The Ancient Mythologies of Peru and Mexico

Book excerpt: Almost exhaustive proof of the wholly indigenous nature of the American religions is offered by the existence of the ruins of the large centers of culture and civilization, which are found scattered through Yucatan and Peru. These civilizations preceded those of the Aztecs and Incas by a very considerable period, how long it is impossible in the present state of our knowledge of the subject to say. Those huge, buried cities, the Nineveh's and Thebes of the West, have left not even a name, and of the peoples who dwelt in them, we are almost wholly ignorant. That they were of a race cognate with the Aztecs and Toltecs appears probable when we consider the similarity of design which their architecture bears to the later ruins of the Aztec structure. Nevertheless, there is equally strong evidence to the contrary. At what epoch in the history of the world these cities were erected, it would at present be idle to speculate. The recent discovery of a buried city in the Panhandle region of Texas may throw some light upon this question and indeed upon the dark places of American archæology as a whole. In the case of the buried cities of Uxmal and Palenqüe, great antiquity is generally agreed upon. Indeed one writer on the subject goes so far as to place their foundation at the beginning of the second Glacial Epoch!