The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1922-05-03
There Run Strange
Threads of the Past
Elizabeth J. Coatsworth in the
North American Review.

North American Review.
So accustomed are we to our own
art and civilization that we scarcely
realize how varied are the sources
from which they sprang. We ac-
knowledge a great debt to Rome
broken gifts saved for US in the state
~ arms of the bishops. But do we
often remember that our alphabet
goes back at least to the Egyptians ?
Do we appreciate the meaning of the
fact that nearly half the words we
use have a Latin derivation? That
we owe our numerals to the Arabs?
How many people know that the GUS
tom of shaving the heads of the monks
originated with the priests of Isis IN
an attempt to initiate the sun and it's
rays, and that the headdress of the
bishops was once the open-mouthed
fish head worn by the Babylonian
clergy? Whence sprang all the GUS
toms of the church? They are far
older than Christ. They have a his
tory more remote than that of Rome.
In our literature, what is the debt of
the Elizabethans to Theocritus, who
first sang that pastoral they in turn
learned from the Italians?
Through all our lives run strange
threads of the past, but we are too
accustomed to them even to recognize
them as strange and thrilling too.
Perhaps the only reason that the Jap
anese have borrowed more obviously
than we lies in the fact that their
Rome is still vital across a narrow sea
from them, while ours had the de-
stroying centuries like wall between
us. And India, their Greece, still sent
forth it's mystics and missionaries
when ours was waiting, its spontane-
Gus genious changed to ornate form
alism, sealed treasure for the mailed
hand of the crusader.
It is because India, China and Japan
flourish side by side that we can trace
connections between them more easily
than those between US and long dead
nations. Nor are Greece and India
the ultimate sources of inspiration for
East or West. The influences grow
iess distinct, but we can discern
strange fusions We remember that
Alexander led his armies into India
and returned to Greece with many ma
tive craftsmen; that Greece had known
much communication with Persia, and
had been profoundly Unfit tnced by
Egypt, country which in turn had
traded and warred with the nations of
the East. Behind Persia loom the al
most mythical empires, Assyria, Bah
ylonia, with their winged animals and
huge temples. There were conquer
ing nations which took slaves and as
simulated cultures, which sent their
emissaries into far places. We think
that the world has grown small only
since we invented the railroad, the
steamboat, wireless telegraphy and
the cable. Yet it has always been
small, not for the individual indeed
but for the nations. Siam has leg
ends of prince of Rome" and even
in comparatively modern times the
Spaniards expelled the Mohammedans
from their borders and set forth ex-
ploring to the uttermost ends Of the
earth, only to find the Moros Cor
Moors) as they called them Moham-
medan people settled in their new ter
ritory Of the Philippines. The Aztecs
used the Monaghan chronological sys-
tenn. The primitive art of the Pacific,
whether in America or Asia, or the
islands of the sea, is almost identical.
The curling beam ends of Scandina-
Wan architecture are remnants of the
hooded maya heads that rear upright
from the roofs of Siamese temples
fodav