The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations

Zelia Nuttall

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• Publié par: suwyung
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 21
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

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Title: The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World
Civilizations
Author: Zelia Nuttall
Release Date: April 20, 2010 [Ebook 32066]
Language: English
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF OLD AND
NEW WORLD CIVILIZATIONS***The Fundamental Principles
Of
Old and New World Civilizations
A Comparative Research Based on a
Study of the Ancient Mexican Religious,
Sociological, and Calendrical Systems.
By
Zelia Nuttall
Honorary Special Assistant of the Peabody Museum; Fellow
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science;
Member of the Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; Honorary
Member of the Archaeological Association, Univ. of
Pennsylvania; Corresponding Member of the Antiquarian and
Numismatic Society of Philadelphia; of the Anthropological
Society of Washington; of the Societá Italiana d'Antropologia;
of the Société de Géographie de Genève; of the Sociedad
Cientifico “Antonio Alzate,” Mexico; and of the Société des
Américanistes de Paris.
Archaeological and Ethnological Papers
Of The
Peabody Museum
Harvard University
Vol. II.
Cambridge, Mass.
Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology.
March, 1901.Contents
Editorial Note. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Author's Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
The Fundamental Principles Of Old And New World
Civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Appendix I. Comparative Table of some Quechua, Nahuatl
and Maya Words. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671
Appendix II. A Prayer-meeting of the Star-worshippers. . . 683 III. Comparative Lists of Words. . . . . . . . . 691
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 709
Note. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 848
Footnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 851[003]Editorial Note.
The author of this volume explains in her preface how she came
to be led beyond her special field of research into a comparative
study of the early civilizations of the Old World; and how she
traced the origin of the swastika, in Mexico, to an astronomical
source and, in all countries alike, found its use as a sacred symbol
accompanied by evidences of a certain phase of culture based
on pole-star worship, and the recognition of the fixed laws of
nature, which found expression in the ideal of celestial kingdoms
or states organized on a set numerical plan and regulated by the
apparent revolutions of circumpolar constellations.
The results of the author's researches seem to justify her
summary of conclusions; but she distinctly states that she does
not wish to propound any theory. She invites further study and
discussion by Orientalists and Americanists before drawing final
conclusions from the facts she has gathered. The publication of
this paper will open anew the consideration of pre-Columbian
visits to the New World, shown, as many have believed, by
identities too many and too close to be considered as mere
resemblances or as the natural results of independent intellectual
development.
The illustrations are nearly all from drawings by the author.
The analytical Index has been prepared by Miss Mead. It will
be seen, by the numbering at the bottom of each page, that it
was at first intended to include this paper in Volume I of the
Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of the Museum; but the
addition of the text relating to the Old World made too bulky a
volume, and it is therefore issued as Volume II of the series.
To Mrs. Nuttall for the gift of her work, the results of years of
research, and to the several generous friends who have providedEditorial Note. 3
the means for publishing this volume, the editor expresses his
gratitude in behalf of the Museum.
F. W. PUTNAM,
Curator of the Peabody Museum.
Harvard University,
March 1, 1901.
[004]Author's Preface.
In February, 1898, while engaged upon the translation and
commentary of the anonymous Hispano Mexican MS. of the
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Library, of Florence, my interest
was suddenly and unexpectedly diverted from my self-imposed
task by the circumstances described in the opening pages of the
present publication.
Laying my work aside, as I then supposed, for a few days
only, I seized the new thread of investigation with a keen and
enthusiastic interest, little knowing that it, in turn, was not only
to hold me fast for nearly three years, but was to lead me out
of my original field of research, into distant, and to me, hitherto
untrodden realms, in close pursuit of facts relating to the oldest
forms of religion, social organization, and symbolism.
The first portion of the present publication was planned as a
short monograph of forty-one pages, treating of the origin of the
native swastika or cross symbols, and was written in July, 1898,
its outcome being the unforeseen conclusion that the cosmical
conceptions of the ancient Mexicans were identical with those
of the Zuñis. I next traced the same fundamental set of ideas
in Yucatan, Central America and Peru and formed the wish to
add this investigation to the preceding. The result has been the
portion of the work extending from page 41, paragraph 2, to page
284, which was printed in 1899.
Having once launched into a course of comparative research,
the deep interest I have always taken in the question of Asiatic
contact led me to carry my investigation of the same subject into
China. It then seemed impossible not to extend researches from
Eastern to Western Asia, and from Asia Minor to Egypt, Greece,
Rome and Europe. It is in this unpremeditated wayAuthor's Preface. 5
that the scope of the present investigation enlarged itself of its
own accord, for the simple reason that the most interesting and
precious facts fell into my way as I advanced and all I had to do [005]
was to pick them up and add them to my collection of evidence.
One serious disadvantage, arising from the circumstance that
the present investigation has been in press for nearly three years,
is my inability to make any alteration, amendment, or addition,
in the earlier portions, which stand as written at different times. It
is a matter of regret to me that I was not acquainted with O'Neil's“Night of the Gods” and Hewitt's “Ruling Races of Prehistoric
Times,” at an earlier stage of my investigation, as through them
my publication would have been enriched by many valuable
additions which I could have incorporated in the body of my
work without unduly sacrificing its unity of form.
In the line of Maya investigation notable advances have been
made since I wrote (on page 221), about the “septenary set of
signs” described by Mr. A. P. Maudslay in 1886, and about the
inscription on the tablet of the Temple of the Cross at Palenque
(pp. 237-39). Since that time an important publication on the
Tablet of the Cross, to which I should have liked to refer, has
been issued by the much esteemed Nestor of Maya investigations,
Herr Geheimrath Dr. Förstemann. My attention has also been
drawn by the best versed of American students of the Maya
Codices, Mr. Charles P. Bowditch, to the fact that Mr. Maudslay
now recognizes the general recurrence of an eighth sign in
combination with the septenary group, causing this to consist of
an initial glyph, followed by seven instead of six signs. Referring
the reader to pp. 221 and 222, I point out that the employment of
an initial glyph, representing the synopsis of a whole, followed
by seven signs, appears even more strongly to corroborate my
view that the inhabitants of Copan were acquainted with the
septenary, cosmical division I have traced.
My fellow archaeologists will understand the disadvantage of
issuing an investigation partly written a few years previously,6The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations
and will realize that, had I, at the outset, been in possession
of all the facts I have since learned, the present work would
have been very differently planned and executed. On the other
hand, as it partakes somewhat of the nature of a log-book, the
reader is able to follow closely my blundering course, and will
recognize and appreciate some of its perils and difficulties. It
being, unfortunately, impossible to re-write the book. I shall
have to be resigned to incur some criticism and blame for
[006] omissions, which could have been averted. I shall, however, be
content if my prolonged study of ancient Mexican archaeology
and the present research open out new lines of investigation,
and conclusively prove that primitive cross-symbols and the
swastika are universally accompanied by vestiges of a certain
set of cosmical conceptions and schemes of organization, which
can be traced back to an original pole-star worship. I c