Transcriber’s Note
A number of typographical errors have been maintained in this version ofthis book. They are marked and the corrected text is shown in the popup.A description of the errors is found in the list at the end of the text.Inconsistent spelling, hyphenation, and capitalization have been maintained.A list of inconsistently spelled, hyphenated, and capitalized words is foundin a list at the end of the text.
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OR,
Facts tending to prove that Communications and Intimate Relations must have
existed, in very remote times, between the inhabitants of
MAYAB
AND THOSE OF
ASIA AND AFRICA.
BY
AUGUSTUS Le PLONGEON, M. D.,
Member of the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Mass., of the California
Academy of Sciences, and several other Scientific Societies. Author of various
Essays and Scientific Works.
NEW YORK:
JOHN POLHEMUS, PRINTER AND STATIONER,
102 NASSAU STREET.
1881.
To
MR. PIERRE LORILLARD.
Who deserves the thanks of the students of American Archæology more thanyou, for the interest manifested in the explorations of the ruinedmonuments of Central America, handiwork of the races that inhabited thiscontinent in remote ages, and the material help given by you to Foreignand American explorers in that field of investigations?
Accept, then, my personal thanks, with the dedication of this smallEssay. It forms part of the result of many years’ study and hardshipsamong the ruined cities of the Incas, in Peru, and of the Mayas inYucatan.
Yours very respectfully,
AUGUSTUS Le PLONGEON, M. D.
New York, December 15, 1881.
Entered according to an Act of Congress, in December, 1881,
By AUGUSTUS Le PLONGEON,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Yucatan is the peninsula which divides the Gulf of Mexico from theCaribbean Sea. It is comprised between the 17° 30´ and 21° 50´, oflatitude north, and the 88° and 91° of longitude west from the Greenwichmeridian.
The whole peninsula is of fossiferous limestone formation. Elevated afew feet only above the sea, on the coasts, it gradually raises towardthe interior, to a maximum height of above 70 feet. A bird’s-eye view,from a lofty building, impresses the beholder with the idea that he islooking on an immense sea o