Amy D. V. Chalmers - "Madge Morton's Secret"

La Motte Fouque, Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Freiherr de - "The Two Captains"

W. S. Gilbert - "More Bab Ballads"

Hamlin Garland - "The Spirit of Sweetwater"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Antediluvian World

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> The Antediluvian World




The Maya i is ### ; this became in time ### ; this developed into a
still simpler form, ### ; and this passed into the Phoenician form, ###
. The Samaritan i was formed thus, ### ; the Egyptian letter i is ### :
gradually in all these the left-hand line was dropped, and we come to
the figure used on the stone of Moab, ### and ### ; this in time became
the old Hebrew ### , or ### ; and this developed into the Greek ### .

We have seen the complicated symbol for m reduced by the Mayas
themselves into this figure, ### : if we attempt to write this rapidly,
we find it very difficult to always keep the base lines horizontal;
naturally we form something like this, ### : the distinctive figure
within the sign for m in the Maya is ### or ### . We see this repeated
in the Egyptian hieroglyphics for m, ### , and ### , and ### ; and in
the Chaldaic m, ### ; and in the Ethiopic ### . We find one form of the
Phoenician where the m is made thus, ### ; and in the Punic it appears
thus, ### ; and this is not unlike the m on the stone of Moab, ### , or
the ancient Phoenician forms ### , ### , and the old Greek ### , or the
ancient Hebrew ### , ### .

The ### , x, of the Maya alphabet is a hand pointing downward ### ,
this, reduced to its elements, would be expressed some thing like this,
### or ### ; and this is very much like the x of the archaic Phoenician,
### ; or the Moab stone, ### ; or the later Phoenician ### or the Hebrew
### , ### , or the old Greek, ### : the later Greek form was ### .

The Maya alphabet contains no sign for the letter s; there is, however,
a symbol called ca immediately above the letter k; it is probable that
the sign ca stands for the soft sound of c, as, in our words citron,
circle, civil, circus, etc. As it is written in the Maya alphabet ca,
and not k, it evidently represents a different sound. The sign ca is
this, ### . A somewhat similar sign is found in the body of the symbol
for k, thus, ### , this would appear to be a simplification of ca, but
turned downward. If now we turn to the Egyptian letters we find the sign
k represented by this figure ### , simplified again into ### ; while the
sign for k in the Phoenician inscription on the stone of Moab is ### .
If now we turn to the s sound, indicated by the Maya sign ca, ### , we
find the resemblance still more striking to kindred European letters.
The Phoenician s is ### ; in the Greek this becomes ### ### ; the Hebrew
is ### ### ; the Samaritan, ### . The Egyptian hieroglyph for s is ### ;
the Egyptian letter s is ### ; the Ethiopic, ### ; the Chaldaic, ### ;
and the Illyrian s c is ### .

We have thus traced back the forms of eighteen of the ancient letters to
the Maya alphabet. In some cases the pedigree, is so plain as to be
indisputable.

For instance, take the h:

Maya, ### ; old Greek, ### ; old Hebrew, ### ; Phoenician, ### .

Or take the letter o:

Maya, ### ; old Greek, ### ; old Hebrew, ### ; Phoenician, ### .

Or take the letter t:

Maya, ### ; old Greek, ### ; old Phoenician, ### and ### .

Or take the letter q:

Maya, ### ; old Phoenician, ### and ### ; Greek, ### .

Or take the letter k:

Maya, ### ; Egyptian, ### ; Ethiopian, ### ; Phoenician, ### .

Or take the letter n:

Maya, ### ; Egyptian, ### ; Pelasgian ### , Arcadian, ### ; Phoenician,
### .

Surely all this cannot be accident!

But we find another singular proof of the truth of this theory: It will
be seen that the Maya alphabet lacks the letter d and the letter r. The
Mexican alphabet possessed a d. The sounds d and t were probably
indicated in the Maya tongue by the same sign, called t in the Landa
alphabet. The Finns and Lapps do not distinguish between these two
sounds. In the oldest known form of the Phoenician alphabet, that found
on the Moab stone, we find in the same way but one sign to express the d
and t. D does not occur on the Etruscan monuments, t being used in its
place. It would, therefore, appear that after the Maya alphabet passed
to the Phoenicians they added two new signs for the letters d and r; and
it is a singular fact that their poverty of invention seems to have been
such that they used to express both d and r, the same sign, with very
little modification, which they had already obtained from the Maya
alphabet as the symbol for b. To illustrate this we place the signs side
by side:

###

It thus appears that the very signs d and r, in the Phoenician, early
Greek, and ancient Hebrew, which are lacking in the Maya, were supplied
by imitating the Maya sign for b; and it is a curious fact that while
the Phoenician legends claim that Taaut invented the art of writing, yet
they tell us that Taaut made records, and "delivered them to his
successors and to foreigners, of whom one was Isiris (Osiris, the
Egyptian god), the inventor of the three letters." Did these three
letters include the d and r, which they did not receive from the
Atlantean alphabet, as represented to us by the Maya alphabet?

In the alphabetical table which we herewith append we have represented
the sign V, or vau, or f, by the Maya sign for U. "In the present
so-called Hebrew, as in the Syriac, Sabaeic, Palmyrenic, and some other
kindred writings, the vau takes the place of F, and indicates the sounds
of v and u. F occurs in the same place also on the Idalian tablet of
Cyprus, in Lycian, also in Tuarik (Berber), and some other writings."
("American Cyclopaedia," art. F.)

Since writing the above, I find in the "Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society" for December, 1880, p. 154, an interesting
article pointing out other resemblances between the Maya alphabet and
the Egyptian. I quote:

It is astonishing to notice that while Landa's first B is, according to
Valentini, represented by a footprint, and that path and footprint are
pronounced Be in the Maya dictionary, the Egyptian sign for B was the
human leg.

"Still more surprising is it that the H of Landa's alphabet is a tie of
cord, while the Egyptian H is a twisted cord. . . . But the most
striking coincidence of all occurs in the coiled or curled line
representing Landa's U; for it is absolutely identical with the Egyptian
curled U. The Mayan word for to wind or bend is Uuc; but why should
Egyptians, confined as they were to the valley of the Nile, and
abhorring as they did the sea and sailors, write their U precisely like
Landa's alphabet U in Central America? There is one other remarkable
coincidence between Landa's and the Egyptian alphabets; and, by-the-way,
the English and other Teutonic dialects have a curious share in it.
Landa's D (T) is a disk with lines inside the four quarters, the allowed
Mexican symbol for a day or sun. So far as sound is concerned, the
English day represents it; so far as the form is concerned, the Egyptian
'cake,' ideograph for (1) country and (2) the sun's orbit is essentially
the same."

It would appear as if both the Phoenicians and Egyptians drew their
alphabet from a common source, of which the Maya is a survival, but did
not borrow from one another. They followed out different characteristics
in the same original hieroglyph, as, for instance, in the letter b. And
yet I have shown that the closest resemblances exist between the Maya
alphabet and the Egyptian signs--in the c, h, t, i, k, m, n, o, q, and
s--eleven letters in all; in some cases, as in the n and k, the signs
are identical; the k, in both alphabets, is not only a serpent, but a
serpent with a protuberance or convolution in the middle! If we add to
the above the b and u, referred to in the "Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society," we have thirteen letters out of sixteen in the
Maya and Egyptian related to each other. Can any theory of accidental
coincidences account for all this? And it must be remembered that these
resemblances are found between the only two phonetic systems of alphabet
in the world.

Let us suppose that two men agree that each shall construct apart from
the other a phonetic alphabet of sixteen letters; that they shall employ
only simple forms--combinations of straight or curved lines--and that
their signs shall not in anywise resemble the letters now in use. They
go to work apart; they have a multitudinous array of forms to draw from
the thousand possible combinations of lines, angles, circles, and
curves; when they have finished, they bring their alphabets together for
comparison. Under such circumstances it is possible that out of the
sixteen signs one sign might appear in both alphabets; there is one
chance in one hundred that such might be the case; but there is not one
chance in five hundred that this sign should in both cases represent the
same sound. It is barely possible that two men working thus apart should
bit upon two or three identical forms, but altogether impossible that
these forms should have the same significance; and by no stretch of the
imagination can it be supposed that in these alphabets so created,
without correspondence, thirteen out of sixteen signs should be the same
in form and the same in meaning.

It is probable that a full study of the Central American monuments may
throw stronger light upon the connection between the Maya and the
European alphabets, and that further discoveries of inscriptions in
Europe may approximate the alphabets of the New and Old World still more
closely by supplying intermediate forms.

We find in the American hieroglyphs peculiar signs which take the place
of pictures, and which probably, like the hieratic symbols mingled with
the hieroglyphics of Egypt, represent alphabetical sounds. For instance,
we find this sign on the walls of the palace of Palenque, ### ; this is
not unlike the form of the Phoenician t used in writing, ### and ### ;
we find also upon these monuments the letter o represented by a small
circle, and entering into many of the hieroglyphs; we also find the tau
sign (thus ### ) often repeated; also the sign which we have supposed to
represent b, ### ; also this sign, ### , which we think is the
simplification of the letter k; also this sign, which we suppose to
represent e, ### ; also this figure, ### ; and this ### . There is an
evident tendency to reduce the complex figures to simple signs whenever
the writers proceed to form words.

Although it has so far been found difficult, if not impossible, to
translate the compound words formed from the Maya alphabet, yet we can
go far enough to see that they used the system of simpler sounds for the
whole hieroglyph to which we have referred.

Bishop Landa gives us, in addition to the alphabet, the signs which
represent the days and months, and which are evidently compounds of the
Maya letters. For instance, we have this figure as the representative of
the month Mol ### . Here we see very plainly the letter ### for m, the
sign ### for o; and we will possibly find the sign for l in the right
angle to the right of the m sign, and which is derived from the figure
in the second sign for l in the Maya alphabet.

One of the most ancient races of Central America is the Chiapenec, a
branch of the Mayas. They claim to be the first settlers of the country.
They came, their legends tell us, from the East, from beyond the sea.

And even after the lapse of so many thousand years most remarkable
resemblances have been found to exist between the Chiapenec language and
the Hebrew, the living representative of the Phoenician tongue.

The Mexican scholar, Senor Melgar ("North Americans of Antiquity," p.
475) gives the following list of words taken from the Chiapenec and the
Hebrew:

+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| English. | Chiapenec. | Hebrew. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| Son | Been | Ben. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| Daughter | Batz | Bath. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| Father | Abagh | Abba. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| Star in Zodiac | Chimax | Chimah. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| King | Molo | Maloc. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| Name applied to Adam | Abagh | Abah. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| Afflicted | Chanam | Chanan. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| God | Elab | Elab. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| September | Tsiquin | Tischiri. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| More | Chic | Chi. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| Rich | Chabin | Chabic. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| Son of Seth | Enot | Enos. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+
| To give | Votan | Votan. |
+----------------------+------------+-----------+

Thus, while we find such extraordinary resemblances between the Maya
alphabet and the Phoenician alphabet, we find equally surprising
coincidences between the Chiapenec tongue, a branch of the Mayas, and
the Hebrew, a branch of the Phoenician.

Attempts have been repeatedly made by European scholars to trace the
letters of the Phoenician alphabet back to the elaborate hieroglyphics
from which all authorities agree they must have been developed, but all
such attempts have been failures. But here, in the Maya alphabet, we are
not only able to extract from the heart of the hieroglyphic the typical
sign for the sound, but we are able to go a step farther, and, by means
of the inscriptions upon the monuments of Copan and Palenque, deduce the
alphabetical hieroglyph itself from an older and more ornate figure; we
thus not Only discover the relationship of the European alphabet to the
American, but we trace its descent in the very mode in which reason
tells us it must have been developed. All this proves that the
similarities in question did not come from Phoenicians having
accidentally visited the shores of America, but that we have before us
the origin, the source, the very matrix in which the Phoenician alphabet
was formed. In the light of such a discovery the inscriptions upon the
monuments of Central America assume incalculable importance; they take
us back to a civilization far anterior to the oldest known in Europe;
they represent the language of antediluvian times.

It may be said that it is improbable that the use of an alphabet could
have ascended to antediluvian times, or to that prehistoric age when
intercourse existed between ancient Europe and America; but it must be
remembered that if the Flood legends of Europe and Asia are worth
anything they prove that the art of writing existed at the date of the
Deluge, and that records of antediluvian learning were preserved by
those who escaped the Flood; while Plato tells us that the people of
Atlantis engraved their laws upon columns of bronze and plates of gold.

There was a general belief among the ancient nations that the art of
writing was known to the antediluvians. The Druids believed in books
more ancient than the Flood. They styled them "the books of Pheryllt,"
and "the writings of Pridian or Hu." "Ceridwen consults them before she
prepares the mysterious caldron which shadows out the awful catastrophe
of the Deluge." (Faber's "Pagan Idolatry," vol. ii., pp. 150, 151.) In
the first Avatar of Vishnu we are told that "the divine ordinances were
stolen by the demon Haya-Griva. Vishnu became a fish; and after the
Deluge, when the waters had subsided, he recovered the holy books from
the bottom of the ocean." Berosus, speaking of the time before the
Deluge, says: "Oannes wrote concerning the generations of mankind and
their civil polity." The Hebrew commentators on Genesis say, "Our
rabbins assert that Adam, our father of blessed memory, composed a book
of precepts, which were delivered to him by God in Paradise." (Smith's
"Sacred Annals," p. 49.) That is to say, the Hebrews preserved a
tradition that the Ad-ami, the people of Ad, or Adlantis, possessed,
while yet dwelling in Paradise, the art of writing. It has been
suggested that without the use of letters it would have been impossible
to preserve the many details as to dates, ages, and measurements, as of
the ark, handed down to us in Genesis. Josephus, quoting Jewish
traditions, says, "The births and deaths of illustrious men, between
Adam and Noah, were noted down at the time with great accuracy." (Ant.,
lib. 1, cap. iii., see. 3.) Suidas, a Greek lexicographer of the
eleventh century, expresses tradition when he says, "Adam was the author
of arts and letters." The Egyptians said that their god Anubis was an
antediluvian, and it "wrote annals before the Flood." The Chinese have
traditions that the earliest race of their nation, prior to history,
"taught all the arts of life and wrote books." "The Goths always had the
use of letters;" and Le Grand affirms that before or soon after the
Flood "there were found the acts of great men engraved in letters on
large stones." (Fosbroke's "Encyclopaedia of Antiquity," vol. i., p.
355.) Pliny says, "Letters were always in use." Strabo says, "The
inhabitants of Spain possessed records written before the Deluge."
(Jackson's "Chronicles of Antiquity," vol. iii., p. 85.) Mitford
("History of Greece," vol. i, p. 121) says, "Nothing appears to us so
probable as that it (the alphabet) was derived from the antediluvian
world."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BRONZE AGE IN EUROPE.

There exist in Europe the evidences of three different ages of human
development:

1. The Stone Age, which dates back to a vast antiquity. It is subdivided
into two periods: an age of rough stone implements; and a later age,
when these implements were ground smooth and made in improved forms.

2. The Bronze Age, when the great mass of implements were manufactured
of a compound metal, consisting of about nine parts of copper and one
part of tin.

3. An age when iron superseded bronze for weapons and cutting tools,
although bronze still remained in use for ornaments. This age continued
down to what we call the Historical Period, and embraces our present
civilization; its more ancient remains are mixed with coins of the
Gauls, Greeks, and Romans.

The Bronze Period has been one of the perplexing problems of European
scientists. Articles of bronze are found over nearly all that continent,
but in especial abundance in Ireland and Scandinavia. They indicate very
considerable refinement and civilization upon the part of the people who
made them; and a wide diversity of opinion has prevailed as to who that
people were and where they dwelt.

In the first place, it was observed that the age of bronze (a compound
of copper and tin) must, in the natural order of things, have been
preceded by an age when copper and tin were used separately, before the
ancient metallurgists had discovered the art of combining them, and yet
in Europe the remains of no such age have been found. Sir John Lubbock
says ("Prehistoric Times," p. 59), "The absence of implements made
either of copper or tin seems to me to indicate that the art of making
bronze was introduced into, not invented in, Europe." The absence of
articles of copper is especially marked, nearly all the European
specimens of copper implements have been found in Ireland; and yet out
of twelve hundred and eighty-three articles of the Bronze Age, in the
great museum at Dublin, only thirty celts and one sword-blade are said
to be made of pure copper; and even as to some of these there seems to
be a question.

Where on the face of the earth are we to find a Copper Age? Is it in the
barbaric depths of that Asia out of whose uncivilized tribes all
civilization is said to have issued? By no means. Again we are compelled
to turn to the West. In America, from Bolivia to Lake Superior, we find
everywhere the traces of a long-enduring Copper Age; bronze existed, it
is true, in Mexico, but it held the same relation to the copper as the
copper held to the bronze in Europe--it was the exception as against the
rule. And among the Chippeways of the shores of Lake Superior, and among
them alone, we find any traditions of the origin of the manufacture of
copper implements; and on the shores of that lake we find pure copper,
out of which the first metal tools were probably hammered before man had
learned to reduce the ore or run the metal into moulds. And on the
shores of this same American lake we find the ancient mines from which
some people, thousands of years ago, derived their supplies of copper.

IMPLEMENTS AND ORNAMENTS OF THE BRONZE AGE

Sir W. R. Wilde says, "It is remarkable that so few antique copper
implements have been found (in Europe), although a knowledge of that
metal must have been the preliminary stage in the manufacture of
bronze." He thinks that this may be accounted for by supposing that "but
a short time elapsed between the knowledge of smelting and casting
copper ore and the introduction of tin, and the subsequent manufacture
and use of bronze."

But here we have in America the evidence that thousands of years must
have elapsed during which copper was used alone, before it was
discovered that by adding one-tenth part of tin it gave a harder edge,
and produced a superior metal.

The Bronze Age cannot be attributed to the Roman civilization. Sir John
Lubbock shows ("Prehistoric Times," p. 21) that bronze weapons have
never been found associated with Roman coins or pottery, or other
remains of the Roman Period; that bronze articles have been found in the
greatest abundance in countries like Ireland and Denmark, which were
never invaded by Roman armies; and that the character of the
ornamentation of the works of bronze is not Roman in character, and that
the Roman bronze contained a large proportion of lead, which is never
the case in that of the Bronze Age.

It has been customary to assume that the Bronze Age was due to the
Phoenicians, but of late the highest authorities have taken issue with
this opinion. Sir John Lubbock (Ibid., p. 73) gives the following
reasons why the Phoenicians could not have been the authors of the
Bronze Age: First, the ornamentation is different. In the Bronze Age
"this always consists of geometrical figures, and we rarely, if ever,
find upon them representations of animals and plants, while on the
ornamented shields, etc., described by Homer, as well as in the
decoration of Solomon's Temple, animals and plants were abundantly
represented." The cuts on p. 242 will show the character of the
ornamentation of the Bronze Age. In the next place, the form of burial
is different in the Bronze Age from that of the Phoenicians. "In the
third place, the Phoenicians, so far as we know them, were well
acquainted with the use of iron; in Homer we find the warriors already
armed with iron weapons, and the tools used in preparing the materials
for Solomon's Temple were of this metal."

This view is also held by M. de Fallenberg, in the "Bulletin de la
Societe des Sciences" of Berne. (See "Smithsonian Rep.," 1865-66, p.
383.) He says,

ORNAMENTS OF THE BRONZE AGE

"It seems surprising that the nearest neighbors of the Phoenicians--the
Greeks, the Egyptians, the Etruscans, and the Romans--should have
manufactured plumbiferous bronzes, while the Phoenicians carried to the
people of the North only pure bronzes without the alloy of lead. If the
civilized people of the Mediterranean added lead to their bronzes, it
can scarcely be doubted that the calculating Phoenicians would have done
as much, and, at least, with distant and half-civilized tribes, have
replaced the more costly tin by the cheaper metal. . . . On the whole,
then, I consider that the first knowledge of bronze may have been
conveyed to the populations of the period tinder review not only by the
Phoenicians, but by other civilized people dwelling more to the
south-east."

Professor E. Desor, in his work on the "Lacustrian Constructions of the
Lake of Neuchatel," says,

"The Phoenicians certainly knew the use of iron, and it can scarcely be
conceived why they should have excluded it from their commerce on the
Scandinavian coasts. . . . The Etruscans, moreover, were acquainted with
the use of iron as well as the Phoenicians, and it has already been seen
that the composition of their bronzes is different, since it contains
lead, which is entirely a stranger to our bronze epoch. . . . We must
look, then, beyond both the Etruscans and Phoenicians in attempting to
identify the commerce of the Bronze Age of our palafittes. It will be
the province of the historian to inquire whether, exclusive of
Phoenicians and Carthaginians, there may not have been some maritime and
commercial people who carried on a traffic through the ports of Liguria
with the populations of the age of bronze of the lakes of Italy before
the discovery of iron. We may remark, in passing, that there is nothing
to prove that the Phoenicians were the first navigators. History, on the
Contrary, positively mentions prisoners, under the name of Tokhari, who
were vanquished in a naval battle fought by Rhamses III. in the
thirteenth century before our era, and whose physiognomy, according to
Morton, would indicate the Celtic type. Now there is room to suppose
that if these Tokhari were energetic enough to measure their strength on
the sea with one of the powerful kings of Egypt, they must, with
stronger reason, have been in a condition to carry on a commerce along
the coasts of the Mediterranean, and perhaps of the Atlantic. If such a
commerce really existed before the time of the Phoenicians, it would not
be limited to the southern slope of the Alps; it would have extended
also to the people of the age of bronze in Switzerland. The introduction
of bronze would thus ascend to a very high antiquity, doubtless beyond
the limits of the most ancient European races."

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