The Project Gutenberg EBook of Prehistoric Structures of Central America, by
Martin Ingham Townsend

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Title: Prehistoric Structures of Central America
Who Erected Them?

Author: Martin Ingham Townsend

Release Date: June 24, 2009 [EBook #29212]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note

A number of typographical errors have been maintained in this version of
this book. They have been marked with a [TN-#], which refers to a
description in the complete list found at the end of the text.
Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been maintained. A list
of inconsistently spelled and hyphenated words is found at the end of
the text.

Oe ligatures have been expanded.

PREHISTORIC STRUCTURES

OF

CENTRAL AMERICA.

WHO ERECTED THEM?

A LECTURE,

BY

MARTIN INGHAM TOWNSEND,
OF TROY, NEW YORK.

TROY, N. Y.:
T. J. HURLEY, PRINTER, HARMONY HALL BUILDING.
1895.

INTRODUCTION.

It was not a long period after 1492, when the great Italian navigator
with his Spanish crew made their first discoveries upon the central
portion of America, that the Europeans, who had followed the footsteps
of Christopher Columbus, began to fall in with structures of great
magnitude and architectural beauty scattered widely throughout Mexico,
Guatemala and Yucatan, &c.; and when the conquest of Peru was achieved,
artificial highways and water courses were found there, such as could
have owed their existence to no people but one with advanced knowledge
of science as well as of the arts of civilized life. No people existed
then upon this continent capable of doing the work which so astonished
the world.

Thinking men and dreaming men have, from the earliest of these
discoveries, been busying themselves to find out when, and by what
people, these early monuments to human efforts were constructed.

Norwegian discoverers and Welsh e