The Hartford republican. (Hartford, Ky.) 18??-1926, 1916-02-18
MYSTERIOUS ELEPHANTS
OF CENTRAL AMERICA
ENGLISH SCHOLAR EXPLAINS
WHY THEIR FIGURES AP-
PEAR IN STONE-WORK.

courtyards, palaces, strange carved
monuments patterned with human
heads. And all over the jungle.
The people Of hundred cities are
gone. No one knows when they went
nor why nor where. All that can be
made out is that the civilization arose
suddenly, perhaps not many centur-
les before the year 1000 OF our era,
fourished for only a few hundred
years and then went under.
1t has been maintained that the
old State was literally washed away
by the rain, that series of wet
years sent the tropic vegetation roll
ing in on the cultivated fields. Lack
ing iron weapons. men fought in
vain against the plants.
Be all this as it may, a civilization
little inferior to that of Europe Of
the same date perished before Co
lumbus' time and left only its stones
to show 1t had ever been.
An extraordinary thing about the
carved affairs and shafts which lie
scattered thru the jungle is that here
and there, along with serpents and
human faces and hieroglyphs yet un-
read. there are occasionally the heads
of elephants.
One of the Copan monuments in
particular bears a striking picture.
The creatures trunk is twined
around some sort of low herb as II
to pull it for food. The tusks are
conventionalized into a spiral. A
mans head appears about where it
should be IL the man himself were
seated astride the neck, and further
behind is another human figure as
II carried on the back. All, in short,
carved in stone, is a good deal the
sort of picture. that one sees nova
days in natural history primer or
circus bill.
But there are no elephants In
America. And there have not been
any since the great Ice Age, when
the mammoth roamed what are now
the prairies and even strayed as far
south as Mexico. Either, therefore,
these Central Americans had passed
down for some $4,000 years the ira
dition of the mammoth, or else they
had had some much more recent
contact with the eastern continent,
where elephants are still common.
So the matter rested until lately.
Then G. Eliot Smith of the Univer-
sity of Manchester, England. took it
up.
Unlike his predecessors. Professor
Smimth did not rest content with not
ing that the sculptor at Copan had
carved an elephants head. He asked
in addition just what kind of ele-
plant 1t was.
Now, there are elephants and ele-
plants. Most of them. the African
species. for example, have enormous
tusks and great ears. But the circus
elephant, which is the Indian spe-
cies has ears hardly larger than a
circus fan and tusks only just large
enough to make one row of billiard
balls.
First Of all, then. Professor Smith
argues that the Copan figure is not
an American mammoth nor the wool
ly elephant of Siberia. nor the Afri-
can sort nor eny other kind except
the Indian. Shape of head, size OF
ear, hang of trunk, all prove the old
carving to be our familiar peanue-
eating friend. Moreover. since man
rides his neck and another his back
he is a tame elephant, not a wild
one.
Now the common or circus ele-
plant. altho. confined now in his
wild state to the neighborhood of
India, occurred also not so very long
ago in China. In fact, various old
Chinese potters of the time of the
Middle Ages used to decorate their
wares with figures of elephants or
with elephants heads.
Furthermore. II you take the
trouble to run the tip of your ton
que along the roof of your mouth,
you will feel there certain rough
bars lying crosswise. The elephant
has these same bars on the under
side of his trunk where every child
has noticed them when he throws
peanuts into the creatures mouth.
For the elephants trunk is not. as is
commonly supposed. his nose, but
his nose, upper lip and palate all
pull out together. The under side
of the trunk, therefore. being really
the roof of the mouth. carries. ma
turally, the roof bars.
Both the Chinese potters and the
sculptors Of Copan took pains to fig-