Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book The Ancient Inhabitants of America written by Alexander De Humboldt and published by TGS Publishing. This book was released on 2010-08-22 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (originally published in (1814) Two Volumes now in One Book, Large Print 13 point font: From the author: I have collected, in the following work, whatever relates to the origin and first progress of the arts among the natives of America. Two thirds of the plates which it contains present specimens of the remains of their architecture, sculpture, historical paintings, and hieroglyphics relative to their division of time, and the system of their calendar. To this representation of their monuments, which are interesting to the philosophical study of man, I have added a few of the most remarkable picturesque views of the new continent. The motives for this selection will be found in the general observations at the beginning of this Essay. The description of each plate, as far as the nature of the subject admits, forms a separate treatise. I have dwelt more at length on such as could throw light on the analogies existing between the inhabitants of the two hemispheres; and we shall be surprised to find, towards the end of the fifteenth century, in a world which we call new, those ancient institutions, those religious notions, and that style of building, which seem. in Asia to indicate the very dawn of civilization. The characteristic features of nations, like the internal construction of plants, spread over the surface of the globe, were the impression of a primitive type, notwithstanding the variety produced by the difference of climates, the nature of the soil, and the concurrence of many accidental causes. --- Claimed to be an original source for Joseph Smith's Books of Mormon.