Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/93

 Primitive Neolithic Civilizations 73 tiou ill particular ran blood ; it ol'lcrcd thousands ot luiuian victims' yearly. The cutting open of living victims, the tearing out of the still beating heart, was an act that dominated the minds and lives- of these strange priesthoods. The public life, the national festivities all turned on this fantastically horrible act. The ordinary existence of the common ]ieoplc in these comnnmi- tics was very like the ordinary existence of " any other barbaric peasantry. Their pot- tery, weaving and dye- ing was very good. The Ma}-a writing was not only carven on stone but written and painted upon skins and the like. The European and American museums contain many enig- matical IMaya manu- scripts of which at present little has been deciphered except the dates. In Peru there were beginnings of a similar writing bvit they were superseded by a method of k e e ]3 i n g records by knotting cords. A similar method of cord mnemonics was in use in China thou- sands of years ago. In the old world before 4000 or 5000 B.C., that is to say three or four thousand years earlier, there were primitive civilizations not unhke these American civilizations ; civilizations based upon a temple, having a vast quantity of blood sacriHces and with an in- tensely astronomical priesthood. But in the old world the primiti^•e civilizations reacted upon one another and de^•elope^l towards the conditions of our own world. In America these prinntive civiliza- EUROPEAN NEOLITHIC WARRIOR ModelleJ from the imaginative draninfi by Prof. Rutot