The same tendency is plainly shown in the two forms of the letter h, as given in Landa’s alphabet; the original form is more elaborate than the variation of it. The original form is ### The variation is given as ### . Now let us suppose this simplification to be carried a step farther: we have seen the upper and lower parts of the first form shrink into a smaller and less elaborate shape; let us imagine that the same tendency does away with them altogether; we would then have the letter H of the Maya alphabet represented by this figure, ### ; now, as it takes less time to make a single stroke than a double one, this would become in time ### . We turn now to the archaic Greek and the old Hebrew, and we find the letter h indicated by this sign, ### , precisely the Maya letter h simplified. We turn to the archaic Hebrew, and we find ### . Now it is known that the Phoenicians wrote from right to left, and just as we in writing from left to right slope our letters to the right, so did the Phoenicians slope their letters to the left. Hence the Maya sign becomes in the archaic Phoenician this, ### . In some of the Phoenician alphabets we even find the letter h made with the double strokes above and below, as in the Maya h. The Egyptian hieroglyph for h is ### while ch is ### . In time the Greeks carried the work of simplification still farther, and eliminated the top lines, as we have supposed the Atlanteans to have eliminated the double strokes, and they left the letter as it has come down to us, H.
Now it may be said that all this is coincidence. If it is, it is certainly remarkable. But let us go a step farther:
We have seen in Landa’s alphabet that there are two forms of the letter m. The first is ### . But we find also an m combined with the letter o, a, or e, says Landa, in this form, ### . The m here is certainly indicated by the central part of this combination, the figure ### ; where does that come from? It is clearly taken from the heart of the original figure wherein it appears. What does this prove? That the Atlanteans, or Mayas, when they sought to simplify their letters and combine them with others, took from the centre of the ornate hieroglyphical figure some characteristic mark with which they represented the whole figure. Now let us apply this rule:
We have seen in the table of alphabets that in every language, from our own day to the time of the Phoenicians, o has been represented by a circle or a circle within a circle. Now where did the Phoenicians get it? Clearly from the Mayas. There are two figures for o in the Maya alphabet; they are ### and ### ; now, if we apply the rule which we have seen to exist in the case of the Maya m to these figures, the essential characteristic found in each is the circle, in the first case pendant from the hieroglyph; in the other, in the centre of the lower part of it. And that this circle was withdrawn from the hieroglyph, and used alone, as in the case of the m, is proved by the very sign used at the foot of Landa’s alphabet, which is, ### Landa calls this ma, me, or mo; it is probably the latter, and in it we have the circle detached from the hieroglyph.