Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 249, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1917 — CIVILIZATION OF AGES AGO [ARTICLE]

CIVILIZATION OF AGES AGO

Ruins of 172 Cities, Big and Little, Have Been Discovered on Yucatan Peninsula. Scattered all over the Yucatan peolnsula'*are monuments to a civilisation that flourished thousands of years ago. Just how many thousand nobody knows and scientists differ very materially In their ideas on the subject. The prevailing belief, however, Is that this civilization was in full swing as late as the beginning of the Christian era. Other scientists assert that the ruins antedate those of Egypt Yucatan can well be called “the American Egypt,” George Minor writes in the Mexico Review. The ruins of 172 cities, big and little, have been dis* covered, and not a quarter of the ter* rltory has been carefully explored, for the tropical verdure makes the finding of the ruins difficult. You might pass within a hundred feet of a wonderful old temple or pyramid a hundred times and not discover it so effectively does the jungle screen these cram bling monuments of the distant pakt and shield them from the prying eyes of this inquisitive and presumptuous age. Of the 172 clusters of ruins discovered, two sets represent what were once large and prosperous cities, of about one-half million inhabitants each. Doubtless at different times each one of these two cities was the capital of the country.