Under such circumstances it is possible that out of the
sixteen signs one sign might appear in both alphabets; there is one
chance in one hundred that such might be the case; but there is not one
chance in five hundred that this sign should in both cases represent the
same sound. It is barely possible that two men working thus apart should
bit upon two or three identical forms, but altogether impossible that
these forms should have the same significance; and by no stretch of the
imagination can it be supposed that in these alphabets so created,
without correspondence, thirteen out of sixteen signs should be the same
in form and the same in meaning.
It is probable that a full study of the Central American monuments may
throw stronger light upon the connection between the Maya and the
European alphabets, and that further discoveries of inscriptions in
Europe may approximate the alphabets of the New and Old World still more
closely by supplying intermediate forms.
We find in the American hieroglyphs peculiar signs which take the place
of pictures, and which probably, like the hieratic symbols mingled with
the hieroglyphics of Egypt, represent alphabetical sounds.
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