Brasseur de Bourbourg
1873
translated by Jason Colavito
2016
|
NOTE |
Charles-Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg was a cleric and archaeologist who did pioneering work on Mesoamerica. He also believed in Atlantis and strove to demonstrate that the Mesoamericans had inherited the traditions of Atlantis. His work inspired Ignatius Donnelly. In the following article, published by the French Ethnographic Society in 1873, Brasseur de Bourbourg raises the possibility that a pole shift resulted in the destruction of Atlantis and caused the Flood of Noah. In so doing, he presaged the more famous and widely cited Pole Shift hypothesis of Charles Hapgood by eight decades. In the translation below, the author's original notes are given with Arabic numerals, and my own notes are marked with asterisks.
|
Historical Chronology of the Mexicans.
M. Brasseur de Bourbourg made the following announcement:
Regarding the exceedingly remote dates M. Oppert found in Assyrian documents, some members of the Ethnographic Society have desired to compare these with those I have discovered in Mexican documents: A great historical epoch seems, moreover, to emerge from both of these, dating back to about ten thousand years B.C. Among the documents that I have in my possession in the Mexican language, two in particular have dates going back to ancient times in a series or periods of thirteen years each, ending with the time of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. This is the great advantage that American documents have over the documents of the Eastern world, whose chronology was found broken as a result of wars and invasions or changes that have occurred in the political and religious order. The Codex Chimalpopoca, of which I have frequently spoken in my books, contains two documents, the history of the times of nature, called the History of the Suns, and the History of the Kings of Colhuacan and Mexico. Under the veils of mythology and dynastic annals of gods, heroes, and kings, both of these reveal the geological history of the world, closely united to that of races and nations. Their main purpose, however, is the history of disasters that led in turn to the formation of the lands which the Atlantic has swallowed up within it, and the gradual destruction of these same lands. The surveys which have taken place at various times in the Atlantic, the diverse flora of the two continents observed by naturalists, besides a host of other geological circumstances, have sufficiently put beyond doubt the existence of Atlantis, long ago celebrated under some poetic veils by Plato, so it is pointless to search here for still more evidence.
The oldest dates in my document are those of the History of the Suns. I transcribe here the first verse of this document with the literal translation, so that one is able to judge not only its accuracy, but the object that the author of the document proposes. I would just say in passing that the author was Prince Ixtlilxochitl, grandson of the last king of Mexico and Texcoco, who transcribed in Latin characters this document and the other, from the figurative or hieroglyphic originals, to save them the fanaticism of the conquerors:
In nican ca tlamachiliz tlàtol çaçanilli
This is the teaching (or revelation) of the histories that they fantasized
ye vecauh mochiuh inic mamaca tlalli
(which) anciently occurred with the distribution of land,
cecen tell ini tlamama ca ini c peuh
each rock which has been carried forth since the beginning (through
i coniuh Mach in i tzinlic
elevation) of the uprisings (expansions). They say that which be-
in iz qui tetl in om ac
gan (the deposition on the floor) of each rock is the double hot water
Aton-atiuh chicue centzon xihuitl, ipan
of Aton (controller of water), (there are) eight four-hundred-year periods, in addition to
tnacuil poval xihuitl, ipan matlac xihuitl om-ei axcan
five twenty-year periods, plus ten more periods, besides three today
ipan mayo ic 22 ilhuilia de 1558 anos.
on the day 22 May in the year 1558 (which is 43,069 years). [*]
In this short paragraph, one can satisfy oneself of several very important things: that the ancient Mexicans were great geologists and no less learned in hydrology, a science still in its infancy here, just like geology. They had observed the causes of sedimentary deposits of the seabed and land and had a detailed law of water movement; they also knew both equatorial currents, which shape all the others. To this dual power they gave the name of Aton, or atonic, in which we can recognize easily the name of Adon or Adonai, and the origin of all the “Aton” elements in the names of the gods and the Phoenician kings, hence Pumay-Aton, Sanchoni-Athon, etc. For Alon, Alonatiuh is the name expressing the law of water movement, the disruptor and the regulator of the seas, the primordial instrument of the creation of our present globe in the hands of God, and under which the Hebrews recognized the same Creator as the Mexicans.
Another lesson to be drawn from that paragraph is the mode of epigraphic science of the Mexicans: indeed, in the terms expressing the action of the stated facts are the names of things and places, as we see with Aton-atiuh; because every word, besides its intrinsic value, has a double and sometimes a triple meaning, which, of course, applies in the general sense of the idea expressed and only develops with more details; each word further, by merging with others, sets out the names of the places where the action is, and its geological or topographical formation. I have applied this rule here in the name of the equatorial current; but it can be applied to the rest. So ma-ma, “reduplication,” is repeated twice with a different meaning because of the affix or suffix, means “both arms” or “both shores,” and mama is the Ocean. And see how the sense here adds to the force of the discourse, regarding marine sedimentation. Mamaca tlalli, “distribution of the land,” written as ma-mac-atlalli means “irrigable land,” “cultivable at the edges of the seas,” etc.
In all the figures we have just seen enumerated above, we found 3,313 periods of 13 years each, for a total of 43,069 years before the year 1558 AD, or 41,511 years B.C. During this long interval, four remarkable phases are related by the author: they are suns, tonatiuh, or epochs of nature which have been much talked about since we acquired the knowledge of the Mexican books, but Alexander von Humboldt has spoken particularly in his Views of the Cordilleras. “The sacred books of the Hindus,” he said, “especially the Bhâgavata Purana, was already talking about the four ages and the pralagas, or cataclysms, which at various times have destroyed the human race. A tradition of five ages, similar to that of the Mexicans, can be found on the Tibetan plateau.”
This tradition varies in the details in the Mexican documents. In the document in question here, the Suns are four in number and relate to cataclysms that completely changed the face of the world; these periods vary in duration, but the intervals are based on a joint total of six hundred seventy-six periods, taken for mere years by Humboldt and others, but in my possession a document fixed these periods at thirteen years each. To these six hundred seventy-six periods, he added thirteen others to the first sun and fifty-two to the third. Although I have not yet fully and thoroughly reviewed the History of the Suns, I thought I saw that the disasters were caused each time by a shift in the axis of the world (1), upsetting the polar ice caps and reversing the order of the seasons. Mankind, following these Mexican documents (2), lived in these ancient times. It was in memory of the cataclysms that they instituted the feast of the Renovation, celebrated in Mexico in the month of Izcalli (a month of 20 days, from January 8-27). We find these festivals among many ancient peoples: The Athenians remembered it in the Panathenaic festival, and the Egyptians in those called Lepsins, whose name translates precisely as the word Renovations, identical with the Mexican name. According to the anonymous Letellier Manuscript, “they were called Pixquiltia, that is to say the preservation of human nature that had escaped each time the world was lost. After four in four years,” it adds, “they fasted for eight days in memory of the three times the land was lost, which is why they give this festival the name of Renovation.”
The fourth epoch of the History of the Suns is called Nahui-atl, “four-water, or places sharing four”; it relates to a major flood or inundation, which caused a large part of the world to change the direction of the ocean currents, as a result of various volcanic catastrophes. In a region named in the text, which seems to be part of the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, encompassing the Mediterranean: “All the mountains,” it says, “disappeared under the water” (moch poliuh in tepetl), following a huge weakening of the earth’s crust, and others arose in their place. The number and name of the period, Ce-Tochlli “1-Rabbit” or Cet-ochlli, “extensive (covered in) ice,” and the one that follows Ome-Acatl, Two-Rods, of the same events that are reported, and mark a point of concordance with the second and larger of the two Codex Chimalpopoca documents, where the date of this catastrophe is fixed to the period from the year 9402 to the year 9590 B.C.
In historical perspective, it is this second document that is the most complete. Its short chronology is regular, following a series of nine hundred and thirty-five (935) periods back to the year 4570, when the document was written, according to the Mexican archives and whose last period stops at the year of the landing of Cortes in Mexico, that is to say in 1519. The total of these periods provides a sum of 12,155 years which, deducting the 1,570 years from the birth of J.C. until the Conquest, gives us 10,565 years B.C.
I will not go into detail about the history preserved in this document; I need only say that it is a sequence of records, whose main purpose is the geological formation of the Atlantic lands, which in another time united America to Africa and Europe, as well as events which then combined to make them disappear. This loss did not occur suddenly; a considerable portion was taken at the Flood, and that is, I think, that to which Plato alludes. The rest sank slowly, piece by piece, carried away by the sea and especially by the effects of the current of the Gulf Stream. It is to these ancient lands that the document gives different names, depending on their neighborhood and their altitude, which to me seems to refer generally to these remarkable words of [Isaiah] Chapter XVIII, which remained unappreciated until now. I quote from the translation of St. Jerome, which from my point of view, best captures the ancient sense: “Voe terrae cymbalo alarum, etc.” “Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters (3), saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled!”
One sees the winged cymbal or drum, huehuetl, which is called a Mexican drum, a hundred times in the form of a winged globe in the Codex Borgia, reproduced by Kingsborough (vol. III), found as propaganda carved on the frontispiece of the monuments of Mexico, just as on those of Egypt (4), one cannot fail to recognize in it the Holy Ark of the Hebrews—the covering of the seraphim, in imitation of Egyptian ornaments—all of this, like the wings of the animals of Ezekiel and the gods of Babylon, referred to the beautiful region subsumed under the Atlantic waters. The wings designate the lowlands intersected by canals, compared here to the pipes of feathers of a wing, for a large part of Atlantis was composed of islands, and this is expressed beautifully in the Mexican language, where the word for wing, atlapalli, simultaneously means “black and moist earth” (palli), “lying on the seas” (atla).
P.S.—The Mexican text above may not have been rendered in an absolutely correct way, and one or two typos might have slipped through, so I repeat it here in full, by interposing the French, one word after another, for clarity. [**]
In (c’est) nican (ici) tlamachiliz (l’enseignement ou révélation) tlatol (des histoires) çaçanilli (enfabulées) yevecauh (qui) très-anciennement) mo-chiuh (se produisirent ou se firent) inic (avec la) mamaca (distribution) tlalli (de la terre), cecen (de) chaque) tetl (roche) ini (que) elle) tlamama (porte) ca (depuis que) inic (avec ou à cause de cela) peuh (commencèrent (par exhaussement) i çoniuh (ses soulèvements ou expansions). Mach (on sait) ini (que) celui qui) tzintic commença (par dépôts sur le sol) in izqui tetl (sa chacune roche) in om-ac-Atonatiuh (c’est le double profond ou canalisé courant régulateur des eaux, ou bien courant d’eau chaude d’Aton (5), chicue (il y a) huit fois) cenlzon xihuitl (quatre cents indictions) ipan macuil poual xihuitl (en sus cinq fois vingt indictions) ipan mallac xihuitl omei (en sus dix indictions plus trois) axcan ipan mayo (aujourd’hui en mai) ic 22 ilhuitia (22e jour faisant) de 1558 años (de l’an 1558).
In closing this postscript, I must add that the compilation of these records, as we have them (M. Aubin has two copies) is due to the pen of Don Gabriel Tapia Maçacihuatl, Prince of Toltitlan near Mexico, who was still busy writing in August 1570, as he said himself. The original copy, from which I made mine, was on loose leaves and carried the genealogy and signature of the Prince Ixtlilxochitl, to whom I attributed the above: It was doubtless in his possession at the death of the author; this is what caused my mistake, which pulled me from a closer reading of this document.
Regarding the exceedingly remote dates M. Oppert found in Assyrian documents, some members of the Ethnographic Society have desired to compare these with those I have discovered in Mexican documents: A great historical epoch seems, moreover, to emerge from both of these, dating back to about ten thousand years B.C. Among the documents that I have in my possession in the Mexican language, two in particular have dates going back to ancient times in a series or periods of thirteen years each, ending with the time of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards. This is the great advantage that American documents have over the documents of the Eastern world, whose chronology was found broken as a result of wars and invasions or changes that have occurred in the political and religious order. The Codex Chimalpopoca, of which I have frequently spoken in my books, contains two documents, the history of the times of nature, called the History of the Suns, and the History of the Kings of Colhuacan and Mexico. Under the veils of mythology and dynastic annals of gods, heroes, and kings, both of these reveal the geological history of the world, closely united to that of races and nations. Their main purpose, however, is the history of disasters that led in turn to the formation of the lands which the Atlantic has swallowed up within it, and the gradual destruction of these same lands. The surveys which have taken place at various times in the Atlantic, the diverse flora of the two continents observed by naturalists, besides a host of other geological circumstances, have sufficiently put beyond doubt the existence of Atlantis, long ago celebrated under some poetic veils by Plato, so it is pointless to search here for still more evidence.
The oldest dates in my document are those of the History of the Suns. I transcribe here the first verse of this document with the literal translation, so that one is able to judge not only its accuracy, but the object that the author of the document proposes. I would just say in passing that the author was Prince Ixtlilxochitl, grandson of the last king of Mexico and Texcoco, who transcribed in Latin characters this document and the other, from the figurative or hieroglyphic originals, to save them the fanaticism of the conquerors:
In nican ca tlamachiliz tlàtol çaçanilli
This is the teaching (or revelation) of the histories that they fantasized
ye vecauh mochiuh inic mamaca tlalli
(which) anciently occurred with the distribution of land,
cecen tell ini tlamama ca ini c peuh
each rock which has been carried forth since the beginning (through
i coniuh Mach in i tzinlic
elevation) of the uprisings (expansions). They say that which be-
in iz qui tetl in om ac
gan (the deposition on the floor) of each rock is the double hot water
Aton-atiuh chicue centzon xihuitl, ipan
of Aton (controller of water), (there are) eight four-hundred-year periods, in addition to
tnacuil poval xihuitl, ipan matlac xihuitl om-ei axcan
five twenty-year periods, plus ten more periods, besides three today
ipan mayo ic 22 ilhuilia de 1558 anos.
on the day 22 May in the year 1558 (which is 43,069 years). [*]
In this short paragraph, one can satisfy oneself of several very important things: that the ancient Mexicans were great geologists and no less learned in hydrology, a science still in its infancy here, just like geology. They had observed the causes of sedimentary deposits of the seabed and land and had a detailed law of water movement; they also knew both equatorial currents, which shape all the others. To this dual power they gave the name of Aton, or atonic, in which we can recognize easily the name of Adon or Adonai, and the origin of all the “Aton” elements in the names of the gods and the Phoenician kings, hence Pumay-Aton, Sanchoni-Athon, etc. For Alon, Alonatiuh is the name expressing the law of water movement, the disruptor and the regulator of the seas, the primordial instrument of the creation of our present globe in the hands of God, and under which the Hebrews recognized the same Creator as the Mexicans.
Another lesson to be drawn from that paragraph is the mode of epigraphic science of the Mexicans: indeed, in the terms expressing the action of the stated facts are the names of things and places, as we see with Aton-atiuh; because every word, besides its intrinsic value, has a double and sometimes a triple meaning, which, of course, applies in the general sense of the idea expressed and only develops with more details; each word further, by merging with others, sets out the names of the places where the action is, and its geological or topographical formation. I have applied this rule here in the name of the equatorial current; but it can be applied to the rest. So ma-ma, “reduplication,” is repeated twice with a different meaning because of the affix or suffix, means “both arms” or “both shores,” and mama is the Ocean. And see how the sense here adds to the force of the discourse, regarding marine sedimentation. Mamaca tlalli, “distribution of the land,” written as ma-mac-atlalli means “irrigable land,” “cultivable at the edges of the seas,” etc.
In all the figures we have just seen enumerated above, we found 3,313 periods of 13 years each, for a total of 43,069 years before the year 1558 AD, or 41,511 years B.C. During this long interval, four remarkable phases are related by the author: they are suns, tonatiuh, or epochs of nature which have been much talked about since we acquired the knowledge of the Mexican books, but Alexander von Humboldt has spoken particularly in his Views of the Cordilleras. “The sacred books of the Hindus,” he said, “especially the Bhâgavata Purana, was already talking about the four ages and the pralagas, or cataclysms, which at various times have destroyed the human race. A tradition of five ages, similar to that of the Mexicans, can be found on the Tibetan plateau.”
This tradition varies in the details in the Mexican documents. In the document in question here, the Suns are four in number and relate to cataclysms that completely changed the face of the world; these periods vary in duration, but the intervals are based on a joint total of six hundred seventy-six periods, taken for mere years by Humboldt and others, but in my possession a document fixed these periods at thirteen years each. To these six hundred seventy-six periods, he added thirteen others to the first sun and fifty-two to the third. Although I have not yet fully and thoroughly reviewed the History of the Suns, I thought I saw that the disasters were caused each time by a shift in the axis of the world (1), upsetting the polar ice caps and reversing the order of the seasons. Mankind, following these Mexican documents (2), lived in these ancient times. It was in memory of the cataclysms that they instituted the feast of the Renovation, celebrated in Mexico in the month of Izcalli (a month of 20 days, from January 8-27). We find these festivals among many ancient peoples: The Athenians remembered it in the Panathenaic festival, and the Egyptians in those called Lepsins, whose name translates precisely as the word Renovations, identical with the Mexican name. According to the anonymous Letellier Manuscript, “they were called Pixquiltia, that is to say the preservation of human nature that had escaped each time the world was lost. After four in four years,” it adds, “they fasted for eight days in memory of the three times the land was lost, which is why they give this festival the name of Renovation.”
The fourth epoch of the History of the Suns is called Nahui-atl, “four-water, or places sharing four”; it relates to a major flood or inundation, which caused a large part of the world to change the direction of the ocean currents, as a result of various volcanic catastrophes. In a region named in the text, which seems to be part of the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, encompassing the Mediterranean: “All the mountains,” it says, “disappeared under the water” (moch poliuh in tepetl), following a huge weakening of the earth’s crust, and others arose in their place. The number and name of the period, Ce-Tochlli “1-Rabbit” or Cet-ochlli, “extensive (covered in) ice,” and the one that follows Ome-Acatl, Two-Rods, of the same events that are reported, and mark a point of concordance with the second and larger of the two Codex Chimalpopoca documents, where the date of this catastrophe is fixed to the period from the year 9402 to the year 9590 B.C.
In historical perspective, it is this second document that is the most complete. Its short chronology is regular, following a series of nine hundred and thirty-five (935) periods back to the year 4570, when the document was written, according to the Mexican archives and whose last period stops at the year of the landing of Cortes in Mexico, that is to say in 1519. The total of these periods provides a sum of 12,155 years which, deducting the 1,570 years from the birth of J.C. until the Conquest, gives us 10,565 years B.C.
I will not go into detail about the history preserved in this document; I need only say that it is a sequence of records, whose main purpose is the geological formation of the Atlantic lands, which in another time united America to Africa and Europe, as well as events which then combined to make them disappear. This loss did not occur suddenly; a considerable portion was taken at the Flood, and that is, I think, that to which Plato alludes. The rest sank slowly, piece by piece, carried away by the sea and especially by the effects of the current of the Gulf Stream. It is to these ancient lands that the document gives different names, depending on their neighborhood and their altitude, which to me seems to refer generally to these remarkable words of [Isaiah] Chapter XVIII, which remained unappreciated until now. I quote from the translation of St. Jerome, which from my point of view, best captures the ancient sense: “Voe terrae cymbalo alarum, etc.” “Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters (3), saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled!”
One sees the winged cymbal or drum, huehuetl, which is called a Mexican drum, a hundred times in the form of a winged globe in the Codex Borgia, reproduced by Kingsborough (vol. III), found as propaganda carved on the frontispiece of the monuments of Mexico, just as on those of Egypt (4), one cannot fail to recognize in it the Holy Ark of the Hebrews—the covering of the seraphim, in imitation of Egyptian ornaments—all of this, like the wings of the animals of Ezekiel and the gods of Babylon, referred to the beautiful region subsumed under the Atlantic waters. The wings designate the lowlands intersected by canals, compared here to the pipes of feathers of a wing, for a large part of Atlantis was composed of islands, and this is expressed beautifully in the Mexican language, where the word for wing, atlapalli, simultaneously means “black and moist earth” (palli), “lying on the seas” (atla).
P.S.—The Mexican text above may not have been rendered in an absolutely correct way, and one or two typos might have slipped through, so I repeat it here in full, by interposing the French, one word after another, for clarity. [**]
In (c’est) nican (ici) tlamachiliz (l’enseignement ou révélation) tlatol (des histoires) çaçanilli (enfabulées) yevecauh (qui) très-anciennement) mo-chiuh (se produisirent ou se firent) inic (avec la) mamaca (distribution) tlalli (de la terre), cecen (de) chaque) tetl (roche) ini (que) elle) tlamama (porte) ca (depuis que) inic (avec ou à cause de cela) peuh (commencèrent (par exhaussement) i çoniuh (ses soulèvements ou expansions). Mach (on sait) ini (que) celui qui) tzintic commença (par dépôts sur le sol) in izqui tetl (sa chacune roche) in om-ac-Atonatiuh (c’est le double profond ou canalisé courant régulateur des eaux, ou bien courant d’eau chaude d’Aton (5), chicue (il y a) huit fois) cenlzon xihuitl (quatre cents indictions) ipan macuil poual xihuitl (en sus cinq fois vingt indictions) ipan mallac xihuitl omei (en sus dix indictions plus trois) axcan ipan mayo (aujourd’hui en mai) ic 22 ilhuitia (22e jour faisant) de 1558 años (de l’an 1558).
In closing this postscript, I must add that the compilation of these records, as we have them (M. Aubin has two copies) is due to the pen of Don Gabriel Tapia Maçacihuatl, Prince of Toltitlan near Mexico, who was still busy writing in August 1570, as he said himself. The original copy, from which I made mine, was on loose leaves and carried the genealogy and signature of the Prince Ixtlilxochitl, to whom I attributed the above: It was doubtless in his possession at the death of the author; this is what caused my mistake, which pulled me from a closer reading of this document.
Author’s Notes
(1) Instead of a shift in the axis of the world, some read this as a slight deviation.
(2) According to this document, and the next, the land that emerged most anciently among all the existing land is currently Peru, from the node of Cuzco to the node of Almaguer in New Granada. It emerged after huge volcanic convulsions, forerunner of our continents, which arose as the continents of the Southern Ocean sank down under the waves. I have a considerable manuscript in the Quechua language of the Incas giving in great detail the destruction and burial of the Pacific lands. The Yungas of Ecuador and the Chimus of the west coast of Peru are the remains of this ancient race.
(3) Papyrus ships, that is to say of light bark like that of the papyrus plant of Biblus, which is mentioned here. These were for centuries the canoes and dugouts of the Africans, particularly in the Congo; so too are those of birch bark of the Canadian natives, etc.; thus also were the currachs, or wicker boats, covered in Irish leather, etc. As for this people, terrible and powerful on the water, if there were one more similar, according to Isaiah, it is obviously the Atlanteans, the Cares of ancient times, so named in the Mexican documents (Cayé for Cares), fathers of the Pelasgians, etc.
(4) With this remarkable difference: In Egypt the wing tips are deployed below and at Ococugio (near Palenque) they are deployed above, thus showing knowledge of the difference between the two continents separated by the globe, a cymbal or hollow drum, that is to say by the sea basin.
(5) Atonaliuh, literally, current or running hot water, or heated water. A-ton means that which opened the waters: atl, “water” and tomi, “open, widen, relax.” Tona means heat or hot water, ton-a and tiuh is “walking.” But the term, as it composed, also comes from atonavi, “tener ciciones,” says Molina, to be hot and cold as the hare. Thus, alternating running hot and cold water, as it exists in the Gulf Stream, which runs along the stream of cold water from the north pole. The fact, moreover, is confirmed by the impressive series of Codex Chimalpopoca texts where the history of the ocean current changes and modifications are reported in such detail, for period after period. Let us add that the term Atonal-ittaloni is translated in Molina as “relox de agua,” literally, a water clock, which the great Spanish Dictionary says is the hourglass of the Ancients.
(2) According to this document, and the next, the land that emerged most anciently among all the existing land is currently Peru, from the node of Cuzco to the node of Almaguer in New Granada. It emerged after huge volcanic convulsions, forerunner of our continents, which arose as the continents of the Southern Ocean sank down under the waves. I have a considerable manuscript in the Quechua language of the Incas giving in great detail the destruction and burial of the Pacific lands. The Yungas of Ecuador and the Chimus of the west coast of Peru are the remains of this ancient race.
(3) Papyrus ships, that is to say of light bark like that of the papyrus plant of Biblus, which is mentioned here. These were for centuries the canoes and dugouts of the Africans, particularly in the Congo; so too are those of birch bark of the Canadian natives, etc.; thus also were the currachs, or wicker boats, covered in Irish leather, etc. As for this people, terrible and powerful on the water, if there were one more similar, according to Isaiah, it is obviously the Atlanteans, the Cares of ancient times, so named in the Mexican documents (Cayé for Cares), fathers of the Pelasgians, etc.
(4) With this remarkable difference: In Egypt the wing tips are deployed below and at Ococugio (near Palenque) they are deployed above, thus showing knowledge of the difference between the two continents separated by the globe, a cymbal or hollow drum, that is to say by the sea basin.
(5) Atonaliuh, literally, current or running hot water, or heated water. A-ton means that which opened the waters: atl, “water” and tomi, “open, widen, relax.” Tona means heat or hot water, ton-a and tiuh is “walking.” But the term, as it composed, also comes from atonavi, “tener ciciones,” says Molina, to be hot and cold as the hare. Thus, alternating running hot and cold water, as it exists in the Gulf Stream, which runs along the stream of cold water from the north pole. The fact, moreover, is confirmed by the impressive series of Codex Chimalpopoca texts where the history of the ocean current changes and modifications are reported in such detail, for period after period. Let us add that the term Atonal-ittaloni is translated in Molina as “relox de agua,” literally, a water clock, which the great Spanish Dictionary says is the hourglass of the Ancients.
Editor’s Note
[*] A literal translation of the “Legend of the Suns” from the Codex Chimalpopoca is as follows:
1. here is what is known, what is spoken, a tale
2. a long time ago it was made
3. thereby the land extended
4. one by one, things (inanimate, lump-like) extended
5. thereby (it) began
6. only thus is it known how (it) originated
7. so many (flat, discrete, stone-like)
8. suns that were
9. 2400 years
10. on top of 100 years
11. on top of thirteen years
12. today is the 22[nd] day of May, 1558.
(translated by Paul Hockelman)
A more fluid translation is as follows:
Here are the wisdom-discourse fables,
how in ancient times it happened that the earth was established,
and each individual thing found its place.
This is the manner in which it is known how the sun gave rise to so many things, two thousand five hundred and thirteen years before today, the 22nd of May, 1558.
(trans. Willard Gingerich)
[**] As this would be somewhat nonsensical to give in English, both because the French does not correlate 1:1 with the English, and the Nahuatl is not transliterated according to modern standards in the first place, I leave this in the original French.
1. here is what is known, what is spoken, a tale
2. a long time ago it was made
3. thereby the land extended
4. one by one, things (inanimate, lump-like) extended
5. thereby (it) began
6. only thus is it known how (it) originated
7. so many (flat, discrete, stone-like)
8. suns that were
9. 2400 years
10. on top of 100 years
11. on top of thirteen years
12. today is the 22[nd] day of May, 1558.
(translated by Paul Hockelman)
A more fluid translation is as follows:
Here are the wisdom-discourse fables,
how in ancient times it happened that the earth was established,
and each individual thing found its place.
This is the manner in which it is known how the sun gave rise to so many things, two thousand five hundred and thirteen years before today, the 22nd of May, 1558.
(trans. Willard Gingerich)
[**] As this would be somewhat nonsensical to give in English, both because the French does not correlate 1:1 with the English, and the Nahuatl is not transliterated according to modern standards in the first place, I leave this in the original French.
Source: Brasseur de Bourbourg, “Chronologie historique des Mexicains,” Actes de la Socièté d’Ethnographie 7 (1873): 77-85.
