The St. Johns herald., 1895-08-15
INTERESTING RUNS.
An American's Discoveries in Peru
 and Bolivia.
Thought to Re the Most Ancient Remains of Lower Civilization to Be Found Upon the Western
 Hemisphere.


 Hemisphere.
 Mai. William Sully Beebe, retired army officer living at Thompson. Conn, is about to send to the leading archRologists of this country and Hurope 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- lieves, says the New York Sun, that hi. findings will convince scientists that America i; the se1t Of an older source of occidental civilization tAan either Assyria or Egypt. bIaj. Bae5e claims that the races that Eourished around the MedlterTancan-the Acca- dian. the Assyrian. the Egyptian, ta" Roman aud tho Crce,1-proye them selves to havo been the borrowers from an earlier people on this conti- nent, because in the parallels that occur in the carly traces of both civili- zations the greater purity is found in the American examples. Myths and symbols and folklore tales that Euro pean students have rot been able to make clear are simpliIied when read by the light of his American discOv- cries Tn the journey to distant lands they have been alt.rea, copie1 blindiy or re2satel igaorantly, 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 s;agittarius was at first an arrnadillo. 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 ill the heavens as the European symbol of a man with bow'and arrow, Sagittar- jus.
 Mai. Beese 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 i}olivia-Pcru border. These relics are scattered over 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 sustcnance for more than sparse population, but there is little doubt that it's climate and it's population were once very different. 1t once supported thousands of stone cutters who could neither live TOT work there now. The Ay1nara 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 8 capable man there to verify the old observations and make new ones, and, after 6 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- tzation. and that their influence C2read 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 mntter, all around the Mediterranean, the most evident Implications of the work of these Aymaras in diGls 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 Maj. Beebe's discovery with re- gard to the photographic tablet found at Davenport, la. and declared by Smithsonian experts to be spurious and worse than valueless. Maj. Bee be declares that he Is able to read 1t. He says that it reproduces the sym bols and myth of the Aymara Indians, 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 MT. Inwards, of Lon don. found to correspond so nearly in appearance with 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 manner that when all arc 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 a 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.
 Grand Duchess Serge of Russia,