The St. Johns herald., 1895-05-02
INTERESTING RUINS.
An Americans Discoveries In Peru
 and Bolivia.
Thought to Re the Most Ancient Remains oa Lower Civilization to Be Found Upon tho Western
 Uemi<phere.

Mai. William Sully Beebe, a retired army officer living at Thompson. Conn, is about to send to the leading archBologists 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 large sum of money expended in novel lines of investigation. He be- ieves, says the New York Sun, that his findings will convince scientists that Amorica is the sca9 of an older source of occidental civilization shan either Assyria or Egypt. Maj. Beebc claims that the races that f0urished around the McditcrTa1ea1-thc Acca- dian, the Assyrian. tie Eryptit-I. the Roman and the Grcek-provc them selves to have been the borrowers from an earlier people on thii conti- ncnt, because in the parallels that occur in the early traces Of both civ;li- zatiOns the greater purity is found in the American examples. Myths and symbols and folklore tales that Euro pcan students have not been able to make clear are simplified when read by the light of his American discov- cries. Tn the journey to distant lands they have been altered, copiel blindly or repeated ignoraltly, 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 Rrmored 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 bow and arrow. It is the same sign, Maj. Beebe says, and stands for the same constellation iu the heavens as the European symbol of . man with bow'and arrow, Sagittar- jus.
 Mai, Reebe 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 over a great extent of coun- try and reveal remarkable skill in stone cutting ,in architecture and in or pament. 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 its 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 tool, down their fables md legends in great numbers Mai. Bcebc sent a capable man there to verify the old observations and make new ones, and, after a study of eight other American tongues and people to tho 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 Stonehengo, in Assyrian and Egyptian buildings, in the folklore and in the languages of many peoples.
 Of almost equal interest to Ameri- cans is Maj. Beebe's discovery with re- gard to the photographic tablet found 1t Davenport. la., and declared by experts to be spurious and worse than valueless. Mai. Bee be declares that he is able to read it. He says that it reproduces the sym bols and myths of the Aymara Indians, and tells the same stories that arc by means of the great dial temple at Tia Huanacu in their cour- try-the same that Mir. Inwards, of Lon with a miniature temple left in Assyria. Maj. 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 iI 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,