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Particularly, little definite is known of the Maya system; the indications are that the Mayas were superior in civilization to the Aztecs, and their religious customs and conceptions correspondingly higher than those of the latter. +664+. The Aztec religion is that which the Spaniards on their arrival found to be the dominant one in Mexico.
That the Mayas were a race autochthon on this western continent and did not receive their civilization from Asia or Africa, seems a rational conclusion, to be deduced from the foregoing FACTS. If we had nothing but their name to prove it, it should be sufficient, since its etymology is only to be found in the American Maya language.
The traders whom Columbus met were doubtless Mayas, coming from some of the great fairs or markets. The natives of both sexes are said to be tall and well proportioned.
The language of the ancient Mayas, strange as it may appear, has survived all the vicissitudes of time, wars, and political and religious convulsions. It has, of course, somewhat degenerated by the mingling of so many races in such a limited space as the peninsula of Yucatan is; but it is yet the vernacular of the people.
The Persians had such a building in each town and village; and the Egyptians, such a fire in every temple; while the Mexicans, Natches, Peruvians and Mayas kept their "national fires" burning upon great pyramids. Eventually the keeping of such fires became a sacred rite, and the "Eternal Lamps" kept burning in synagogues and in Byzantine and Catholic churches may be a survival of these customs.
It is true that I have shown that many of the customs and attainments of the Egyptians were identical to those of the Mayas; but these had many religious rites and habits unknown to the Egyptians; who, as we know, always pointed towards the West as the birthplaces of their ancestors, and worshiped as gods and goddesses personages who had lived, and whose remains are still in MAYAB. Besides, the monuments themselves prove the respective antiquity of the two nations.
One of the modes was by the inspection of the entrails of victims; another by the manner of the cracking of the shell of a turtle or armadillo by the action of fire, as among the Chinese. The Mayas had also their astrologers and prophets.
The ruins of Palenque are deemed important by archæologists partly on account of the great abundance of inscriptions found there, which, it is believed, will at length be deciphered, the written characters being similar to those of the Mayas, which are now understood. The ruins known as Copan are situated in the extreme western part of Honduras, where they are densely covered by the forest.
Recent researches in the plains of lower Mesopotamia have revealed to us their mode of building their sacred edifices, which is precisely identical to that of the Mayas. It consisted of mounds composed of superposed platforms, either square or oblong, forming cones or pyramids, their angles at times, their faces at others, facing exactly the cardinal points.
In some tribes, as among the Dakotas, the gentes had fallen out; in others, as among the Ojibwas, the Omahas, and the Mayas of Yucatan, descent had been changed from the female to the male line. Throughout aboriginal America the gens took its name from some animal or inanimate object and never from a person. In this early condition of society the individuality of persons was lost in the gens.
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