The Mythologies of Ancient Mexico and Peru

The question of the origin of the religions of ancient Mexico and Peru is unalterably associated with that of the origin of the native races of America themselves—not that the two questions admit of simultaneous settlement, but that in order to prove the indigenous nature of the American mythologies it is necessary to show the extreme improbability of Asiatic or European influence upon them, and therefore of relatively late foreign immigration into the Western Hemisphere. As regards the vexed question of the origin of the American races it has been thought best to relegate all proof of a purely speculative or legendary character to a chapter at the end of the book, and for the present to deal with data concerning the trustworthiness of which there is little division of opinion.

The controversy as to the manner in which the American continent was first peopled is as old as its discovery. For four hundred years historians and antiquarians have disputed as to what race should have the honour of first colonising the New World. To nearly every nation ancient and modern has been credited the glory of peopling the two Americas; and it is only within comparatively recent years that any reasonable theory has been advanced in connection with the subject. It is now generally admitted that the peopling of the American continent must have taken place at a period little distant to the original settlement of man in Europe. The geological epoch generally assumed for the human settlement of America is the Pleistocene (Quaternary) in some of its interglacial conditions; that is, in some of the recurrent periods of mildness during the Great Ice Age. There is, however, a possibility that the continent may have been peopled in Tertiary times. The first inhabitants were, however, not of the Red Man type.

Difficult as is this question, an even more difficult one has to be faced when we come to consider the affinities of the races from whom the Red Man is descended. It must be remembered that at this early epoch in the history of mankind in all likelihood the four great types of humanity were not yet fully specialised, but were only differentiated from one another by more or less fundamental physiological characteristics. That the Indians of America are descended from more than one human type is proved by the variety of shapes exhibited in their crania, and it is safe to assume that both Europe and Asia were responsible for these early progenitors of the Red Man. At the period in question the American continent was united to Europe by a land-bridge which stretched by way of Greenland, Iceland, and the Faröe Islands to Northern Europe, and from the latter area there probably migrated to the western continent a portion of that human type which has been designated the Proto-European—precursors of that race from which was finally evolved the peoples of modern Europe.

When we come to the question of the settlement of America from the Asiatic side we can say with more certainty that immigration proceeded from that continent by way of Behring Strait, and was of a Proto-Mongolian character, though the fact should not be lost sight of that within a few hundred miles of the point of emigration there still exists the remains of an almost purely Caucasian type in the Ainu of Saghalien and the Kurile Islands. However, immigration on any extensive scale must have been discontinued at a very early period, as on the discovery of America the natives presented a highly specialised and distinctive type, and bear such a resemblance one nation to another, as to draw from all authorities the conclusion that they are of common origin.