Читать книгу The Origin of the Mound Builders онлайн

2 страница из 11

When a boy, I have stood and wondered at the stupendous magnificence of the Mound-builders’ rude art, in crowning a beautiful hill with a throne for their Chieftain, or perhaps a temple to their god of nature, or possibly a sacrificial altar, on which to shed human blood to appease an irate divinity, or to dedicate the triumphal march of a conquering hero. Since a man, I have wandered among the thousands of mounds, from the Great Lakes to the Mexican Gulf, and have pondered among the unclassified tumuli on the plains of Texas that stretch away toward the Rio Grande, and have wondered if these are the watch-towers of a gigantic antediluvian prairie-dog contemporaneous with the Deinosaurs, or if they are the mute landmarks of a mysterious people who trafficked here while Cheops was building on the Nile. While modern science is endeavoring to classify the ethnic relations of the Mound-builders, it is also aware that that hypothesis alone will have credence, that accords best with the cumulative evidence of those most infallible guides, comparative craniology and philology.