ian exiles, fugitives and mercenaries who,
during countless centuries, had founded colonies along the Libyan coast,
and pushed migration further westward along the coast line. Migrations
from these regions would doubtless have resulted in the remarkable
combination of archaic star, fire-drill and socket worship found in
Yucatan and Mexico, existing alongside of a highly developed and perfected
philosophical scheme of social organization identical, in principle, with
that which, in the Old World, constituted an ideal which was the result of
centuries of experience and active intellectual life.

The present investigation, in which I have collected more material than it
has been possible to present in this publication, brings out facts tending
to show that, originally, both hemispheres were peopled from the North,
and that, in antiquity, at intervals, an extremely limited intercourse was
kept up between the Old and New Worlds. The obvious fact that navigation
must have been seriously impeded by the interregnum of Polaris, lasting
for many centuries, would explain a prolonged isolation of America
anterior to the Christian era. Whereas the equatorial currents facilitated
the voyage to America, the same favorable conditions did not accompany
navigation in the same latitudes in a reverse direction, and this suggests
the probability that few who set out for "the hidden land," ever returned
to the port whence they sailed. Investigation seems to reveal that
influences, emanating from the most ancient centres of Old World
civilization, reached sundered regions of America at different times, and
that they could have been carried there by a seafaring and building race
such as the Minyans, the Magas, the Phoenicians or their descendants.

If such were the case it would be reasonable to expect that, in America,
traces of words associated with the archaic set of ideas would be found,
and the same method of writing. Let us now refer with prudent reservations
as to the possibility of their being accidental, to the striking
resemblances which undoubtedly exist between certain names for God,
Heaven, North, Middle, etc., in the languages of the most ancient
civilizations of the Old World and the Maya and Nahuatl. For convenient
reference and without detailed comment, these words are presented as
Appendix III.

Too much importance must not, of course, be given to these linguistic
analogies; at the same time we cannot shut our eyes to the fa