The Omaha Sunday Bee Magazine Page
Copyright 1912, ty American-Examiner. Great Britain R!Mf Reatrred.
' '
Mm rh MgggW mSSsM te ggfe Sgfil-i;
At least 5,000 ytars ago, it would
eem, the Chinese, sailing their
Junks across the Pacific, discovered
America.
Settling, they built a city, and, in
a grave of one of their number,
nany years after, a clay image of
him was buried.
This great city fell ."nto ruins
perhaps through conquest, perhaps
hrcugh earthquake but the image
ay safe.
The first citv was covered with
earth, and upon it arose, through
enturies, another splendid' and
nysterious one.
This, too, fell int. ruins, and upon
H arose a third metropolis of the
nysterious race and still the Image
ay safe.
At last the third city was a place
of rulas. but still, under the re
mains of the first, the Chinaman's
image lay.
And, at last. Professor Niven,
digging, recovers the image, to an
swer, perhaps, the enigmt of the
New World's beginning.
The Image of a Chinaman Buried Thousands of Years Before Co
lumbus, and Found in the Lowest of Three Great Mexican Cities,
Built Each Upon the Ruins of the Other. Throws New and Aston
ishing Light
A
Mexico, Aug. 16.
N Image of. an unmistakable
Chinaman, moulded In clay,
foaa been found at San
Miguel Amantla burled beneath the
ruins of three Mexican civilizations.
This discovery Is believed by high
archaeological authorities to prove
the interesting theory that the an
cient civilization of Mexico preced
ing that of the Aztecs was of Chi- ,
nese or Mongolian origin. This ex-
planatlon would unravel the mystery
of the wonderful Maya ruins of Yu-'
catan and other parts or Mexico. vg.
eye-slits, padded, coat, nowipg
trousers and slippers a Chinaman
in everything except , the ..queue
which is lacking. The Chinese, it
must be remembered, did not adopt
the queue until they had' been con
quered by the Tartar horde from the
north. Thirty feet under the
ground, at. San Miguel Amantla,
nineteen miles from the city ot
Mexico, the image was uncovered in
the ruins of a buried tomb by Pro
fessor William Niven, of Mexico City.
It is about seven inches is
fleugtlt, and .where, the, arms are
broken' the' clay of which the image
was made shows red and friable' in
the centre, i Outside, however, this
clay has metamorphosed to stone
so that that "it can be chipped with .
a hammer only with the greatest
difficulty. ' It is about three and one-
half inches in width across the
chest and one and one-half inches in
thickness through the abdomen. In
the ears are huge rings, similar to
those worn by , the Chinese to this
day, and on the head is a skull cap,
One of the Oldest Monuments
in Mexico, Probably the
Work of the Early
Chinese Invaders.
with a tiny button in the centre, al
most exactly like the caps of the
Mandarins of the empire which has
so lately become a republic. ( ;
The coat, which ic loose and of
the type still worn by the Chinese,
is shown fastened with a frog and a
button, while on the breast is a cir
cular plate or ornament, evidently
once covered with a thin layer of
beaten gold, but worn bare by con
tact with the earth for unknown
centuries. Each arm Is broken off
close to, the shoulder, '.and the open
ing of the entire tomb, or room,
nearly thirty feet square, In which t
the image was found, has fialed to
discover the missing hands. ,-v '
This Chinese linage was not made
by the Aztecs. It had been buriec"
in the earth of the Valley of Mexico
a thousand years before the "Aztecs
set foot on the plateau. " The Aztecs ;
were newcomers In Mexico's history, '.
the bloodthirsty conquerors of the .
great civilized,1 organized races of
day knew very little more until Pro
fessor Niven uncovered the China
man. Mr Niven, who has been delving in
the buried tombs and temples of
Mexico for thirty years, declares
that the first people of Mexico came
from China, by way . of Behrlnjc
Straits. Ramon Meria, the foremost
living archeologlst ' of Mexico, who,
has spent twenty years in the ruins"
of Mexico's dead races, supports him
without qualification. There is an-
Upon Our
Prehis
toric Past
f
f'V-
r
A ' ' v s vv 1
r I V..UT 36
fcSd .:r
-V?
to . .''S ''n t
'A v
.(hi
0 MASi
f v 1 - 1 I! OTd-rOV II
! All That Is Left of the Ancient Lost City of Tulum. Which l . 1
. ; ' , t a riounsneaa muueanu i cf ueiwe m ucj uime ina vi ' 1 H qi
- M I. Now Believed to. Have Been Built by Chinese. V, ..4' ' V.3Vi
f 3l f 3 U"3a1-S i Tf is nrobablv true that the Aztecs way of a land connection across the VXm "'-II VNiT-" Vv 1-4 WVJ
J V" v ' I- R V V v I
a iH ' ft. ' '
,.,A
Cf DC
f Sjanai jiMMM
u
Clay Image of a Chinaman Just Found by Professor William
Niven, Near San Miguel, Mexico.
a. I I I n i
1 1
1 14V sv,'
111. f in. .- !
i
the finest artefact I have ever seen '
in Mexico. .
"I am inclined to think the room,
which was thirty feet square, its
walls made of concrete and crushed
down to within about a foot of their
bases, was a tomb, in the centre, on
a raised rectangular platform, also
of concrete, lay the skull and Some
of the bones of the skeleton of a
nan, who could not have been more
than five feet in height His arms
were very Jong, reaching almost to
W . . . '
4 -X- -v'
sV v Jf
All Th
4 1 ( ' i
3
. ' l it i
toe i
J
America's Egypt, who ravaged with
fire and sword the cities built by the
Toltecs, the Olmecs and the Mayas.
It Is probably true that the Aztecs
built little, if any, of the massive
palaces and temples whose ruins
mark all parts of Mexico. They fok
them by force of arms fron; the
builders.
When Hernan Cnrtez asked of
Montezuma, his captive, "Who built
that huge temple?" Montezuma re
plied, "Las Toltecas," and Bernal
Diaz, historian of the conquest,
named the tribe which had preceded
the Aztecs in the Valley of Mexico,
the Toltecs. But in the Nahuatl
tongue, which was the language of
the Aztecs, and which Is still spoken
in some of the villsges of remote
Mexico, "tolteca" means a builder, a
mason, nothing more, and Monte
zuma knew as little of the race
which made the Calendar Stone,
which worked out its own system of
astronomy and time, and which
moved twenty-ton blocks of stone to
build Its temples as did the Spanish
invaders and archeologlsts of to
other school of archeology, whose
members insist that the aborigines
of .Mexico came from the east, by
way of a land connection across the
lower end of the Gulf of Mexico, to
what is now the northwardolntlng
peninsula' of Yucatan.
Now comes the curious Chinaman,
burled for at least fifteen hundred
years, possibly more, to prove to the Buddha-Like Image Found at Oaxaca, Which Also Proves
world that the Mongol was known
In Mexico when the Wise Men fol
lowed the star to Bethlehem. The
Image is not an Idol; nine-tenths of
the figurines which are called idols
In Mexico were, indeed, never In
tended as objects of worship. It Is
an ornament for the house of some
prehistoric noble, probably the same
man whose crumbling skull, shell
noney, jade ornaments and flowpr
vase were found scattered round the
Chinese Image.
"This Image," says Professor
Niven, "proves with Indisputable
evidence that the people who lived
In the Valley of Mexico ten or fifteen
centuries ago "knew and were fa
miliar with the Mongol type. The
the Prehistoric Association Between Mexico and China.
ruin In which I found i. was in the
remains of the third civilization in
the pit which I had dug at San
Miguel Amantla, near Tlalnepantla,
nineteen miles from the National
Palace In Mexico City. The first
civilization, marked by a cement
floor and the walls of concrete build
ings, I found at a depth of eight
feet. Eleven feet below It was the
second civilization, of about the
same grade of development as the
first and. thirty feet and three Inches
from the surface of the ground I
came on a bedchamber, or t tomb, I
do not know which, In a third
stratum of. ruins w. . contained
his knees, and his skull was of s
decidedly Mongoloid type. . Around
his neck had been a string of green
Jade beads, another link which binds
Mexico to China, for real Jade has
never been found in Mexico in a
natural state.
"Lying beside the body was
string of five hundred and ninety
seven pieces of shell. I say string,
but the buckskin thong which had
once borne them was long since
rotted to dust, and the wampum, or
money, lay as it had fallen from the
string. With this money lay the
greatest find of all the little China
man. It is the first find of the kind
ever found in Mexico, though Mon
goloid types persist in sufficient num
bers among .the Indians of all Mex
- lco to convince any one, It ssems to
me, that the Indian blood of the
country came originally from Asia.
"Near the skeleton, but off the
platform, lay a flower vase, about
fifteen inches in height, undoubtedly
filled with xochltl, the yellow sacred
flower of practically all the ancient
races of this country. Undoubtedly
the tomb, or room, is a part of the
ruin of a large city, and I have se
cured the aid of the National
Museum, to whom the Chinese Image
will be presented, to clear away the
thirty feet of earth a sufficient dis
tance around the shaft I have dug
:) show what lies beneath.
"It must be remembered that this
was not a god, nor an idol, but an
ornament the image of some person,
his portrait done in clay by some
prehistoric sculptor. Thousands of
Images of men, woman and animals
and a very few of children, are found
in all ancient graves in this country.
They were made for preservation in
houses, and to be burled with the
dead, and I believe ih's was the
image of the man whose skeleton
lay on the platform in this buried
room. How long was he buried?
How long is required for the ele
ments to deposit thirty feet of earth
on a level surface? Making a rough
guess, without figuring the rates of
imposition of the different classes of
f.a-th which make up this blanket, I
snould Say not lecj than fifteen cen
turies, possibly more.
"San Miguel Amantla, where I
found the three buried cities, is a
l.-jvel plain thirty miles long by ten
miles wide. There is no trace of
any cataclysm which might have
buried the cities deeply and sud
denly. Earth was deposited slowly
over the first city; then the secon.1
was built on top of that ten or
eleven feet of earth. Then cme
another period of centuries of depo
sition and the third city was built ;
Above this upper ruin Nature laid
another blanket of earth, and oh the
surface to-day cattle grsse, while
miserable brush huts dot the fields
above buried palaces of stono and
. concrete.
"The little stone Chinaman fur
nishes exactly the link for which
we have been searching. He says
without speaking that the most an
cient tribes of Mexico were off
shoots of the Mongoloid."