The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1901-12-01
FROM OLDEST MEXICO
RELICS OF THE MOST ANCIENT CIV
ILIZATION IN AMERICA.
Curious Images Recently Acquired by
Peabody Museum Collected in
Time of Macmillan.
of the indianapolis Journal.

Correspondence OF the Indianapolis Journal.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass, Nov. 30.-A typical
ly interesting collection of Mexican antiqui-
ties-stone images, masks, coied serpents.
carved stone axes. stone beads, and other
rude ornaments and utensils of prehistoric
date-has recently been secured by the Pea
body Museum of American Archaeology
and Ethnoiogy at Cambridge.
The collection, which was made origi-
nally by q lady who spent some years in
Mexico shortly after the fall Of Maxi
milan, contains among other things
score or more of the roughly sculptured
images-st!ll commonly known as idols,
although the most conservative authori-
ties believe rather that they typified ex-
allied persenages or ideas-which are, per-
haps. the most curious of early American
relics
About thirty similar statuettes especially
characterized by their peculiar head
dresses, were. it will be remembered, found
in the Pannes river survey, made by Fran
els Verchelli. and with these the idols of
the collection now in Cambridge suggest
natural comparison. The largest figure
in the collection represents squatting
human being about two feet in height
with it's arms clasped around the knees
and the head surmounted by this curious
but characteristic headgear suggesting In
this case 1T once a ROSTERS comb and an
English barrister's wig; while another fig
ure, somewhat cruder, wears more elabor-
ate and massive headdress oddly suggestive
of the architecture Of an ancient temple.
THE IMAGES DIFFER.
No two images, 1t may be added, appear
to represent the same subject, and they
vary greatly in size and in material. Many
are cut from lava stones of various colors
and some of the smaller ones no bigger
than a mans fist. are almost white. Others
show only rough indications of head and
arms mounted on an indefinite pedestal.
The collection includes also masks rep
resentng faces of different types, grave,
gay, or frankly caricatured; several speci-
mems of the coiled serpent, the symbol so
frequently found among Mexican antiqui-
ties; an deliberately carved sacrifcial axe
and other more common stone implements.
Mexico, as is generally known, equals
if it does not surpass Egypt in its interest
for archaeologists. The images of HUT
silopochtli for example, found in various
parts of the country, have led many au-
thorities to believe that no other people
were so far advanced in the stone and
early bronze age as the Nahuatl and May
an civilizations, and the whole field of
archaeological work has been widened by
the comparatively recent discoveries at
Monte Alban, in Central Oaxaco, at Militia
1.-The place of sadness so called from it's
use as a burying ground, at Yachilan, at
Teotihuacan, and particularly in the splen-
did ruins of Copan and Palenque.
THE MOST ANCIENT KNOWN.
In these discoveries, as has been the case
in Egypt, the tombs and the actual cities
of the past have been almost equally rich
in contributing material for modern arch
geological study. Monte Alban, for ex-
ample, was once a strongly fortified holy
place and is supposed to have contained
the tombs of Zapotec mobiles, and later to
have been used as a burial place by the
Aztecs who supplanted them. Militia, as
has been said, was also a burial place
Yachilan was once a Zapotec capital, and
Copan and Palenque were important and
beautiful Magyar cities. To account for the
presence of these relics. indicating as they
do the existence on Mexican soil of the
earliest known civilizations. various the
cries have been formulated, among which
the story of lost Atlantis is only one ex-
ample. Meantime. for the purposes of pa
tient and persistent study, which Harvard
University and other similar institutions
have undertaken, every addition to the
number of relics already discovered is so
much fresh material the value Of which
time alone will be able to determine.
Something at least of the Importance Of
this latest addition to the Cambridge Mu-
scum, may be judged from the fact that
many of the Aztec and Toltec relics seem
modern in comparison. while even the older
civilizations, buried during five centuries
with Copan and Panleque in the forests of
Honduras and Yucatan, Guatemala and
Chiapa, were probably younger than many
of the specimens here brought together.