The St. Johns herald., 1894-06-21
INTERESTING RUINS.
An American's Discoveries in Peru
 and Bolivia.
Thought to Be the Most Ancient Remains of Lower Civilization to De Found Upon the Western
 Hemisphere.

Hemisphere.
 Maj. William Sully Beebe, retired army officer living at Thompson, Conn, is about to send to the leading arch9ologists of this country and Europe-what he considers proofs of some very remarkable discoveries that he has made during researches that have cost him twenty years of study and a large sum of money expended in novel lines of investigation. He be- lieves, says the New York Sun, that. his findings will convince scientists that America is the seat of an older source of occidental civilization than either Assyria or Egypt. Maj. Beebe claims that the races that fourished around the Mediterranean-the Acca- dian, the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Roman and the Greek-prove them selves to have been the borrowers from an earlier people on this conti- nent, because in the parallels that occur in the early traces of both civili- cations the greater purity is found in the American examples. Myths and symbols and folklore tales that Euro pCt1A cbuQCAbS AdfC AlOS OCCA uOAO OO make clear are simpli6ed when read by the light of his American discov- cries. In the journey to distant lands they have been altered, copied blindly or repeated ignorantly, he thinks, so that they have obtained altered or modified meanings on the other side. To give only one example: Maj. Beebe asserts that the zodiacal sign of Sagittarius was at first an armadillo, the name of which in Peru meant an armored hare or rabbit. The sign and name remained the same wherever the armadillo was known, but by the time the symbol reached northern Mexico and the region of our states it became changed to an "armed rabbit"-a rab- bit carrying a bow and arrow. It is the same sign, Maj. Beebe says, and stands for the same constellation in the heavens as the European symbol of a man with bow'and arrow, Sagittar- jus.
 Mai. Beebe declares the most ancient remains of former civilization on this continent to be those ruins of temples and of cities that are found in the neighborhood of Lake Titicaca, on the Bolivia-Peru border. These relics are scattered oyer a great extent of coun- try and reveal remarkable skill in stone cutting ,.in architecture and in or nament. This region is fourteen thou sand feet above the sea level and too cold to provide sustenance for more than sparse population, but there is little doubt that its climate and it's population were once very different. It once supported thousands of stone cutters who could neither live nor work there now. The Aymara tribe of Indians, the present inhabitants, have retained in great purity the lan- guage they spoke when the Spaniards conquered the country, and at that time the Spaniards took down their fables and legends in great numbers. Maj Beebe sent capable man there to verify the old observations and make new ones, and, after study of eight other American tongues and people to the north of the Aymaras, he is convinced that they are the rel ics of the oldest American semicivil- ization, and that their influence spread over North America. Proofs of this he claims to have found as far away as Iowa and New Jersey. He asserts that there are in Egypt, and, for that matter, all around the Mediterranean, the most evident Implications of the work of these Aymaras in dials like that at Stonehenge, in Assyrian and | Egyptian buildings, in the folklore and | in the languages of many peoples.
 Of almost equal interest to Ameri- cans is Mai. Beebe's discovery with re- gard to the photographic tablet found at Davenport, 1a., and declared by Smithsonian experts to be spurious | and worse than valueless. Mai. Bee be declares that he is able to read it. He says that lt reproduces the sym bols and myths of the Aymara Indians, 1 and tells the same stories that are | conveyed by means of the great dial temple at Tia Huanacu in their coun- try-the same that Mr. Inwards, of Lon- don, found to correspond so nearly in appearance with a miniature temple | left in Assyria. Mai. Beebe has re- duced all his proofs to writing, and ar ranged the vast number of analogies that he claims to have discovered be- tween old and new world beginnings in such a manner that when all are collected and presented in print and sent out, the scholars of the world may, with the least possible trouble, examine his work and judge his claims. He is man of leisure and of means, who in taking up the study of Hebrew had his attention directed to those similarities between the Israelites and our North American Indians which have been often and generally discussed
 Grand Duchess Serge.