rd of this tongue
(the Maya) is pure Greek. Who brought the dialect of Homer to America?
or who took to Greece that of the Mayas? Greek is the off-spring of
the Sanscrit. Is Maya? or are they coeval?" Still more surprising is
it to find thirteen letters out of the Maya alphabet bearing most
distinct relation to the Egyptian hieroglyphic signs for the same
letters. It is probable that the earliest form of alphabet was
hieroglyphic, "the writing of the Gods," as the Egyptians called it,
and that it developed later in Atlantis into the phonetic. It would be
natural to assume that the Egyptians were an early colony from
Atlantis (as they actually were) and that they carried away with them
the primitive type of writing which has thus left its traces on both
hemispheres, while the Phoenicians, who were a sea-going people,
obtained and assimilated the later form of alphabet during their
trading voyages with the people of the west.

One more point may be noticed, _viz._, the extraordinary resemblance
between many words in the Hebrew language and words bearing precisely
the same meaning in the tongue of the Chiapenecs--a branch of the Maya
race, and amongst the most ancient in Central America. A list of these
words is given in _North Americans of Antiquity_, p. 475.

The similarity of language among the various savages races of the
Pacific islands has been used as an argument by writers on this
subject. The existence of similar languages among races separated by
leagues of ocean, across which in historic time they are known to have
had no means of transport, is certainly an argument in favour of their
descent from a single race occupying a single continent, but the
argument cannot be used here, for the continent in question was not
Atlantis, but the still earlier Lemuria.

_Ethnological Types._--Atlantis as we shall see is said to have been
inhabited by red, yellow, white and black races. It is now proved by
the researches of Le Plongeon, De Quatrefages, Bancroft and others
that black populations of negroid type existed even up to recent times
in America. Many of the monuments of Central America are decorated
with negro faces, and some of the idols found there are clearly
intended to represent negros, with small skulls, short woolly hair and
thick lips. The Popul Vuh, speaking of the first home of the
Guatemalan race, says that "black and white men together" lived in
this happy land "in great peace," speaking "one language."