The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-09-10

IT will doubtless surprise many Amer
 jeans who look upon this henis- A phere as the new world, to hear that a civilization of high degree four ished In the sub equatorial belt, when that region was temperate in climate, some 10000 years ago, while the glacial sheet was still on. This date has for some time been scientifically estab- lished but it is only recently that the relation of this ancient American civil lization to that of the old world has been demonstrated.
 That this knowledge has come to us is due mainly to Dr. Augustus le Plongeon and his wife, who after pro- longed exploration and study in Yuca- tan, revealed the analosies between the arts and architecture, religious concep- tions and cosmogonic notions, language and traditions, manners and customs of these people and those of the ancient civilized countries of the east partic- ularly Egypt. Among the most strlk-
 ing are: the high regard in which the serpent and sun were held. both as symbols of royalty and objects Of worship; the similarity of the Mayan and Egyptian hieratic alphabets; the close resemblance of the Mayan royal tombs, to those of the most rncient Egyptian called mastabas; and proba- bly, the most remarkable of all, the carving of sphinxes in ancient Yucatan, as in old Egypt, to perpetuate the mem ory of a great monarch
 Many other points of similarity might be adduced, the fum tota! of which Is convincing the scientific world of interoceanic communications in ore- historic times, and proving that 1T the culture of the land of the Pharaohs was not carried there from the land of the Mayas, as Dr. le Plongeon believed (the Egyptians always pointed to the west as the birthplace of their gods) they both received their civilizations from common source still' more re- mote.
 No romance could be moro fasclnat- ing than the story of the doctors life work, as written in his Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx the crownlng achievement of which he regarded the finding of clue to at least some or the hieroglyphs hitherto regarded as undecipherable riddles. What at least to the Masonic fraternity, could sur pass in interest his identifying at Ux- mal a temple as a Masonic sanctuary, with figures and symbols readily recog- nizable by the craft; his discovering at Chichen, a tablet, carefully protected inocrihad n with
 account of the submergence of the land of Mu Gas the Mayas called the Host Atlantis); his finding at Mayapan, gnomon, proving that these ancient Americans employed the metric system; | his bringing to light statues and tombs of high priests and monarchs buried i for scores of centuries; and, not least.
 his preserving to posterity, by tracings, | faithfully colored frescoes since obllt- erated by vandals and time?
 But from the standpoint of purely
 human interest, what undoubtedly will
 make the greatest appeal is the le
 Plongeon's tracing, by close examina-
 ton of every object found, the story
 of the fall of the once mighty Maya
 empire, concluding with the flight of
 her last Queen to Egypt. This story
 has its counterpart in the myth of Isis and Osiris, and Dr. le Plongeon
 read also parallel account in the cele-
 brated Troano Ms.
 | Mime. le Plongeon. inspired by her 1 husbands desire, wrote in poetical
 form the tragic romance of Princess ! of Old Maya, Moo by name, who was
 woeed by royal brothers, the younger
 of which, Prince Coh, was slain by his
 unsuccessful elder, Prince Aac, only in
 the end to fail In consummating his
 purpose and meet his fate at the hand
 of an infuriated subject.
 l The warm critical and public appre-
 citation with which Queen Moo's Talis-
 man. was received on its publication
 10 years ago, filled the doctor and his
 wife with desire to see the poem
 made into the form which has the
 widest and most direct appeal-the
 drama After careful consideration the exclusive rights to decentralization