BOOK REVIEWING THE STONE AGE

The writer calls himself an "amateur archaeologist." That is to infer several things: That he is not a professional archaeologist nor an authority on archaeology, nor even too serious a student.

An amateur is one who loves something for itself. I take it. The academic type of mind persists in eschewing romance, and I am an incurable romanticist and not ashamed of it. To me, men are still but in the dawn of knowledge. Life is much deeper and more profound and has been going on so much longer than the wisest of professors seem to realize!

I shall append to this article a few sketches of Arizona rock hieroglyphics, and copies of some Aztec pictographic symbols. If anyone in this state can show me that any of our Arizona rock pictures are similar to the Aztec, I shall be delighted, and not at all surprised.

Archaeology is more or less erudite guess work. You can tackle it from any angle you choose: language, artifacts, designs and symbols, skull conformation, geologic periods, tree rings, ancient histories and traditions, and the results will be the same, a maze of conjecture.

In trying to decide from whence came the ancient irrigators of our Arizona of two thousand or so years ago, I have at least found a very interesting and delightful pursuit. If I detail what I regard as facts unearthed among the mazes of conjecture, it may prove of interest to others of this state.

It seems that in Mexico at the time of the conquest, there was a race composed of (as I believe) at least four elements. First, the autocthones, of Asiatic appearance. Second, the Colhuas, so called, who were from the lost continent of Atlantic. Third, the Toltecs, probably the ancient Mound Builders race of the Mississippi Valley, who also, by the skull conforma-tion, had cousins in the East Indies and in eastern Brazil. These were driven south by the ancestors of the Aztecs (fourth), who left a branch in the north who were to be the inhabitants of the United States at the beginning of its history. Apparently they also were of Mongolian origin, possibly Tatar or even the ancient Scythian.

As I say, the mazes of conjecture into which any attempt to correlate known facts precipitates one proves at least that life, human life I mean, has been on this globe an inconceivably long time.

Consider artifacts: arrow heads found on this continent are of say five general shapes, and all five are found in Europe. Axes are broadly of the same form all over the globe, as are primitive pots and urns. I have seen stone borers from the state of Indiana almost identical with those I have picked up myself in Arizona ruins, and the same may be said, to repeat, of arrow heads and axes, and stone hoes or spades.

Still, by the skulls the Mound Builders were as dissimilar as is humanly possible from the modern North American Indian and the relics I speak of came from the ancient mounds.

It is very doubtful if our ancient irrigators of Arizona were of the same race as the present day Indians.

We find pyramids, or truncated pyramids at least, in Mexico and Central America and in the mounds of the Mississippi Valley as well as in Egypt. It is recognized that the Great Pyramid of Egypt was truncated in the first place. In Missouri the most magnificent of the ancient mounds was of the same approximate basal area as the Great Pyramid, and in Mexico there was at least one approximately twice as large. In America, the truncated pyramids were the site of temples and sacrificial places, and this may easily have been the original purpose of the Egyptian pyramids.

I state my beliefs for what they may be worth. One advantage of being an "amateur archaeologist" is that anyone is at liberty to disagree with my views without discommoding me in the least.

I believe in the lost continent of Atlantis. This name is very probably the ancient name, by the way. I believe that this lost continent may easily have been the cradle of what we call civilization. The climatic conditions were apparently more nearly ideal than almost any part of the habitable globe today. Civilizations seemingly originated near the tropics, where food was easy to obtain and physical conditions were the most favorable for life. The ability to think, to ratiocinate, seems to develop most rapidly near the tropics, and the subconscious mind with all its astonishing and so far practically unknown qualities seems to develop most rapidly in the warmer climes.

The history of man's struggles with fellow man seems broadly to be that the branches of the races that pushed into the more temperate latitudes developed vigor and passion and aggressiveness at a loss of spiritualism and concentration and subconscious power, and later returned to conquer the less aggressive races of the sub tropics, as note the Tartars, the Goths and Huns, the nomadic North American tribes in the first place the Aztecs, and in modern times, the Apaches, who finally drove out the last of the peaceful tribes, or at least ruined them.

Arizona has a peculiar endowment of its ages-old mammoth irrigation projects, and its marvelous and immense quantities of ancient pottery. And our hieroglyphics may yet be considered important.

Getting back to the matter of the stoneage "books" or the hieroglyphics: it is my intention in appending heiroglyphics and symbols from the Old World and a few from Mexico, to see if any one who reads this has seen similar marks on our Arizona pictoglyph galleries.

OCTOBER, 1932

We are familiar, of course, with the work of the late lamented Dr. Omar A. Turney. He was very conservative regarding the Arizona "heiroglyphics," regarding them as uniformly of later origin than the Golden Age of the Canal Builders, and carved by a nomadic and primitive people who boasted no civilization at all. He took them to be but the idle beginnings of art, comparable to what a child will scratch on a slate, and in no wise symbols of language or even the beginnings of language. Now, it is possible that this is true. However, I as a roman-ticist and amateur, if you please, must reserve the right to believe that when the Arizona rock pictures are really studied, they will be taken to be more and more of significance. There are pictures of all sorts of natural objects, to be sure, but there are also designs very carefully worked out which are absolutely undecipherable as mere pictures. The amount of labor necessary to inscribe all the "hieroglyphics" in Arizona as it was done with jagged corners of flint and obsidian, was tremendous. The pictures of animals are astonishingly realistic, and now and then really humorous caricatures. Whatever they did was more often than not very painstakingly worked out.

As to the age in which the pictures were cut-let it pass. What I wish to know is whether we have designs here definitely Aztec, or definitely Egyptian, or definitely Chinese, or definitely allied to any other known nation.

Dr. Turney believed that the Canal Builders were in communication with the Aztecs. So do I.

He did not attempt to show any connection between the new and old worlds, as we call them. (To me the Americas are as "old" in human habitation as Eurasia.) Believing in a land connection between the Americas and Europe, called "Atlantis" as I do, I look for a correspondence in the ancient symbols. The connection with Arizona would be hard to imaginea sort of triple play, Atlantis to Maya to Aztec to Hohokam, as it were. But what do we know of the past? Only that we have not guessed one per cent of it as yet and probably never will.

I am not unduly excited about tracing phonetic language very far back. To me, humanity for ages dispensed largely with what we call language. Psy-

chic

Then, we for ages had names for different objects, and finally for all things, but denoted action by pantomime or sug-

gestive sound. Language as we know it is

modern indeed, in the true light of history. It is, in fact, an accident of evolution. Very great and intelligent races of the unknown past might have developed instead telepathy and gone into the psychic side of life as we disregard the psychic and concentrate on the physical. But I do wish I had time and opportunity to examine all the thousands of rock pictures in Arizona. Some one should study them more seriously than has yet been done.