A number of fatuous theories about the connection of Central American culture with that of the Old World have been broached, from the time when Lord Kingsborough published his lavishly-illustrated book to prove that the ancient Mexicans were the descendants of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel to the present day, when Dr. Augustus Le Plongeon brings us his "proofs" that Yucatan was the primitive home of Adam, and avers that he has discovered not only the grave of Abel, but disinterred his heart therefrom, and found the knife wherewith Cain slew him! (_Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx_, p. 138.) Now, among the certainties which modern research has reached is that of the independent origin and development of civilisation in the New World. Man himself, whether or not descended from a single pair, had his origin in one region, probably the Indo-Malaysian, since there we find his nearest congeners, the anthropoid apes, while the pliocene beds of Java have recently yielded a remarkable corroboration of the theory in the fossil bones which bring man near to the common stem whence the highest animals have diverged. At a period when the general temperature of the globe was milder than now, the ancestors of the existing four leading groups--the Ethiopic, Mongolic, American, and Caucasic--spread themselves over the several zones of the habitable world, the American group migrating from Asia and Europe across the then existing land-connection between those continents and the New World, where those various stages of development which are still to be witnessed from the Arctic regions to Cape Horn were reached. Of these the Mexican plateau affords interesting and valuable material in the chipped flint implements evidencing a Stone Age, and in the marvellous buildings which vie both in their cyclopean dimensions and ornamented features with the palaces, tombs, and temples of Egypt and Assyria, testifying to the relatively high culture of the races that raised them. These peoples, usually grouped together as the ancient Mexicans, are known as Mayas and Aztecs. The duration of the empire or confederation of the Mayas is unknown, but about two hundred years before the Spanish conquest of America they appear to have been invaded and subdued by the Aztecs, whose rule extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific in the countries now forming Mexico and portions of the United States. The remains of the two races are both imperfect and entangled, so that any coherent story is not to be extracted from them. But the evidence points to the Mayas as the intellectually superior race; the Aztecs, who still form the bulk of the population of South Mexico, borrowing largely from them, especially in the matter of the gods. "If written language be a test of intelligence, the Mayas were ahead not only of the Mexican people, but also of the Peruvians. The latter are believed to have made no nearer advance towards writing than the tying of tally-knots on strings, and