Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions Being...

"The ancient edifices of Chi Chen, in Central America, bear a striking resemblance to the topes of India. The shape of one of the domes, its apparent size, the small tower on the summit, the trees growing on the sides, the appearance of masonry here and there, the style of the ornaments, and the small doorway at the base, are so exactly similar to what I had seen at Anurádhapura, that when my eye first fell upon the engravings of these remarkable ruins, I supposed that they were presented in illustration of the dágobas of Ceylon."[538:3]

"The Bud'hist temples of Southern India, and of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, as described to us by the learned members of the Asiatic Society, and the numerous writers on the religion and antiquities of the Hindoos, correspond, with great exactness, in all their essential and in many of their minor features, with those of Central America."[538:4]

"What striking analogies exist between the monuments of the old continents and those of the Toltecs, who, arriving on Mexican soil, built several of these colossal structures, truncated pyramids, divided by layers, like the temple of Belus at Babylon. Whence did they take the model of these edifices? Were they of the Mongolian race? Did they descend from a common stock with the Chinese, the Hiong-nu, and the Japanese?"[538:6]

"There are striking contrasts between the Mongol and American races."[538:7] "Over a million and a half of square leagues, from the Terra del Fuego islands to the River St. Lawrence and Behring's Straits, we are struck at the first glance with the general resemblance in the features of the inhabitants. We think we perceive that they all descended from the same stock, notwithstanding the enormous diversity of language which separates them from one another."[538:8]

"In reflecting on the aboriginal races of America, we are at once met by the striking fact, that their physical characters are wholly independent of all climatic or known physical influences. Notwithstanding their immense geographical distribution, embracing every variety of climate, it is acknowledged by all travellers, that there is among this people a prevailing type, around which all the tribes—north, south, east and west—cluster, though varying within prescribed limits. With trifling exceptions, all our American Indians bear to each other some degree of family resemblance, quite as strong, for example, as that seen at the present day among full-blooded Jews."[539:2]

"The obliquely-set eyes and prominent cheek-bones of the inhabitants of Veragua were noticed by Monitz Wagner, and according to his description, out of four Bayano Indians from Darien, three had thoroughly Mongolian features, including the flatted nose."

In 1866, an officer of the Sharpshooter, the first English man-of-war which entered the Paraná River in Brazil, remarks in almost the same words of the Indians of that district, that their features vividly reminded him of the Chinese. Burton describes the Brazilian natives at the falls of Cachauhy as having thick, round Kalmuck heads, flat Mongol faces, wide, very prominent cheek bones, oblique and sometimes narrow-slit Chinese eyes, and slight mustaches.

Another traveler, J. J. Von Tschudi, declares in so many words that he has seen Chinese whom at the first glance he mistook for Botocudos, and that since then he has been convinced that the American race ought not to be separated from the Mongolian. His predecessor, St. Hilaire, noticed narrow, obliquely-set eyes and broad noses among the Malali of Brazil. Reinhold Hensel says of the Coroados, that their features are of Mongoloid type, due especially to the prominence of the cheek-bones, but that the oblique position of the eyes is not perceptible. Yet the oblique opening of the eye, which forms a good though not an essential characteristic of the Mongolian nations, is said to be characteristic of all the Guarani tribes in Brazil. Even in the extreme south, among the Hiullitches of Patagonia, King saw a great many with obliquely set eyes. Those writers who separate the Americans as a peculiar race fail to give distinctive characters, common to them all, which distinguish them from the Asiatic Mongols. All the tribes have stiff, long hair, cylindrical in section. The beard and hair of the body is always scanty or totally absent. The color of the skin varies considerably, as might be expected in a district of 110° of latitude; it ranges from a light South European darkness of complexion among the Botocudos, of the deepest dye among the Aymara, or to copper red in the Sonor tribes. But no one has tried to draw limits between races on account of these shades of color, especially as they are of every conceivable gradation.[540:1]

"The Tunguse, Mongolians, and a great part of the Turkish race formed originally, according to all external organic tokens, as well as the elements of their language, but one people, closely allied with the Esquimaux, the Skräling, or dwarf of the Norseman, and the races of the New World. This is the irrefutable result to which all the more recent inquiries in anatomy and physiology, as well as comparative philology and history, have conduced. All the aboriginal Americans have those distinctive tokens which forcibly recall their neighbors dwelling on the other side of Behring's Straits. They have the four-cornered head, high cheek-bones, heavy jaws, large angular eye-cavities, and a retreating forehead. The skulls of the oldest Peruvian graves exhibit the same tokens as the heads of the nomadic tribes of Oregon and California."[540:2]"It is very certain that thousands of American Indians, especially those of small stature or of dwarfish tribes, bear a most extraordinary likeness to Mongols."[540:3]

"I find myself more and more inclined to believe that the wild Indians of the North came originally from Asia, where the race to which they belong seems still represented by the Koraks and Cookchees, found in that part of Asia which extends to Behring's Straits."[540:4]

"A Mongolian came riding up on a little black pony, followed by a servant on a camel, rocking like a windmill. He stopped a moment to exchange pantomimic salutations. He was full of electricity, and alive with motion; the blood was warm in his veins, and the fire was bright in his eye. I could have sworn that he was an Apache; every action, motion and look reminded me of my old enemies and neighbors in Arizona. They are the true descendants of the nomadic Tartars of Asia and preserve every instinct of the race. He shook hands friendlily but timidly, keeping all the time in motion like an Apache."[540:5]

That the continents of Asia and America were at one time joined together by an isthmus, at the place where the channel of Behring's straits is now found, is a well known fact. That the severance of Asia from America was, geologically speaking, very recent, is shown by the fact that not only the straits, but the sea which bears the name of Behring, is extraordinarily shallow, so much so, indeed, that whalers lie at anchor in the middle of it.[541:1] This is evidently the manner in which America was peopled.[541:2]

During the Champlain period in the earth's history the climate of the northern portion of the American continent, instead of being frigid, and the country covered with sheets of ice, was more like the climate of the Middle States of the present day. Tropical animals went North, and during the Terrace period—which followed the Champlain—the climate changed to frigid, and many of these tropical animals were frozen in the ice, and some of their remains were discovered centuries after.

It was probably during the time when the climate in those northern regions was warm, that the aborigines crossed over, and even if they did not do so at that time, we must not be startled at the idea that Asiatic tribes crossed over from Asia to America, when the country was covered with ice. There have been nations who lived in a state of nudity among ice-fields, and, even at the present day, a naked nation of fishermen still exist in Terra del Fuego, where the glaciers stretch down to the sea, and even into it.[541:3]

One day while going on shore near Wollaston Island, Mr. Darwin's party pulled alongside a canoe which contained six Fuegians, who were, he says, "quite naked, and even one full-grown woman was absolutely so. It was raining heavily, and the fresh water, together with the spray, trickled down her body. In another harbor not far distant, a woman, who was suckling a recently-born child, came one day alongside the vessel, and remained there out of mere curiosity, whilst the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom, and on the skin of her naked baby!"[542:1]

A few pages farther on Mr. Darwin says that on the night of the 22d December, a small family of Fuegians—who were living in a cove near the quarters—"soon joined our party round a blazing fire. We were well clothed, and though sitting close to the fire were far from too warm; yet these naked savages, though further off, were observed, to our great surprise, to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a scorching. They seemed, however, very well pleased, and all joined in the chorus of the seamen's songs; but the manner in which they were invariably a little behind was quite ludicrous."[542:2]

The Asiatics who first crossed over to the American continent were evidently in a very barbarous stage, although they may have known how to produce fire, and use bows and arrows.[542:3] The tribe who inhabited Mexico at the time it was discovered by the Spaniards was not the first to settle there; they had driven out a people, and had taken the country from them.[542:4]

"While the proofs of the existence or residence of Orientals in America are extremely vague and uncertain, and while they are supported only by coincidences, the antecedent probability of their having come hither, or having been able to come, is stronger than the Norse discovery of the New World, or even than that of Columbus himself would appear to be. Let the reader take a map of the Northern Pacific; let him ascertain for himself the fact that from Kamtschatka, which was well known to the old Chinese, to Alaska the journey is far less arduous than from China proper, and it will be seen that there was in all probability intercourse of some kind between the continents. In early times the Chinese were bold and skillful navigators, to whom the chain of the Aleutian Islands would have been simply like stepping-stones over a shallow brook to a child. For it is a well ascertained fact, that a sailor in an open boat might cross from Asia to America by the Aleutian Islands in summer-time, and hardly ever be out of sight of land, and this in a part of the sea generally abounding in fish, as is proved by the fishermen who inhabit many of these islands, on which fresh water is always to be found."[543:1]

"From the result of the most accurate scientific observation, it is evident that the voyage from China to America can be made without being out of sight of land more than a few hours at any one time. To a landsman, unfamiliar with long voyages, the mere idea of being 'alone on the wide, wide sea,' with nothing but water visible, even for an hour, conveys a strange sense of desolation, of daring, and of adventure. But in truth it is regarded as a mere trifle, not only by regular seafaring men, but even by the rudest races in all parts of the world; and I have no doubt that from the remotest ages, and on all shores, fishermen in open boats, canoes, or even coracles, guided simply by the stars and currents, have not hesitated to go far out of sight of land. At the present day, natives of many of the South Pacific Islands undertake, without a compass, and successfully, long voyages which astonish even a regular Jack-tar, who is not often astonished at anything. If this can be done by savages, it hardly seems possible that the Asiatic-American voyage was not successfully performed by people of advanced scientific culture, who had, it is generally believed, the compass, and who from an early age were proficient in astronomy."[543:2]

"In their (the American Indians') languages, as well as in their religions, traces may possibly still be found, before it is too late, of pre-historic migrations of men from the primitive Asiatic to the American Continent, either across the stepping-stones of the Aleutic bridge in the North, or lower South, by drifting with favorable winds from island to island, till the hardy canoe was landed or wrecked on the American coast, never to return again to the Asiatic home from which it had started."[543:3]

It is very evident then, that the religion and mythology of the Old and New Worlds, have, in part, at least, a common origin. Lord Kingsborough informs us that the Spanish historians of the 16th century were not disposed to admit that America had ever been colonized from the West, "chiefly on account of the state in which religion was found in the new continent."[543:4]