es of linguistic and cultural activity, operative with
about the same degree of rapidity, all over both hemispheres, save in
places protected by our Law of Retardation. We will find the rate of
changes and successions generally far less rapid the farther back in
time we go; and finally we will find a special and marked acceleration
on both sides of the Atlantic during the last thousand years, all
incident to the placing of a new race in America.

So for the facts as we find them. They point to the descent of past
American civilizations from a past period of continental, or far more
probably, of world-wide extent. For who can imagine that people great
enough to build as these did, should not also have navigated? Why should
we assume in the face of other experiences, that Maya dates and
calculations mean nothing, except on the general principle that they did
not know as much as we do, and were doubtless liars? Bailly proved over
a hundred years ago that Hindu exact astronomical observations must date
back at least 5000 years, and that they were in possession of minutely
accurate tables[61-*] long before Europe was. And the rotundity of the
earth was certainly known both to them and the other great nations of
antiquity.

Archaeology is today pushing back the dates of fixed and acknowledged
history almost to the date given by the Egyptians to Solon for the
submersion of the great Atlantean island; and if we can but read the
Maya glyphs, and open _that_ door, another twenty years from now may
show us beyond all possible dispute evidences in every part of the earth
belt of a contemporaneous culture, different from and precedent to the
Aryan.

* * * * *

I have so far in this monograph, based upon and having to do as it has
with the Maya glyphs, their interpretation and their place in the
linguistic field, limited myself to an analysis and consideration of the
facts presented to us by those linguistic and cultural data we have
actually before us. But there is one further problem which is suggested
by it all. It is this: Where, in point of time and place, is the change
in the world's linguistic and cultural life from ideographic to literal
to be sought for, and what is its rationale? Separated from us by such
an enormous period of time as it is, I still cannot believe that some
view of it cannot be had. There are various facts of Old World history
and language, partly of prehistoric Europe, pa