The bewildering observation here is Mr. Holder's assertion that this
stone did fall. It seems to me that he must mean that it fell by
dislodgment from a mountainside into a valley--but we shall see that it
was such a marked stone that very unlikely would it have been unknown to
dwellers in a valley, if it had been reposing upon a mountainside above
them. It may have been carelessness: intent may have been to say that a
sensational story of a strange stone said to have fallen, etc.
This stone was reported by Major Frederick Burnham, of the British Army.
Later Major Burnham revisited it, and Mr. Holder accompanied him, their
purpose to decipher the inscriptions upon it, if possible.
"This stone was a brown, igneous rock, its longest axis about eight
feet, and on the eastern face, which had an angle of about forty-five
degrees, was the deep-cut inscription."
Mr. Holder says that he recognized familiar Mayan symbols in the
inscription. His method was the usual method by which anything can be
"identified" as anything else: that is to pick out whatever is agreeable
and disregard the rest. He says that he has demonstrated that most of
the symbols are Mayan. One of our intermediatist pseudo-principles is
that any way of demonstrating anything is just as good a way of
demonstrating anything else. By Mr. Holder's method we could demonstrate
that we're Mayan--if that should be a source of pride to us. One of the
characters upon this stone is a circle within a circle--similar
character found by Mr. Holder is a Mayan manuscript. There are two 6's.
6's can be found in Mayan manuscripts. A double scroll. There are dots
and there are dashes. Well, then, we, in turn, disregard the circle
within a circle and the double scroll and emphasize that 6's occur in
this book, and that dots are plentiful, and would be more plentiful if
it were customary to use the small "i" for the first personal
pronoun--that when it comes to dashes--that's demonstrated: we're Mayan.
I suppose the tendency is to feel that we're sneering at some valuable
archaeologic work, and that Mr. Holder did make a veritable
identification.
He writes:
"I submitted the photographs to the Field Museum and the Smithsonian and
one or two others, and, to my surprise, the reply was that they could
make nothing out of it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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