Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/164

154, the far-aiming, the shining wanderer; surely, enlivened by the sun, do men go to their tasks and do their work." Even his people the Toltecs catch from him solar qualities. Will it be even possible to grant to this famous race, in whose story the legend of Quetzalcohuatl is the leading incident, anything more than a mythic existence?

The student, then, may well look suspiciously on statements professing to be direct history of the early growth of civilization, and may even find it best to err on the safe side and not admit them at all, unless they are shown to be probable by other evidence, or unless the tradition is of such a character that it could hardly have arisen but on a basis of fact. For instance, both these tests seem to be satisfied by the Chinese legend concerning quipus. In the times of Yung-ching-che, it is related, people used little cords marked by different knots, which, by their numbers and distances, served them instead of writing. The invention is ascribed to the Emperor Suy-jin, the Prometheus of China. Putting names and dates out of the question, this story embodies the assertion that in old times the Chinese used quipus for records, till they were superseded by the art of writing. Now in the first place, it is not easy to imagine how such a story could come into existence, unless it were founded on fact; and in the second place, an examination of what is known of this curious art in other countries, shows that just what the Chinese say once happened to them, is known to have happened to other races in various parts of the world.

The quipu is a near relation of the rosary and the wampum-string. It consists of a cord with knots tied in it for the purpose of recalling or suggesting something to the mind. When a farmer's daughter ties a knot in her handkerchief to remember a commission at market by, she makes a rudimentary quipu. Darius made one when he took a thong and tied sixty knots in it, and gave it to the chiefs of the Ionians, that they might untie a knot each day, till, if the knots were all undone, and he