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

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.
Author’s Preface.
The Fundamental Principles Of Old And New World Civilizations.
Appendix I. Comparative Table of some Quechua, Nahuatl and Maya Words.
Appendix II. A Prayer-meeting of the Star-worshippers.
Appendix III. Comparative Lists of Words.
Index.
Note.
Footnotes






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 provided 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.





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.