ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. LET 
he may have brought them from Peru or Central America, where, among 
ruins still existing, there has been discovered much early picture-writing, 
closely corresponding to early Chinese characters, comprising the 216 radical 
ideographs now used. Thus, heaven is expressed by three horizontal lines, 
slightly curved; and earth by a cross within a circle. In discoveries at Copan 
is a figure strikingly resembling the Chinese symbol of Fokee, both nations 
representing him like Moses, as a lawgiver, with two small horns. Many 
figures on Peruvian water-vessels, of great antiquity, are identical with those 
found in Egyptian temples; birds’ heads, for example, attached to figures 
resembling a comma, but intended to represent tongues; and other remark- 
able coincidences. Either one people learned from the other, or both acquired 
these forms from a common source. Many physico-geographical facts favor 
the hypothesis, that it is more rational to conclude that Egypt received them 
from America, through China—possibly through Fokee, or some predecessor 
in very remote ages. Recent scientific explorations are reported to have 
exhumed Chinese sacred mottoes, carved on tombs in Egypt—counterparts of 
phrases in use to-day—revealing the existence of an intercourse when China 
was ruled by kings anterior to Moses. 
The present written language of China is undoubtedly an imported method, 
advanced from such picture-writings as those of the ancient Peruvians, or 
primitive hieroglyphical signs of ancient Egypt. Among some nations, men- 
tal progress evolved a simple alphabet, while others remained content with 
the increasing complications of ideographic signs, for syllables and objects. 
Egypt, like China, was tenacious of her individual peculiarities, and long 
retained her hieroglyphic type. She finally abandoned it, while China clung 
to but improved it. 
The South Arabians and their descendants, the Phcenicians, having an 
extended commerce established throughout the Indian Ocean, with every 
known shore, undoubtedly passed more readily into a simple phonetic alpha- 
bet, better adapted to the practical wants of a commercial people. Tablets 
have been discovered among their ancient ruins, by which the various 
changes are readily traced. 
Chinese characters, so long surrounded by the ultra conservatism of 
an impenetrable isolation, have undoubtedly developed from these common 
forms of natural objects, and subsequently been adapted to easy and rapid 
writing, with a peculiar style of brush, and their manner of holding it. 
The consideration of whether the Chinese people originally developed in 
Asia or abroad, bears an important relation to the origin of the Japanese race, 
the subject we are ultimately investigating and shall consider in our next 
paper. In seeking the initial points whence migrations have diverged, we 
naturally gather all possibilities, whence we select probabilities, in the hope 
of finally eliciting absolute truth. We shall be compelled fo limit this already 
lengthy paper to setting forth certain fundamental principles useful in re- 
search; and to a collection of evidence, the full discussion of which will 
necessarily remain for a future occasion. 
Without, in any manner, endorsing the following hypothesis, we shall 
simply aim to shadow forth a few possibilities, which the consideration of 
many curious facts have suggested during the laborious details of an elabo- 
rate search. 
