The American Egypt

PREFACE

In publishing the present volume, it is our privilege to produce the
first book ever written by Englishmen on Yucatan--that Egypt of the New
World, where, it is now generally admitted, Central American
Civilization reached its apogee--and to be, for the present at least,
the only Englishmen who can claim to have explored the uncivilized
north-eastern portions of the Peninsula and the islands of her eastern
coast. Mr. A. P. Maudslay, who in 1889 made a lengthy stay at and a
detailed survey of Chichen, has done yeoman service to Central American
archeology by his years of patient work (alas! too little appreciated)
in Guatemala, in the Usumacinta district and Southern Mexico.

Work, and wonderful work, has been done in civilized Yucatan by bands of
earnest laborers from the States, from Germany, and from France. Among
these the most notable is the late J. L. Stephens, the American
traveler, who visited Yucatan in 1842, and who is justly regarded as
the Father of Mayan archeology. In his footsteps has followed, during
recent years, Mr. Edward H. Thompson, one of the most painstaking and
accomplished of American archæologists. France has been represented by
M. Desiré Charnay, and latterly by Count Perigny. Of the German
field-workers the most assiduous have been Professor Seler, T. Maler,
and K. Sapper; while all who wish to see the Mayan problem solved must
pay a meed of thanks to the eminent Professor Forstemann for his
attempts to decipher the inscriptions, even if they feel, as do we, that
he has allowed his enthusiasm to lead him too far astray on a
will-o'-the-wisp path of inquiry and theory.

The problem reviewed in this volume is a profoundly interesting one. The
ethnology of the Americas presents a problem as yet unsolved. The
average ethnologist has been content to label the vast affiliated hordes
and tribes of the two Americas "Mongolian." But the American
ethnological puzzle is deepened by the existence of what is known as the
Mayan civilization and its many ramifications throughout Central
America. Whence came these building races? What cradle-land is one to
assign to architects whose achievements often rival in grandeur the
monuments of Egypt? How is one to believe that they were ordinary
members, or members at all, of that great affiliated race of American
Indians whose ideas of building were represented in the north by the
snow-house of the Eskimo and the wigwam of the Sioux, and in the south
by the leaf-shelters of the cannibal inhabitants of the forests of
Brazil?

The American Egypt