of the Old World; for as yet we know not of any
American dialect which can be deemed more nearly allied than the
rest to any of the numerous groups of Asiatic, African, or European
languages. The assertions of some scholars, proceeding upon abstract
theories, respecting the supposed poverty of all the American langua-
ges, as well as the extraordinary scantiness of their system of num-
bers, are as rash and unfounded as the statements of others who con-
tend for the imbecility and stupidity of the human race in the New
World, the diminution of organic bodies, and the degeneracy of the
animals transported thither from our hemisphere.
Various dialects at present spoken by barbarous nations alone,
seem to be relics of copious and flexible languages, which denote a
considerable progress in civilization. I shall not here enter into an
examination of the question—whether the original condition of man-
kind was a state of rudeness and stupidity, or whether the savage
hordes are descended from nations whose mental powers, as well as
the language in which they are reflected, were previously both equally
developed: but I shall merely observe that the little which we know
of the history of the Americans seems to demonstrate that those
tribes which migrated from north to south, possessed in their northern
abodes that variety of languages which we discover in the tropical
regions. Hence we may draw the analogical inference that the rami-
fication, or to use an expression independent of all systems the diver-
sity of the languages is a very ancient phenomenon. Perhaps the
languages which we term American originally belong no more to this
quarter of the globe than the Madjarian or Hungarian, and the
Tschoudian or Finnish do to Europe.
It must be admitted that the comparison of the languages of the
Old and New World has led as yet to no general results; but we
ought not on this account to relinquish our hopes that this study will
prove more productive when the sagacity of scholars shall possess a
larger stock of materials. How many languages of America, as well
as of the interior and eastern part of Asia may there still be, whose
mechanism is as unknown to us as that of the Tyrrhenian, Oscian,
and Sabine dialects! Of the nations which disappeared from the
Old World, there may perhaps still exist some petty detached tribes
in the vast wilds of America.
If, however, the early intercourse between the two worlds can be
but very imperfectly proved by the languages, it is on the other hand
unequivocally demonstrated by the cosmogonies, the monuments,
hieroglyphics, and institutions of the American and Asiatic nations.
ded no small number that were hitherto unknown. I have every
where endeavoured to discriminate that which denotes a common ori-
gin from what must be considered as the result of analogous relations,
subsisting between nations which have attained the highest degree of
civilization.
To determine the period of the ancient connexion between the two
worlds was previously impracticable, and it would be too presumptuous
to pretend to designate the group of nations in the Old World, to
which the Toltekes, Aztekes, Muyscas, or Peruvians, are nearest al-
lied, since the relations here alluded to are founded upon such
tions,
tions,
than the present division of the Asiatics into Mongols, Hindoos,
Tongouses, and Chinese.
At the time of the discovery of the New World, or to speak more
correctly, at the period of the first Spanish invasion, the American na-
tions, which had made the greatest progress in civilization were
mountaineers. People born in the valleys of a temperate region
climbed the ridges of the Cordilleras, which become more elevated as
they approach the equator; and on these heights they found a tempera-
ture and vegetation similar to those of their native land.
All those situations in which man has to struggle with natural ob-
stacles on a soil of inferior fertility, and is not absolutely vanquished
in too unequal a conflict, are most favourable to the development of
his energies. On the Caucasus and in the centre of Asia the barren
mountains afford an asylum to independent and savage tribes. In the
equinoctial regions of America, where ever verdant savannahs rise above
the region of the clouds, the Cordilleras alone are inhabited by polish-
ed tribes; the first advances in science were there coeval with the
extraordinary institutions by no means favourable to individual
liberty.
We perceive in the New World, as in Asia and Africa, various
centres whence spread an original civilization, whose mutual relations,
however, we are as incapable of discovering as those of Meröe, Tibet,
and China. Mexico derived its civilization from a more northern re-
gion. In South America it was the extensive structures of Tiahuana-
ko that furnished the models of those monuments which the Incas
erected at Coutzko. Ramparts of considerable extent, bronze weapons,
and engraved stones found in the vast plains of Upper Canada, in
Florida, and in the wilds bounded by the Oronoko, Cassiquaire, and
Guainia, attest that these regions now traversed only by hordes of
savage hunters were once the abode of nations who had made some
proficiency in the arts.
The unequal distribution of the different species of brute animals
over the earth, had a powerful influence on the condition of nations,
and on their more or less rapid progress in civilization. In the Old
World, it was the pastoral life that formed the link between the hunter
and the husbandman. The ruminating animals, so easily naturalized
in every climate, were the companions of the African Negro, as well
as of the Mongols, the Malays, and Caucasian race. Now, though
several quadrupeds, and very numerous species of vegetables, are
of horned cattle possessed by America are the buffalo and the bison,
two varieties which it is very difficult to domesticate, and the females
of which, notwithstanding the richness of the pastures, yield but little
milk. The American hunter, therefore, was not prepared, by the care
of flocks and herds, and the occupations of a pastoral life, for the pur-
suits of agriculture. Never did the inhabitants of the Cordilleras at-
tempt to milk the lama, alpaca, or guanaco; and milk diet was form-
erly as unknown to the Americans, as it is to many of the tribes of
eastern Asia.
There is no instance of the savage living in the forests of the temperate
zone, having voluntarily exchanged the
transition, the most important and the most difficult in the history of
human society, cannot be effected but by compulsory means. When
in their great migrations troops of hunters, persecuted by other war-
rior hordes, reach the plains of the equinoctial zone, the impenetrable
closeness of the woods, and the luxuriant growth of the vegetable
species, produce an essential change in their character and way of
life. Between the Oronoko, Ukajale, and the river of Amazons, there
are tracts where man finds scarcely any thing but streams and lakes.
Here on the banks of the rivers, even the most savage inhabitants sur-
round their huts with the fig of Paradise, the jatropha tree, and some
other vegetables, which contribute to their subsistence.
Neither historical facts nor popular tradition record that any con-
nexion ever subsisted between the South American nations and those
dwelling to the north of the isthmus of Panama. The annals of the
Mexican empire seem to go back to the sixth century of our æra.
They state the periods of the migrations which took place, the causes
which occasioned them, the names of the leaders belonging to the
illustrious family of the Citins who conducted northern tribes from the
unknown regions of Aztlan and Teocolhuacan to the plains of Anahuac.
The founding of Tenochtilan happens like that of Rome in the heroic
age, and it is only from the 12th century that the Aztekian chronicles,
like those of the Chinese and Tibetians, contain the almost uninter-
rupted record of the secular festivals, the succession of the kings, the
tributes imposed upon the conquered, the foundation of cities, meteo-
rological phenomena, and many trivial incidents which have an influ-
ence on society in infant states.
But though no traditions denote any immediate connexion between
the nations of the two grand divisions of America, their history on the
other hand exhibits striking coincidences in the political and religious
revolutions which led to the civilization of the Aztekes, Muyscas and
Peruvians. Bearded men of a lighter complexion than the natives of
Anahuac, Cundinamarca, and the plain of Couzco, make their appear-
ance, without its being known from what country they come. As high
priests, legislators, friends of peace, and of the arts and sciences,
which it promotes, they accomplish a change in the state of the na-
tions, from whom they experience a respectful reception. Quetzal-
coat, Bochica, and Mango Capac, are the sacred names of these
mysterious beings. Quetzalcoat comes in black priestly attire from
Panuco and the shores of the Mexican Gulf: Bochica, the Buddha of
the savannahs situated on the east side of the
of these lawgivers is full of marvellous stories, religious fictions, and
such circumstances as betray an allegorical meaning. Some scholars
have conjectured that these foreigners might have been shipwrecked
Europeans, or descendants of the
11th century visited Greenland, Newfoundland, and perhaps even
Nova Scotia; but the slightest reflection on the period of the first
Toltekian emigrations, on the monastic institutions, the religious sym-
bols, the calendar and the forms of the monuments of Cholula, Soga-
mozo, and Couzco, will lead to the conviction that the codes of Quet-
zalcoat, Bochica, and Mango Capac, could not possibly derive their
origin from the north of Europe. Every thing, on the contrary, seems
to point to eastern Asia, and to people connected with the Tibetians,
the Shamanists, the Tartars, and the bearded Ainos of the islands of
Jesso and Sachalin.
When I employ the terms—Monuments of the New World—progressin the imitative arts—cultivation of the understanding, in my inquiries
respecting America, it is by no means my intention to denote a state
of things which is rather vaguely denominated a higher degree of cul-
ture and civilization. Nothing is more difficult than to institute com-
parisons between nations who have advanced by different roads to so-
cial improvement. The Mexicans and Peruvians must not be judged
by such principles as are deduced from the history of the nations of
whom our studies are continually reminding us. They differ from
the Greeks and Romans in the same ratio as they resemble the
Etruscans and Tibetians. The theocratic government of the Peruvians
favoured on the one hand the progress of industry, public works, and,
if I may be allowed the expression, whatever relates to civilization in
general and in mass: on the other hand it prevented the development
of individual energies. Among the Greeks it was just the reverse,
and till the time of Pericles the free and rapid mental development of
individuals bore no proportion to the slow advance of national cultiva-
tion. The empire of the Incas might be likened to a vast monastic
institution, in which every member had prescribed to him what he was
to do for the general benefit. Whoever makes himself acquainted on
the spot with those Peruvians, who for ages retained their national
physiognomy without alteration, will be enabled duly to appreciate
the code of Mango Capac and its influence on morals and the public
weal. There was general prosperity, but no individual happiness;
resignation to the will of the sovereign usurped the place of patriotism;
for great enterprizes there was patient obedience, but no genuine
courage; a spirit of order, which by petty laws for regulating the con-
duct in the most indifferent transactions, extinguished at once all free-
dom of thought and all greatness of character. The most complicated
of all political institutions recorded in history had nipped the bud of
individual liberty; and the founder of the empire of Couzco, who
flattered himself that he should render men happy through restraint,
in fact transformed into mere machines. The Peruvian theocracy
was indeed less oppressive than the government of the Mexican
ments the religious worship and mythology of these mountaineers that
dismal and gloomy air, which forms so striking a contrast with the
arts and the pleasing fictions of the people of Greece.