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Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions

T. W. Doane (Thomas William Doane)

passage 442 of 487 · Chapter XXXIX.), we have considered the *Miracles of Christ Jesus*, the > CHAPTER XL. (25/70)

↪ you wandered here via “Chinese wine production regions” — the connecting lines are tinted below

in brief
Continuing the argument, the author cites travelers and writers to claim American Indigenous peoples have Mongoloid features, to argue for Asian origins, and to suggest links between continents via migrations and shallow sea passages.

Brazilian natives at the falls of Cachauhy as having thick, round Kalmuck heads, flat Mongol faces, wide, very prominent cheek bones, oblique and sometimes narrow-slit Chinese eyes, and slight mustaches.

Another traveler, J. J. Von Tschudi, declares in so many words that he has seen Chinese whom at the first glance he mistook for Botocudos, and that since then he has been convinced that the American race ought not to be separated from the Mongolian. His predecessor, St. Hilaire, noticed narrow, obliquely-set eyes and broad noses among the Malali of Brazil. Reinhold Hensel says of the Coroados, that their features are of Mongoloid type, due especially to the prominence of the cheek-bones, but that the oblique position of the eyes is not perceptible. Yet the oblique opening of the eye, which forms a good though not an essential characteristic of the Mongolian nations, is said to be characteristic of all the Guarani tribes in Brazil. Even in the extreme south, among the Hiullitches of Patagonia, King saw a great many with obliquely set eyes. Those writers who separate the Americans as a peculiar race fail to give distinctive characters, common to them all, which distinguish them from the Asiatic Mongols. All the tribes have stiff, long hair, cylindrical in section. The beard and hair of the body is always scanty or totally absent. The color of the skin varies considerably, as might be expected in a district of 110° of latitude; it ranges from a light South European darkness of complexion among the Botocudos, of the deepest dye among the Aymara, or to copper red in the Sonor tribes. But no one has tried to draw limits between races on account of these shades of color, especially as they are of every conceivable gradation.[540:1]

Charles G. Leland says:

"The Tunguse, Mongolians, and a great part of the Turkish race formed originally, according to all external organic tokens, as well as the elements of their language, but one people, closely allied with the Esquimaux, the Skräling, or dwarf of the Norseman, and the races of the New World. This is the irrefutable result to which all the more recent inquiries in anatomy and physiology, as well as comparative philology and history, have conduced. All the aboriginal Americans have those distinctive tokens which forcibly recall their neighbors dwelling on the other side of Behring's Straits. They have the four-cornered head, high cheek-bones, heavy jaws, large angular eye-cavities, and a retreating forehead. The skulls of the oldest Peruvian graves exhibit the same tokens as the heads of the nomadic tribes of Oregon and California."[540:2] "It is very certain that thousands of American Indians, especially those of small stature or of dwarfish tribes, bear a most extraordinary likeness to Mongols."[540:3]

John D. Baldwin, in his "Ancient America," says:

"I find myself more and more inclined to believe that the wild Indians of the North came originally from Asia, where the race to which they belong seems still represented by the Koraks and Cookchees, found in that part of Asia which extends to Behring's Straits."[540:4]

Hon. Charles D. Poston, late commissioner of the United States of America in Asia, in a work entitled, "The Parsees," speaking of an incident which took place "beyond the Great Wall," says:

"A Mongolian came riding up on a little black pony, followed by a servant on a camel, rocking like a windmill. He stopped a moment to exchange pantomimic salutations. He was full of electricity, and alive with motion; the blood was warm in his veins, and the fire was bright in his eye. I could have sworn that he was an Apache; every action, motion and look reminded me of my old enemies and neighbors in Arizona. They are the true descendants of the nomadic Tartars of Asia and preserve every instinct of the race. He shook hands friendlily but timidly, keeping all the time in motion like an Apache."[540:5]

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topics: fate, destiny, and necessity · voyages and seafaring

Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions · T. W. Doane (Thomas William Doane) · 1882