282 The Naturalist in Nicaragua 
same family who escaped their persecutors by putting out: 
to sea and settling in their mountainous island.” } | 
Let us now return to the Nahuatls, and see if they present 
any affinities to the nations of the old world. Humboldt’s 
well-known argument, in which he sought to prove the 
Asiatic origin of the Mexicans, was based upon the remarkable 
resemblance of their system of reckoning cycles of years to 
that found in use in different parts of Asia. Both the Asiatic 
and Mexican systems of cycles are most artificial in their - 
construction, and troublesome in practice, and they are very 
unlikely to have arisen independently on two continents. 
Humboldt says: ‘“ I inferred the probability of the western 
nations of the new continent having had communication 
with the east of Asia long before the arrival of the Spaniards 
from a comparison of the Mexican and Thibeto-Japanese 
calendars—from the correct orientation of the steps of the 
pyramidal elevations towards the different quarters of the 
heavens, and from the ancient myths and traditions of the 
four ages or four epochs of destruction of the world, and the 
dispersion of mankind after a great flood of waters.” ? 
Whilst there are undoubtedly many curious coincidences 
in the customs of the ancient Mexicans and the peoples of 
eastern Asia, there are, on the other hand, so many differences 
that I believe it is safer to infer that they were essentially 
distinct in origin, and that there had been communication 
between the two peoples in very early times, but that the 
foreign influence in Mexico was extremely feeble, and too 
weak to check the growth of an essentially indigenous 
civilisation. Possibly sun and serpent worship, baptism, 
and the use of the cross as a sacred emblem, were the survival 
of religious beliefs that had obtained in the very cradle of the 
human race. We cannot, however, believe that mankind 
had, before the separation and dispersion of the eastern and 
western nations, attained to any great astronomical know- 
ledge, and it is quite possible that the extraordinary coinci- 
dences between the chronological and astronomical systems 
of the Nahuatls and the eastern Asiatics might have been 
brought about by some of the latter having been stranded 
on the American shore. 
1E. B. Tylor, Early History of Mankind, pp. 288-297. 
2 Humboldt, Aspects of Nature, vol. ii. 174. 
