Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1877 — Extraordinary Archaeological Discoveries. [ARTICLE]

Extraordinary Archaeological Discoveries.

In Stoddard County, Mo., strange archaeological discoveries have been made and unique relics of a forgotten race exhumed. I have written to the World already of inscriptions on a tablet of stone inserted in the inner wall of a ruined temple in Guanajuato. The writing is in the same characters, if my memory be not grievously at fault, as those used by the sunworshipers of the old temple of stone in Western Mexico. The tablet exhumed in Stoddard County is of glazed terra-cotta, and is almost as perfect as when deposited in the mound from which it was taken a tew days ago. It Is ten and a half inches wide and thirteen inches long, and covered with characters clearly cut, bearing a suggestive resemblance to Sanscrit

letters. On both sides of the tablet appear these unique hieroglyphics. The tracing was evidently executed when the clay jraa.'yet goft and thin; it was dried, hardened and glazbd. The whole appearance at this leaf from the Continent's remotest history has many characterlrrticKoff the library tables of the Assyrian King Assur-Bani-Pal recently dug from the mounds at N when I remember how near the Triteness is to the inscriptions in .the old Mexican temple, lam persuadqU plorer wilt yet have photographs made of all thane drawingraaMMA -W that discovered cm astohe noC Ty froru Tuscaloosa, Ala., and, compdrftg the strange records -of the \wrimown races, ascertain their origin, anaaeteimine perhaps the vexed question of unity. The characters of this MisßdtffT tablet are arranged in regular IJneiorj-oyts and are clear and distinct in outline. A key to solve the mysteries "WvtfVed in these two “pages’* of prehistoric lore would be an “ open sesame” to the prorfoundest mystery that affects the furtuwua of the human race. Is there no Chanipollion to make stones eloquent, dead, centuries loquacious, rind to invest mtemniMs habiliments of ancient life? Wtite the Mound-Builders of the of ,$e Mississippi of the same race, with those who reared temples at Cliichen and Cbp«r and Otoluin and Palenque? Wefe the bearded Natchez Indians the draeyhdawfaf<as they claimed, of this race, whose power was coterminous with the two oceans, snri extended, as their raconteurs told'Kie follotyers of Bienville and LaßaHe, even to Africa? They said that wheft thp continent was contulsed, as nev&’’ before or since, their broadest, riehest.- domain east of Florida and South America wks sub<. ; merged and' the west, was uphetiVed: The French forefathers of the writer of this said further that the Nat chert r lhdiftns were never beaten until their presto'tyefo made drunk, and sacred Area that hnrned perennially on the great nu>und below Natchez were suffered to beCoAiddtflrtet. When this cataclysm befell the hapless' race no further serious resistance Was_enJ countered by the French invadcML i Ther Natchez were destroyed or dispersed, abd this was the end of the latest and very re: mote descendants of the that left traces of their toil every whfre.frdru the great lakes to the Gulf, in tire Valjgy of the Mississippi. Whether the writer of the strange glyphs on the Qtoddajd County stone was of the Colhuas, dr. Tpll tecs, or a wanderer from the Orient, a voyager with Hanno or some Phoenician who passed beyond the Pillars of, Hercules for return no more—these are inquiries, to beg solved by him who translates, jne stoiy inscribed on this tablet and on that in the , old temple of Guanajuato. If Congress should appoint a comraissionz. ta. survey’ the lowlands of the Mississippi, if only with reference to the possibility of controlling its floods, much might De done in the way of exploring the hidden mysteries of the swamps, once the unique and ancient civilization, The Stoddard County tablet has been forwarded to the learned Orientalist of Harvard University. Though thesimilar-. ity between tire characters employed by the Mound-Builders and the /Sanscrit “ letters” is striking, it is perhaps only fanciful, and a careful analysis of. the structural forms of these glyphs may reveal no likeness whatever to alphabet)?./ cal language. In fact, the'inscription may be wholly idiographic, and the language emnloyed by the writer mtiy fipt have been developed into lexicographic unity. If this be true, speculative archaeologists may again infer that this was the oldest of inhabited continents and the seat of the earliest civilizatioa .ot.- qur race.— Cor.N. Y. World., ,e* ut*/)