The Antediluvian World
by Ignatius Donnelly
Introduction by J.B. Hare
Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901), lawyer, land promoter, politician and virtuoso author, is today best known for his pioneering work on the subject of Atlantis, “Atlantis the Antediluvian World” (ATAW). Published in 1882, ATAW is one of the best constructed Atlantis theories, as it makes no recourse to occult or ‘channeled’ information. Donnelly’s lucid style and command of the facts (such as they were) make the book readable and compelling even today.
Donnelly started public service as Lieutenant-Governor of Minnesota, and then was elected to Congress in 1863. While in Washington D.C., he frequented the Library of Congress and did much of the research for ATAW. After returning to private life, he completed ATAW and finally published it in 1882, followed shortly by his other masterpiece ‘Ragnarök, the Age of Fire and Gravel’. Donnelly also wrote ‘The Great Cryptogram’, in which he proposed that Sir Francis Bacon was the real author of Shakespeare’s plays. However it was ATAW that secured Donnelly’s reputation. ATAW was an instant bestseller and has been in print ever since. ATAW inspired generations of occultists who claimed to ‘channel’ the Ultimate Truth from ancient Atlantis.
At the center of Donnelly’s thesis are a set of similarities between widely separated cultures. This he interpreted as evidence that all civilization diffused outward from a central point (a now sunken continent in the mid-Atlantic). He cites mythological, linguistic, ethnographic and other evidence for this theory, which at the time seemed to add up to an airtight case.
Donnelly proposes a literal interpretation of Plato’s account of Atlantis. He also ties Atlantis into the global flood myth-complex. These, until recently, have been two of the most compelling unsolved puzzles of history. What was Plato writing about when he described the prehistoric civilization of Atlantis, which disappeared overnight in a great catastrophe? Was this an actual historical account, or a philosophical fable? And why do widely separated cultures on every continent, Australia, the Americas, Europe and Asia all have a similar myth of a great flood from which only a few humans survived to restart civilization?
It is only in the past half century that proposals based in scientific fact have been proposed to solve these conundrums. It now appears that these two problems may actually be totally unrelated (although both have a spectacular origin related to catastrophes of geological scale).
The most commonly accepted hypothesis is that Plato’s account of Atlantis can be explained by the Thera catastrophe. A thriving Minoan-era culture in the Aegean was destroyed by a volcanic eruption on the scale of Krakatoa or Mt. Saint Helens, on the island of Thera circa 1500 B.C. This catastrophic explosion appears to have coincided with the start of the downfall of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, so it may have been accompanied by ash falls or tsunamis which destroyed coastal towns, reducing the viability of Minoan civilization (the economy was largely based on maritime activities).
The Thera discoveries have been extensively documented; portions of the city on Thera which the explosion covered with lava has been excavated and are eerily similar to Plato’s account. The layout of the Thera city had several circular canals surrounding a central acropolis just as Plato described (reduced in size by a factor of ten). The date was about 900 years prior to Plato, which is also a factor of ten less than the 9000 years that Plato gave for the destruction of Atlantis. So it is now accepted by mainstream archaeologists that an entire civilization could have been destroyed ‘in a single day’.
The global flood myth, although less well understood, may be a recollection of the rapid sea-level changes at the end of the Ice Age, when the sea rose 300 feet within a few hundred years. The chronology of the rise in sea levels 11,500 years ago has been verified recently by radio-isotope studies of ice cores extracted deep from the Greenland ice sheet. Areas significant for human migration such as the Indonesian archipelago, the English Channel, the Bering land-bridge and areas of the Caribbean were all flooded at this time. Ironically, this global flooding occurred fairly close to the time which Plato cited for the destruction of Atlantis (i.e., about 9,500 B.C.). This flooding was rapid only in geologic terms, and would be barely noticable in a human lifespan, except in one case that has come to light.
Recent submarine exploration of the Black Sea between Turkey and the Ukraine indicate that a natural dam at the isthmus leading to the Mediterranean burst during this period. Up to this point the Black Sea was much smaller than it is today. This rapid flooding appears to have overwhelmed a widespread Neolithic culture living in its basin in an extremely short time, possibly days or hours. The survivors may have migrated south to the Fertile Crescent, and the memory of the disaster evolved into the Biblical flood story.
At least Donnelly claimed that Atlantis was in the Atlantic, which at least makes logical sense if you take Plato at his word. The sole weak part of the Thera hypothesis is the hand waving required to explain away Plato’s unambiguous statement that Atlantis was “beyond the pillars of Hercules” and “larger than Libya and Asia [Minor] combined”. It is also remarkable that Plato’s description of the geography of the Atlantic is so accurate. He mentions that there is a continent on the other side of the Atlantic, beyond where Atlantis was situated, and describes the Mediterranean as ‘but a harbor’ compared to the rest of the ocean. This seems to indicate, at the very least, that someone had navigated the Atlantic in antiquity and returned to tell the tale.
Donnelly attaches a lot of significance to the mid-Atlantic ridge, which had just been discovered by the Challenger and Dolphin expeditions. The mid-Atlantic ridge when looked at without the covering ocean looks suggestively like a huge continental mass. However, we know today it is very different in origin: it is the result of the American, European and African tectonic plates colliding. It may be rising (albeit very slowly) instead of sinking. Unfortunately for Atlantis, most of this ridge lies at abysmal depths, and has probably never been above water at any time. This has been confirmed by the extremely deep sediments (hundreds of meters thick) that cover it, which can only be produced by millions of years of inundation.
As time has gone by, every nook and cranny of the globe has been claimed as the ‘real’ Atlantis: Bolivia, the North Sea off Denmark, Indonesia, the Bahamas and Antarctica are some of theories for the location.
Very little actual physical evidence has been presented for solutions other than Thera for the location of Atlantis. We don’t know of any sunken structures off the Azores, which would make the most sense if the mid-Atlantic area was Atlantis. There are submerged cyclopean stone roads in the Bimini area in the Bahamas, which may or may not be natural geological formations. These structures, discovered by scuba divers in 1968, are often cited as fulfilment of a prophecy of Edgar Cayce that Atlantis would be rediscovered (or possibly rise from the ocean depths) in the 1960s. Of course Cayce predicted that California would sink into the ocean about the same time, so I wouldn’t attach too much significance to it.
A reasonable explanation for the Bimini road might be that some unknown ice-age culture constructed the road (possibly for ceremonial reasons) when the sea-level was lower. The Bahamas, today a string of small islands, are surrounded by an extensive shelf area which was a fairly large island (the size of Cuba) during the ice-ages. Megalithic cultures in Malta were building similar structures at about the same time, so this was technologically feasible for the period. It doesn’t mean that this culture were the elusive Atlanteans, nor does it require any kind of extraterrestrial or advanced technology.
As noted, some have hypothesized that the Bimini road is just a natural geological formation. However, recent submerged finds off the coast of Japan which appear to be a megalithic ceremonial center reinforce the fact that we don’t yet have all of the evidence.
The North Sea was also flooded at the end of the Ice Ages and was certainly occupied by humans, as shown by the artifacts that come up in fishing nets occasionally. However there is no evidence that the inhabitants of the now sunken North Sea areas were anything but nomadic hunter-gatherers.
As far as documentary evidence goes, the 15th century Piri Reis map is often cited as evidence of a technologically advanced prehistoric civilization. This Turkish map, which is reputedly based on a collection of earlier maps, apparently shows a surprisingly accurate representation of the coast of Antarctica–free of ice. It also purportedly shows accurate features of the North and South American continents which had not been explored by Europeans at the time.
As Antarctica was only recently discovered by modern explorers, and the coast has been covered with ice for a very long time (possibly hundreds of thousands of years), this is anomalous, to say the least. A vast southern continent resembling Antarctica was sketched in on maps from very ancient times; but this might be just a lucky guess. However, this “Terra Incognita Australis” was just a fantasy land at the edges of the map, with landforms that bear no resemblance to reality. The Piri Reis map appears to match modern knowledge of the subglacial coastline.
The position of the followers of Charles Hapgood (who studied the map extensively in the 1950s) is that the Earth’s crust shifted in the year 9600 B.C. At this time, Antarctica shifted several hundred miles south. Prior to the shift an ice-free Antarctica was home to–you guessed it, the Atlanteans. The publication of this theory ended Hapgood’s academic career, despite support from none other than Albert Einstein. Hapgood’s books ‘the Earth’s Shifting Crust’, ‘the Path of the Pole’, and the recently republished ‘Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings’ are required reading for anyone interested in lost continents. Recently Rand and Rose Flem-Ath have picked up the torch with their excellent book ‘When the Sky Fell’. Hapgood and the Flem-Aths support a modern version of the diffusionist theory of culture.
Donnelly’s diffusionist argument is based on an extensive but ultimately flimsy collation of poorly understood ethnographic, mythological and linguistic evidence that unfortunately has not stood the test of time. Much of the underpinnings of his thesis have been completely discredited. One prime example is the bogus Bishop Landa Mayan alphabet on which he bases an entire labored chapter trying to prove that the Atlanteans invented writing.
The diffusion theory which Donnelly develops in the last two thirds of ATAW is today very out of favor. Such items as the couvade, polytheism, burial and marriage customs, and circumcision rituals cited by Donnelly do not prove that all culture spread out from one center in the (comparatively recent) past. Some of these cultural traits may go back as far as the Paleolithic.
Furthermore, most of the linguistic evidence that Donnelly cites would not even stand up to 19th century methodology. He cites a jumble of accidental word similarities between unrelated languages, throwing in examples from Indo-European (which of course, are related); this creates an optical illusion of similarity where there is none. He makes no attempt to find a systematic connection between the vocabularies he presents. This is not to say that there might not be a connection between the languages he cites; it’s just that Donnelly presents no scientific, etymological proof that there is any. The balance of the linguistic evidence that he presents is just hearsay or speculation by non-experts.
It is now known that there was not exactly an airtight separation between the Old World and the New. Today even very conservative historians are comfortable with the idea that the Norse got to America earlier than Columbus, because of firm documentation and archaeological evidence from Newfoundland. There is accepted evidence (because of Thor Heyerdahl’s expeditions and research) that the Polynesians and South Americans, and possibly the Egyptians and the Meso-Americans could have had trans-ocean contact.
There is also a body of controversial but not completely implausible cultural, archeological and documentary evidence that Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Sub-Saharan Africans, Welsh, Irish, Japanese, and Chinese could have had contacts with New World cultures. There are quite a few (possibly hoaxed, possibly not) New World runic inscriptions, particularly in New England and the Great Lakes area. Other inscriptions resembling Phoenician have turned up in the New World. There are statues with African features in the Yucatan. Conversely, traces of tobacco and coca have turned up in Egyptian tombs, plants which were only thought to have existed on the other side of the Atlantic at the time. There are legends of Chinese explorers reaching the American southwest in antiquity. As the Chinese during their exploratory period sailed as far as Madagascar, this is not entirely out of the question. Recently a book was published suggesting links between the Zuñis and the Japanese, and the author was treated receptively by academic reviewers. In addition, some have suggested that there may have been very early oceanic migration into the New World from the European side of the Atlantic.
This is a fascinating subject, and makes for interesting speculation. However, nobody is claiming that this is evidence for a global Atlantean Empire, as Donnelly did.
Some parts of Donnelly’s writing today appear naively racist by today’s standards. He seems unduly concerned about documenting minor variations in skin color, the lighter the better. He has occasionally been accused of being a racist or an anti-semite, based on out-of-context quotes. To set the record straight, during Donnelly’s career in the Civil War era US House of Representatives he was a strong Lincoln loyalist and very vocal about the preserving the Union. After the publication of ATAW he became a leading figure in the Farmers’ Alliance, which later became the Populist Party, and wrote the platform for the Populist Party in the election of 1892. Donnelly was an early representative of the progressive political heritage of the upper midwest, the forerunner of such figures as Paul Wellstone. Keep in mind that by the standards of his time he was very progressive. And obviously we can’t hold him to a rigorous standard of 21st century political correctness.
However, the most flawed aspects of Donnelly’s diffusionist theory have been (consciously or unconsciously) echoed by such modern authors as Von Daniken and Zecharia Sitchen. These authors just substitute ‘Extraterrestrial’ for ‘Atlantean’. Unfortunately, they end up aping the worst aspects of the theory. Von Daniken finds it hard to believe that ‘primitive’ cultures such as the Meso- and South Americans could construct pyramids, erect cyclopean and megalithic stonework, invent writing, an accurate calendar, and a numeric system with a representation for ‘zero’. Why does there have to be some outside influence, be it Atlanteans, Great White Brothers or Extraterrestrials? I say this reeks of first world chauvinism, regardless of whether the Earth has been ‘visited’.
So most of Donnelly’s argument has been invalidated. Why then does this book continue to be so compelling? Perhaps it is because we don’t want Atlantis to go away. The image is seductive; the idea that somewhere there is a completely undiscovered lost civilization brimming with artifacts made from precious metals brings out the Indiana Jones in all of us.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/ataw/index.htm
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ATLANTIS
THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD.
BY
IGNATIUS DONNELLY.
The world has made such comet-like advance
Lately on science, we may almost hope,
Before we die of sheer decay, to learn
Something about our infancy; when lived
That great, original, broad-eyed, sunken race,
Whose knowledge, like the sea-sustaining rocks,
Hath formed the base of this world’s fluctuous lore
FESTUS.
Frontpiece: The Profile of Atlantis
CONTENTS.
PART I.
THE HISTORY OF ATLANTIS.
I. THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK
II. PLATO’S HISTORY OF ATLANTIS
III. THE PROBABILITIES OF PLATO’S STORY
IV. WAS SUCH A CATASTROPHE POSSIBLE?
V. THE TESTIMONY OF THE SEA
VI. THE TESTIMONY OF THE FLORA AND FAUNA
PART II.
THE DELUGE.
I. THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS DESCRIBED IN THE DELUGE LEGENDS
II. THE DELUGE OF THE BIBLE
III. THE DELUGE OF THE CHALDEANS
IV. THE DELUGE LEGENDS OF OTHER NATIONS
V. THE DELUGE LEGENDS OF AMERICA
VI. SOME CONSIDERATION OF THE DELUGE LEGENDS
PART III
THE CIVILIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD AND NEW COMPARED.
I. CIVILIZATION AN INHERITANCE
II. THE IDENTITY OF THE CIVILIZATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW
III. AMERICAN EVIDENCES OF INTERCOURSE WITH EUROPE OR ATLANTIS
IV. CORROBORATING CIRCUMSTANCES
V. THE QUESTION OF COMPLEXION
VI. GENESIS CONTAINS A HISTORY OF ATLANTIS
VII. THE: ORIGIN OF OUR ALPHABET
VIII. THE BRONZE AGE IN EUROPE
IX. ARTIFICIAL DEFORMATION OF THE SKULL
PART IV.
THE MYTHOLOGIES OF THE OLD WORLD A RECOLLECTION OF ATLANTIS.
I. TRADITIONS OF ATLANTIS
II. THE KINGS OF ATLANTIS BECOME THE GODS OF THE GREEKS
III. THE GODS OF THE PH?NICIANS ALSO KINGS OF ATLANTIS
IV. THE GOD ODIN, WODEN, OR WOTAN
V. THE PYRAMID, THE CROSS, AND THE GARDEN OF EDEN
VI. GOLD AND SILVER THE SACRED METALS OF ATLANTIS
PART V.
THE COLONIES OF ATLANTIS.
I. THE CENTRAL AMERICAN AND MEXICAN COLONIES
II. THE EGYPTIAN COLONY
III. THE COLONIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
IV. THE IBERIAN COLONIES OF ATLANTIS
V. THE PERUVIAN COLONY
VI. THE AFRICAN COLONIES
VII. THE IRISH COLONIES FROM ATLANTIS
VIII. THE OLDEST SON OF NOAH
IX. THE ANTIQUITY OF SOME OF OUR GREAT INVENTIONS
X. THE ARYAN COLONIES FROM ATLANTIS
XI. ATLANTIS RECONSTRUCTED
ATLANTIS:
THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD.
PART I. THE HISTORY OF ATLANTIS.
CHAPTER I.
THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK.
This book is an attempt to demonstrate several distinct and novel
propositions. These are:
1. That there once existed in the Atlantic Ocean, opposite the mouth of
the Mediterranean Sea, a large island, which was the remnant of an
Atlantic continent, and known to the ancient world as Atlantis.
2. That the description of this island given by Plato is not, as has
been long supposed, fable, but veritable history.
3. That Atlantis was the region where man first rose from a state of
barbarism to civilization.
4. That it became, in the course of ages, a populous and mighty nation,
from whose overflowings the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the
Mississippi River, the Amazon, the Pacific coast of South America, the
Mediterranean, the west coast of Europe and Africa, the Baltic, the
Black Sea, and the Caspian were populated by civilized nations.
5. That it was the true Antediluvian world; the Garden of Eden; the
Gardens of the Hesperides; the Elysian Fields; the Gardens of Alcinous;
the Mesomphalos; the Olympos; the Asgard of the traditions of the
ancient nations; representing a universal memory of a great land, where
early mankind dwelt for ages in peace and happiness.
6. That the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks, the Ph?nicians,
the Hindoos, and the Scandinavians were simply the kings, queens, and
heroes of Atlantis; and the acts attributed to them in mythology are a
confused recollection of real historical events.
7. That the mythology of Egypt and Peru represented the original
religion of Atlantis, which was sun-worship.
8. That the oldest colony formed by the Atlanteans was probably in
Egypt, whose civilization was a reproduction of that of the Atlantic
island.
9. That the implements of the “Bronze Age” of Europe were derived from
Atlantis. The Atlanteans were also the first manufacturers of iron.
10. That the Ph?nician alphabet, parent of all the European alphabets,
was derived from an Atlantis alphabet, which was also conveyed from
Atlantis to the Mayas of Central America.
11. That Atlantis was the original seat of the Aryan or Indo-European
family of nations, as well as of the Semitic peoples, and possibly also
of the Turanian races.
12. That Atlantis perished in a terrible convulsion of nature, in which
the whole island sunk into the ocean, with nearly all its inhabitants.
13. That a few persons escaped in ships and on rafts, and, carried to
the nations east and west the tidings of the appalling catastrophe,
which has survived to our own time in the Flood and Deluge legends of
the different nations of the old and new worlds.
If these propositions can be proved, they will solve many problems which
now perplex mankind; they will confirm in many respects the statements
in the opening chapters of Genesis; they will widen the area of human
history; they will explain the remarkable resemblances which exist
between the ancient civilizations found upon the opposite shores of the
Atlantic Ocean, in the old and new worlds; and they will aid us to
rehabilitate the fathers of our civilization, our blood, and our
fundamental ideas-the men who lived, loved, and labored ages before the
Aryans descended upon India, or the Ph?nician had settled in Syria, or
the Goth had reached the shores of the Baltic.
The fact that the story of Atlantis was for thousands of years regarded
as a fable proves nothing. There is an unbelief which grows out of
ignorance, as well as a scepticism which is born of intelligence. The
people nearest to the past are not always those who are best informed
concerning the past.
For a thousand years it was believed that the legends of the buried
cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were myths: they were spoken of as
“the fabulous cities.” For a thousand years the educated world did not
credit the accounts given by Herodotus of the wonders of the ancient
civilizations of the Nile and of Chaldea. He was called “the father of
liars.” Even Plutarch sneered at him. Now, in the language of Frederick
Schlegel, “the deeper and more comprehensive the researches of the
moderns have been, the more their regard and esteem for Herodotus has
increased.” Buckle says, “His minute information about Egypt and Asia
Minor is admitted by all geographers.”
There was a time when the expedition sent out by Pharaoh Necho to
circumnavigate Africa was doubted, because the explorers stated that
after they had progressed a certain distance the sun was north of them;
this circumstance, which then aroused suspicion, now proves to us that
the Egyptian navigators had really passed the equator, and anticipated
by 2100 years Vasquez de Gama in his discovery of the Cape of Good Hope.
If I succeed in demonstrating the truth of the somewhat startling
propositions with which I commenced this chapter, it will only be by
bringing to bear upon the question of Atlantis a thousand converging
lines of light from a multitude of researches made by scholars in
different fields of modern thought. Further investigations and
discoveries will, I trust, confirm the correctness of the conclusions at
which I have arrived.
CHAPTER II.
PLATO’S HISTORY OF ATLANTIS.
Plato has preserved for us the history of Atlantis. If our views are
correct, it is one of the most valuable records which have come down to
us from antiquity.
Plato lived 400 years before the birth of Christ. His ancestor, Solon,
was the great law-giver of Athens 600 years before the Christian era.
Solon visited Egypt. Plutarch says, “Solon attempted in verse a large
description, or rather fabulous account of the Atlantic Island, which he
had learned from the wise men of Sais, and which particularly concerned
the Athenians; but by reason of his age, not want of leisure (as Plato
would have it), he was apprehensive the work would be too much for him,
and therefore did not go through with it. These verses are a proof that
business was not the hinderance:
“‘I grow in learning as I grow in age.’
And again:
“‘Wine, wit, and beauty still their charms bestow,
Light all the shades of life, and cheer us as we go.’
“Plato, ambitious to cultivate and adorn the subject of the Atlantic
Island, as a delightful spot in some fair field unoccupied, to which
also he had some claim by reason of his being related to Solon, laid out
magnificent courts and enclosures, and erected a grand entrance to it,
such as no other story, fable, or Poem ever had. But, as he began it
late, he ended his life before the work, so that the more the reader is
delighted with the part that is written, the more regret he has to find
it unfinished.”
There can be no question that Solon visited Egypt. The causes of his
departure from Athens, for a period of ten years, are fully explained by
Plutarch. He dwelt, he tells us,
“On the Canopian shore, by Nile’s deep mouth.”
There be conversed upon points of philosophy and history with the most
learned of the Egyptian priests. He was a man of extraordinary force and
penetration of mind, as his laws and his sayings, which have been
preserved to us, testify. There is no improbability in the statement
that he commenced in verse a history and description of Atlantis, which
he left unfinished at his death; and it requires no great stretch of the
imagination to believe that this manuscript reached the hands of his
successor and descendant, Plato; a scholar, thinker, and historian like
himself, and, like himself, one of the profoundest minds of the ancient
world. The Egyptian priest had said to Solon, “You have no antiquity of
history, and no history of antiquity;” and Solon doubtless realized
fully the vast importance of a record which carried human history back,
not only thousands of years before the era of Greek civilization, but
many thousands of years before even the establishment of the kingdom of
Egypt; and he was anxious to preserve for his half-civilized countrymen
this inestimable record of the past.
We know of no better way to commence a book about Atlantis than by
giving in full the record preserved by Plato. It is as follows:
Critias. Then listen, Socrates, to a strange tale, which is, however,
certainly true, as Solon, who was the wisest of the seven sages,
declared. He was a relative and great friend of my great-grandfather,
Dropidas, as he himself says in several of his poems; and Dropidas told
Critias, my grandfather, who remembered, and told us, that there were of
old great and marvellous actions of the Athenians, which have passed
into oblivion through time and the destruction of the human race and one
in particular, which was the greatest of them all, the recital of which
will be a suitable testimony of our gratitude to you….
Socrates. Very good; and what is this ancient famous action of which
Critias spoke, not as a mere legend, but as a veritable action of the
Athenian State, which Solon recounted!
Critias. I will tell an old-world story which I heard from an aged man;
for Critias was, as he said, at that time nearly ninety years of age,
and I was about ten years of age. Now the day was that day of the
Apaturia which is called the registration of youth; at which, according
to custom, our parents gave prizes for recitations, and the poems of
several poets were recited by us boys, and many of us sung the poems of
Solon, which were new at the time. One of our tribe, either because this
was his real opinion, or because he thought that he would please
Critias, said that, in his judgment, Solon was not only the wisest of
men but the noblest of poets. The old man, I well remember, brightened
up at this, and said, smiling: “Yes, Amynander, if Solon had only, like
other poets, made poetry the business of his life, and had completed the
tale which he brought with him from Egypt, and had not been compelled,
by reason of the factions and troubles which he found stirring in this
country when he came home, to attend to other matters, in my opinion he
would have been as famous as Homer, or Hesiod, or any poet.”
“And what was that poem about, Critias?” said the person who addressed
him.
“About the greatest action which the Athenians ever did, and which ought
to have been most famous, but which, through the lapse of time and the
destruction of the actors, has not come down to us.”
“Tell us,” said the other, “the whole story, and bow and from whom Solon
heard this veritable tradition.”
He replied: “At the head of the Egyptian Delta, where the river Nile
divides, there is a certain district which is called the district of
Sais, and the great city of the district is also called Sais, and is the
city from which Amasis the king was sprung. And the citizens have a
deity who is their foundress: she is called in the Egyptian tongue
Neith, which is asserted by them to be the same whom the Hellenes called
Athene. Now, the citizens of this city are great lovers of the
Athenians, and say that they are in some way related to them. Thither
came Solon, who was received by them with great honor; and he asked the
priests, who were most skilful in such matters, about antiquity, and
made the discovery that neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything
worth mentioning about the times of old. On one occasion, when he was
drawing them on to speak of antiquity, he began to tell about the most
ancient things in our part of the world–about Phoroneus, who is called
‘the first,’ and about Niobe; and, after the Deluge, to tell of the
lives of Deucalion and Pyrrha; and he traced the genealogy of their
descendants, and attempted to reckon bow many years old were the events
of which he was speaking, and to give the dates. Thereupon, one of the
priests, who was of very great age; said, ‘O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes
are but children, and there is never an old man who is an Hellene.’
Solon, bearing this, said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I mean to say,’ he
replied, ‘that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed
down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with
age. And I will tell you the reason of this: there have been, and there
will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes.
There is a story which even you have preserved, that once upon a time
Phaëthon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father’s
chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his
father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed
by a thunderbolt. Now, this has the form of a myth, but really signifies
a declination of the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens,
and a great conflagration of things upon the earth recurring at long
intervals of time: when this happens, those who live upon the mountains
and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those
who dwell by rivers or on the sea-shore; and from this calamity the
Nile, who is our never-failing savior, saves and delivers us. When, on
the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, among
you herdsmen and shepherds on the mountains are the survivors, whereas
those of you who live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea;
but in this country neither at that time nor at any other does the water
come from above on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from
below, for which reason the things preserved here are said to be the
oldest. The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or of
summer sun does not prevent, the human race is always increasing at
times, and at other times diminishing in numbers. And whatever happened
either in your country or in ours, or in any other region of which we
are informed–if any action which is noble or great, or in any other way
remarkable has taken place, all that has been written down of old, and
is preserved in our temples; whereas you and other nations are just
being provided with letters and the other things which States require;
and then, at the usual period, the stream from heaven descends like a
pestilence, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters
and education; and thus you have to begin all over again as children,
and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or
among yourselves. As for those genealogies of yours which you have
recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children;
for, in the first place, you remember one deluge only, whereas there
were many of them; and, in the next place, you do not know that there
dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived,
of whom you and your whole city are but a seed or remnant. And this was
unknown to you, because for many generations the survivors of that
destruction died and made no sign. For there was a time, Solon, before
that great deluge of all, when the city which now is Athens was first in
war, and was preeminent for the excellence of her laws, and is said to
have performed the noblest deeds, and to have had the fairest
constitution of any of which tradition tells, under the face of heaven.’
Solon marvelled at this, and earnestly requested the priest to inform
him exactly and in order about these former citizens. ‘You are welcome
to hear about them, Solon,’ said the priest, ‘both for your own sake and
for that of the city; and, above all, for the sake of the goddess who is
the common patron and protector and educator of both our cities. She
founded your city a thousand years before ours, receiving from the Earth
and Hephæstus the seed of your race, and then she founded ours, the
constitution of which is set down in our sacred registers as 8000 years
old. As touching the citizens of 9000 years ago, I will briefly inform
you of their laws and of the noblest of their actions; and the exact
particulars of the whole we will hereafter go through at our leisure, in
the sacred registers themselves. If you compare these very laws with
your own, you will find that many of ours are the counterpart of yours,
as they were in the olden time. In the first place, there is the caste
of priests, which is separated from all the others; next there are the
artificers, who exercise their several crafts by themselves, and without
admixture of any other; and also there is the class of shepherds and
that of hunters, as well as that of husbandmen; and you will observe,
too, that the warriors in Egypt are separated from all the other
classes, and are commanded by the law only to engage in war; moreover,
the weapons with which they are equipped are shields and spears, and
this the goddess taught first among you, and then in Asiatic countries,
and we among the Asiatics first adopted.
“‘Then, as to wisdom, do you observe what care the law took from the
very first, searching out and comprehending the whole order of things
down to prophecy and medicine (the latter with a view to health); and
out of these divine elements drawing what was needful for human life,
and adding every sort of knowledge which was connected with them. All
this order and arrangement the goddess first imparted to you when
establishing your city; and she chose the spot of earth in which you
were born, because she saw that the happy temperament of the seasons in
that land would produce the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess, who
was a lover both of war and of wisdom, selected, and first of all
settled that spot which was the most likely to produce men likest
herself. And there you dwelt, having such laws as these and still better
ones, and excelled all mankind in all virtue, as became the children and
disciples of the gods. Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of
your State in our histories; but one of them exceeds all the rest in
greatness and valor; for these histories tell of a mighty power which
was aggressing wantonly against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to
which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic
Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an
island situated in front of the straits which you call the Columns of
Heracles: the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and
was the way to other islands, and from the islands you might pass
through the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true
ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a
harbor, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the
surrounding land may be most truly called a continent. Now, in the
island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire, which had
rule over the whole island and several others, as well as over parts of
the continent; and, besides these, they subjected the parts of Libya
within the Columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as
Tyrrhenia. The vast power thus gathered into one, endeavored to subdue
at one blow our country and yours, and the whole of the land which was
within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the
excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind; for she was
the first in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the
Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand
alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated
and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who
were not yet subjected, and freely liberated all the others who dwelt
within the limits of Heracles. But afterward there occurred violent
earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night of rain all your
warlike men in a body sunk into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in
like manner disappeared, and was sunk beneath the sea. And that is the
reason why the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable,
because there is such a quantity of shallow mud in the way; and this was
caused by the subsidence of the island.’ (“Plato’s Dialogues,” ii., 617,
Timæus.) . . .
“But in addition to the gods whom you have mentioned, I would specially
invoke Mnemosyne; for all the important part of what I have to tell is
dependent on her favor, and if I can recollect and recite enough of what
was said by the priests, and brought hither by Solon, I doubt not that I
shall satisfy the requirements of this theatre. To that task, then, I
will at once address myself.
“Let me begin by observing, first of all, that nine thousand was the sum
of years which had elapsed since the war which was said to have taken
place between all those who dwelt outside the Pillars of Heracles and
those who dwelt within them: this war I am now to describe. Of the
combatants on the one side the city of Athens was reported to have been
the ruler, and to have directed the contest; the combatants on the other
side were led by the kings of the islands of Atlantis, which, as I was
saying, once had an extent greater than that of Libya and Asia; and,
when afterward sunk by an earthquake, became an impassable barrier of
mud to voyagers sailing from hence to the ocean. The progress of the
history will unfold the various tribes of barbarians and Hellenes which
then existed, as they successively appear on the scene; but I must begin
by describing, first of all, the Athenians as they were in that day, and
their enemies who fought with them; and I shall have to tell of the
power and form of government of both of them. Let us give the precedence
to Athens. . . .
“Many great deluges have taken place during the nine thousand years, for
that is the number of years which have elapsed since the time of which I
am speaking; and in all the ages and changes of things there has never
been any settlement of the earth flowing down from the mountains, as in
other places, which is worth speaking of; it has always been carried
round in a circle, and disappeared in the depths below. The consequence
is that, in comparison of what then was, there are remaining in small
islets only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called, all the
richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere
skeleton of the country being left. . . .
“And next, if I have not forgotten what I heard when I was a child, I
will impart to you the character and origin of their adversaries; for
friends should not keep their stories to themselves, but have them in
common. Yet, before proceeding farther in the narrative, I ought to warn
you that you must not be surprised if you should bear Hellenic names
given to foreigners. I will tell you the reason of this: Solon, who was
intending to use the tale for his poem, made an investigation into the
meaning of the names, and found that the early Egyptians, in writing
them down, had translated them into their own language, and he recovered
the meaning of the several names and retranslated them, and copied them
out again in our language. My great-grandfather, Dropidas, had the
original writing, which is still in my possession, and was carefully
studied by me when I was a child. Therefore, if you bear names such as
are used in this country, you must not be surprised, for I have told you
the reason of them.
“The tale, which was of great length, began as follows: I have before
remarked, in speaking of the allotments of the gods, that they
distributed the whole earth into portions differing in extent, and made
themselves temples and sacrifices. And Poseidon, receiving for his lot
the island of Atlantis, begat children by a mortal woman, and settled
them in a part of the island which I will proceed to describe. On the
side toward the sea, and in the centre of the whole island, there was a
plain which is said to have been the fairest of all plains, and very
fertile. Near the plain again, and also in the centre of the island, at
a distance of about fifty stadia, there was a mountain, not very high on
any side. In this mountain there dwelt one of the earth-born primeval
men of that country, whose name was Evenor, and he had a wife named
Leucippe, and they had an only daughter, who was named Cleito. The
maiden was growing up to womanhood when her father and mother died;
Poseidon fell in love with her, and had intercourse with her; and,
breaking the ground, enclosed the hill in which she dwelt all round,
making alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller, encircling
one another; there were two of land and three of water, which he turned
as with a lathe out of the centre of the island, equidistant every way,
so that no man could get to the island, for ships and voyages were not
yet heard of. He himself, as he was a god, found no difficulty in making
special arrangements for the centre island, bringing two streams of
water under the earth, which he caused to ascend as springs, one of warm
water and the other of cold, and making every variety of food to spring
up abundantly in the earth. He also begat and brought up five pairs of
male children, dividing the island of Atlantis into ten portions: he
gave to the first-born of the eldest pair his mother’s dwelling and the
surrounding allotment, which was the largest and best, and made him king
over the rest; the others he made princes, and gave them rule over many
men and a large territory. And he named them all: the eldest, who was
king, he named Atlas, and from him the whole island and the ocean
received the name of Atlantic. To his twin-brother, who was born after
him, and obtained as his lot the extremity of the island toward the
Pillars of Heracles, as far as the country which is still called the
region of Gades in that part of the world, he gave the name which in the
Hellenic language is Eumelus, in the language of the country which is
named after him, Gadeirus. Of the second pair of twins, he called one
Ampheres and the other Evæmon. To the third pair of twins he gave the
name Mneseus to the elder, and Autochthon to the one who followed him.
Of the fourth pair of twins he called the elder Elasippus and the
younger Mestor. And of the fifth pair he gave to the elder the name of
Azaes, and to the younger Diaprepes. All these and their descendants
were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea; and
also, as has been already said, they held sway in the other direction
over the country within the Pillars as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia. Now
Atlas had a numerous and honorable family, and his eldest branch always
retained the kingdom, which the eldest son handed on to his eldest for
many generations; and they had such an amount of wealth as was never
before possessed by kings and potentates, and is not likely ever to be
again, and they were furnished with everything which they could have,
both in city and country. For, because of the greatness of their empire,
many things were brought to them from foreign countries, and the island
itself provided much of what was required by them for the uses of life.
In the first place, they dug out of the earth whatever was to be found
there, mineral as well as metal, and that which is now only a name, and
was then something more than a name–orichalcum–was dug out of the
earth in many parts of the island, and, with the exception of gold, was
esteemed the most precious of metals among the men of those days. There
was an abundance of wood for carpenters’ work, and sufficient
maintenance for tame and wild animals. Moreover, there were a great
number of elephants in the island, and there was provision for animals
of every kind, both for those which live in lakes and marshes and
rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and on plains, and
therefore for the animal which is the largest and most voracious of
them. Also, whatever fragrant things there are in the earth, whether
roots, or herbage, or woods, or distilling drops of flowers or fruits,
grew and thrived in that land; and again, the cultivated fruit of the
earth, both the dry edible fruit and other species of food, which we
call by the general name of legumes, and the fruits having a hard rind,
affording drinks, and meats, and ointments, and good store of chestnuts
and the like, which may be used to play with, and are fruits which spoil
with keeping–and the pleasant kinds of dessert which console us after
dinner, when we are full and tired of eating–all these that sacred
island lying beneath the sun brought forth fair and wondrous in infinite
abundance. All these things they received from the earth, and they
employed themselves in constructing their temples, and palaces, and
harbors, and docks; and they arranged the whole country in the following
manner: First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which surrounded
the ancient metropolis, and made a passage into and out of they began to
build the palace in the royal palace; and then the habitation of the god
and of their ancestors. This they continued to ornament in successive
generations, every king surpassing the one who came before him to the
utmost of his power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for
size and for beauty. And, beginning from the sea, they dug a canal three
hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth, and fifty stadia in
length, which they carried through to the outermost zone, making a
passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbor, and leaving an
opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress.
Moreover, they divided the zones of land which parted the zones of sea,
constructing bridges of such a width as would leave a passage for a
single trireme to pass out of one into another, and roofed them over;
and there was a way underneath for the ships, for the banks of the zones
were raised considerably above the water. Now the largest of the zones
into which a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth,
and the zone of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next two,
as well the zone of water as of land, were two stadia, and the one which
surrounded the central island was a stadium only in width. The island in
which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia. This, and
the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in
width, they surrounded by a stone wall, on either side placing towers,
and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. The stone which was
used in the work they quarried from underneath the centre island and
from underneath the zones, on the outer as well as the inner side. One
kind of stone was white, another black, and a third red; and, as they
quarried, they at the same time hollowed out docks double within, having
roofs formed out of the native rock. Some of their buildings were
simple, but in others they put together different stones, which they
intermingled for the sake of ornament, to be a natural source of
delight. The entire circuit of the wall which went round the outermost
one they covered with a coating of brass, and the circuit of the next
wall they coated with tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel
flashed with the red light of orichalcum. The palaces in the interior of
the citadel were constructed in this wise: In the centre was a holy
temple dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon, which remained inaccessible,
and was surrounded by an enclosure of gold; this was the spot in which
they originally begat the race of the ten princes, and thither they
annually brought the fruits of the earth in their season from all the
ten portions, and performed sacrifices to each of them. Here, too, was
Poiseidon’s own temple, of a stadium in length and half a stadium in
width, and of a proportionate height, having a sort of barbaric
splendor. All the outside of the temple, with the exception of the
pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold. In the
interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, adorned everywhere with
gold and silver and orichalcum; all the other parts of the walls and
pillars and floor they lined with orichalcum. In the temple they placed
statues of gold: there was the god himself standing in a chariot–the
charioteer of six winged horses–and of such a size that he touched the
roof of the building with his head; around him there were a hundred
Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was thought to be the number of
them in that day. There were also in the interior of the temple other
images which had been dedicated by private individuals. And around the
temple on the outside were placed statues of gold of all the ten kings
and of their wives; and there were many other great offerings, both of
kings and of private individuals, coming both from the city itself and
the foreign cities over which they held sway. There was an altar, too,
which in size and workmanship corresponded to the rest of the work, and
there were palaces in like manner which answered to the greatness of the
kingdom and the glory of the temple.
“In the next place, they used fountains both of cold and hot springs;
these were very abundant, and both kinds wonderfully adapted to use by
reason of the sweetness and excellence of their waters. They constructed
buildings about them, and planted suitable trees; also cisterns, some
open to the heaven, other which they roofed over, to be used in winter
as warm baths, there were the king’s baths, and the baths of private
persons, which were kept apart; also separate baths for women, and
others again for horses and cattle, and to them they gave as much
adornment as was suitable for them. The water which ran off they
carried, some to the grove of Poseidon, where were growing all manner of
trees of wonderful height and beauty, owing to the excellence of the
soil; the remainder was conveyed by aqueducts which passed over the
bridges to the outer circles: and there were many temples built and
dedicated to many gods; also gardens and places of exercise, some for
men, and some set apart for horses, in both of the two islands formed by
the zones; and in the centre of the larger of the two there was a
race-course of a stadium in width, and in length allowed to extend all
round the island, for horses to race in. Also there were guard-houses at
intervals for the body-guard, the more trusted of whom had their duties
appointed to them in the lesser zone, which was nearer the Acropolis;
while the most trusted of all had houses given them within the citadel,
and about the persons of the kings. The docks were full of triremes and
naval stores, and all things were quite ready for use. Enough of the
plan of the royal palace. Crossing the outer harbors, which were three
in number, you would come to a wall which began at the sea and went all
round: this was everywhere distant fifty stadia from the largest zone
and harbor, and enclosed the whole, meeting at the mouth of the channel
toward the sea. The entire area was densely crowded with habitations;
and the canal and the largest of the harbors were full of vessels and
merchants coming from all parts, who, from their numbers, kept up a
multitudinous sound of human voices and din of all sorts night and day.
I have repeated his descriptions of the city and the parts about the
ancient palace nearly as he gave them, and now I must endeavor to
describe the nature and arrangement of the rest of the country. The
whole country was described as being very lofty and precipitous on the
side of the sea, but the country immediately about and surrounding the
city was a level plain, itself surrounded by mountains which descended
toward the sea; it was smooth and even, but of an oblong shape,
extending in one direction three thousand stadia, and going up the
country from the sea through the centre of the island two thousand
stadia; the whole region of the island lies toward the south, and is
sheltered from the north. The surrounding mountains he celebrated for
their number and size and beauty, in which they exceeded all that are
now to be seen anywhere; having in them also many wealthy inhabited
villages, and rivers and lakes, and meadows supplying food enough for
every animal, wild or tame, and wood of various sorts, abundant for
every kind of work. I will now describe the plain, which had been
cultivated during many ages by many generations of kings. It was
rectangular, and for the most part straight and oblong; and what it
wanted of the straight line followed the line of the circular ditch. The
depth and width and length of this ditch were incredible and gave the
impression that such a work, in addition to so many other works, could
hardly have been wrought by the hand of man. But I must say what I have
heard. It was excavated to the depth of a hundred feet, and its breadth
was a stadium everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain,
and was ten thousand stadia in length. It received the streams which
came down from the mountains, and winding round the plain, and touching
the city at various points, was there let off into the sea. From above,
likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut in the
plain, and again let off into the ditch, toward the sea; these canals
were at intervals of a Hundred stadia, and by them they brought, down
the wood from the mountains to the city, and conveyed the fruits of the
earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal into another,
and to the city. Twice in the year they gathered the fruits of the
earth–in winter having the benefit of the rains, and in summer
introducing the water of the canals. As to the population, each of the
lots in the plain had an appointed chief of men who were fit for
military service, and the size of the lot was to be a square of ten
stadia each way, and the total number of all the lots was sixty thousand.
“And of the inhabitants of the mountains and of the rest of the country
there was also a vast multitude having leaders, to whom they were
assigned according to their dwellings and villages. The leader was
required to furnish for the war the sixth portion of a war-chariot, so
as to make up a total of ten thousand chariots; also two horses and
riders upon them, and a light chariot without a seat, accompanied by a
fighting man on foot carrying a small shield, and having a charioteer
mounted to guide the horses; also, he was bound to furnish two
heavy-armed men, two archers, two slingers, three stone-shooters, and
three javelin men, who were skirmishers, and four sailors to make up a
complement of twelve hundred ships. Such was the order of war in the
royal city–that of the other nine governments was different in each of
them, and would be wearisome to narrate. As to offices and honors, the
following was the arrangement from the first: Each of the ten kings, in
his own division and in his own city, had the absolute control of the
citizens, and in many cases of the laws, punishing and slaying
whomsoever he would.
“Now the relations of their governments to one another were regulated by
the injunctions of Poseidon as the law had handed them down. These were
inscribed by the first men on a column of orichalcum, which was situated
in the middle of the island, at the temple of Poseidon, whither the
people were gathered together every fifth and sixth years alternately,
thus giving equal honor to the odd and to the even number. And when they
were gathered together they consulted about public affairs, and inquired
if any one had transgressed in anything, and passed judgment on him
accordingly–and before they passed judgment they gave their pledges to
one another in this wise: There were bulls who had the range of the
temple of Poseidon; and the ten who were left alone in the temple, after
they had offered prayers to the gods that they might take the sacrifices
which were acceptable to them, hunted the bulls without weapons, but
with staves and nooses; and the bull which they caught they led up to
the column; the victim was then struck on the head by them, and slain
over the sacred inscription. Now on the column, besides the law, there
was inscribed an oath invoking mighty curses on the disobedient. When,
therefore, after offering sacrifice according to their customs, they had
burnt the limbs of the bull, they mingled a cup and cast in a clot of
blood for each of them; the rest of the victim they took to the fire,
after having made a purification of the column all round. Then they drew
from the cup in golden vessels, and, pouring a libation on the fire,
they swore t hat they would judge according to the laws on the column,
and would punish any one who had previously transgressed, and that for
the future they would not, if they could help, transgress any of the
inscriptions, and would not command or obey any ruler who commanded them
to act otherwise than according to the laws of their father Poseidon.
This was the prayer which each of them offered up for himself and for
his family, at the same time drinking, and dedicating the vessel in the
temple of the god; and, after spending some necessary time at supper,
when darkness came on and the fire about the sacrifice was cool, all of
them put on most beautiful azure robes, and, sitting on the ground at
night near the embers of the sacrifices on which they had sworn, and
extinguishing all the fire about the temple, they received and gave
judgement, if any of them had any accusation to bring against any one;
and, when they had given judgment, at daybreak they wrote down their
sentences on a golden tablet, and deposited them as memorials with their
robes. There were many special laws which the several kings had
inscribed about the temples, but the most important was the following:
That they were not to take up arms against one another, and they were
all to come to the rescue if any one in any city attempted to over.
throw the royal house. Like their ancestors, they were to deliberate in
common about war and other matters, giving the supremacy to the family
of Atlas; and the king was not to have the power of life and death over
any of his kinsmen, unless he had the assent of the majority of the ten
kings.
“Such was the vast power which the god settled in the lost island of
Atlantis; and this he afterward directed against our land on the
following pretext, as traditions tell: For many generations, as long as
the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and
well-affectioned toward the gods, who were their kinsmen; for they
possessed true and in every way great spirits, practising gentleness and
wisdom in the various chances of life, and in their intercourse with one
another. They despised everything but virtue, not caring for their
present state of life, and thinking lightly on the possession of gold
and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were
they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their
self-control; but they were sober, and saw clearly that all these goods
are increased by virtuous friendship with one another, and that by
excessive zeal for them, and honor of them, the good of them is lost,
and friendship perishes with them.
“By such reflections, and by the continuance in them of a divine nature,
all that which we have described waxed and increased in them; but when
this divine portion began to fade away in them, and became diluted too
often, and with too much of the mortal admixture, and the human nature
got the upper-hand, then, they being unable to bear their fortune,
became unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see, they began to appear
base, and had lost the fairest of their precious gifts; but to those who
had no eye to see the true happiness, they still appeared glorious and
blessed at the very time when they were filled with unrighteous avarice
and power. Zeus, the god of gods, who rules with law, and is able to see
into such things, perceiving that an honorable race was in a most
wretched state, and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that they
might be chastened and improved, collected all the gods into his most
holy habitation, which, being placed in the centre of the world, sees
all things that partake of generation. And when he had called them
together he spake as follows:”
[Here Plato’s story abruptly ends.]
CHAPTER III.
THE PROBABILITIES OF PLATO’S STORY.
There is nothing improbable in this narrative, so far as it describes a
great, rich, cultured, and educated people. Almost every part of Plato’s
story can be paralleled by descriptions of the people of Egypt or Peru;
in fact, in some respects Plato’s account of Atlantis falls short of
Herodotus’s description of the grandeur of Egypt, or Prescott’s picture
of the wealth and civilization of Peru. For instance, Prescott, in his
“Conquest of Peru” (vol. i., p. 95), says:
“The most renowned of the Peruvian temples, the pride of the capital and
the wonder of the empire, was at Cuzco, where, under the munificence of
successive sovereigns, it had become so enriched that it received the
name of Coricancha, or ‘the Place of Gold.’ . . . The interior of the
temple was literally a mine of gold. On the western wall was emblazoned
a representation of the Deity, consisting of a human countenance looking
forth from amid innumerable rays of light, which emanated from it in
every direction, in the same manner as the sun is often personified with
us. The figure was engraved on a massive plate of gold, of enormous
dimensions, thickly powdered with emeralds and precious stones. . . .
The walls and ceilings were everywhere incrusted with golden ornaments;
every part of the interior of the temple glowed with burnished plates
and studs of the precious metal; the cornices were of the same material.”
There are in Plato’s narrative no marvels; no myths; no tales of gods,
gorgons, hobgoblins, or giants. It is a plain and reasonable history of
a people who built temples, ships, and canals; who lived by agriculture
and commerce: who in pursuit of trade, reached out to all the countries
around them. The early history of most nations begins with gods and
demons, while here we have nothing of the kind; we see an immigrant
enter the country, marry one of the native women, and settle down; in
time a great nation grows up around him. It reminds one of the
information given by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus. “During the
space of eleven thousand three hundred and fort years they assert,” says
Herodotus, “that no divinity has appeared in human shape, . . . they
absolutely denied the possibility of a human being’s descent from a
god.” If Plato had sought to draw from his imagination a wonderful and
pleasing story, we should not have had so plain and reasonable a
narrative. He would have given us a history like the legends of Greek
mythology, full of the adventures of gods and goddesses, nymphs, fauns,
and satyrs.
Neither is there any evidence on the face of this history that Plato
sought to convey in it a moral or political lesson, in the guise of a
fable, as did Bacon in the “New Atlantis,” and More in the “Kingdom of
Nowhere.” There is no ideal republic delineated here. It is a
straightforward, reasonable history of a people ruled over by their
kings, living and progressing as other nations have lived and progressed
since their day.
Plato says that in Atlantis there was “a great and wonderful empire,”
which “aggressed wantonly against the whole of Europe and Asia,” thus
testifying to the extent of its dominion. It not only subjugated Africa
as far as Egypt, and Europe as far as Italy, but it ruled “as well over
parts of the continent,” to wit, “the opposite continent” of America,
“which surrounded the true ocean.” Those parts of America over which it
ruled were, as we will show hereafter, Central America, Peru, and the
Valley of the Mississippi, occupied by the “Mound Builders.”
Moreover, he tells us that “this vast power was gathered into one;” that
is to say, from Egypt to Peru it was one consolidated empire. We will
see hereafter that the legends of the Hindoos as to Deva Nahusha
distinctly refer to this vast empire, which covered the whole of the
known world.
Another corroboration of the truth of Plato’s narrative is found in the
fact that upon the Azores black lava rocks, and rocks red and white in
color, are now found. He says they built with white, red, and black
stone. Sir C. Wyville Thomson describes a narrow neck of land between
Fayal and Monte da Guia, called “Monte Queimada” (the burnt mountain),
as follows: “It is formed partly of stratified tufa of a dark chocolate
color, and partly of lumps of black lava, porous, and each with a large
cavity in the centre, which must have been ejected as volcanic bombs in
a glorious display of fireworks at some period beyond the records of
Acorean history, but late in the geological annals of the island”
(“Voyage of the Challenger,” vol. ii., p. 24). He also describes immense
walls of black volcanic rock in the island.
The plain of Atlantis, Plato tells us, “had been cultivated during many
ages by many generations of kings.” If, as we believe, agriculture, the
domestication of the horse, ox, sheep, goat, and bog, and the discovery
or development of wheat, oats, rye, and barley originated in this
region, then this language of Plato in reference to “the many ages, and
the successive generations of kings,” accords with the great periods of
time which were necessary to bring man from a savage to a civilized
condition.
In the great ditch surrounding the whole land like a circle, and into
which streams flowed down from the mountains, we probably see the
original of the four rivers of Paradise, and the emblem of the cross
surrounded by a circle, which, as we will show hereafter, was, from the
earliest pre-Christian ages, accepted as the emblem of the Garden of
Eden.
We know that Plato did not invent the name of Poseidon, for the worship
of Poseidon was universal in the earliest ages of Europe;
“Poseidon-worship seems to have been a peculiarity of all the colonies
previous to the time of Sidon” (“Prehistoric Nations,” p. 148.) This
worship “was carried to Spain, and to Northern Africa, but most
abundantly to Italy, to many of the islands, and to the regions around
the Ægean Sea; also to Thrace.” (Ibid., p. 155.)
Poseidon, or Neptune, is represented in Greek mythology as a sea-god;
but he is figured as standing in a war-chariot drawn by horses. The
association of the horse (a land animal) with a sea-god is inexplicable,
except with the light given by Plato. Poseidon was a sea-god because he
ruled over a great land in the sea, and was the national god of a
maritime people; he is associated with horses, because in Atlantis the
horse was first domesticated; and, as Plato shows, the Atlanteans had
great race-courses for the development of speed in horses; and Poseidon
is represented as standing in a war-chariot, because doubtless wheeled
vehicles were first invented by the same people who tamed the horse; and
they transmitted these war-chariots to their descendants from Egypt to
Britain. We know that horses were the favorite objects chosen for
sacrifice to Poseidon by the nations of antiquity within the Historical
Period; they were killed, and cast into the sea from high precipices.
The religious horse-feasts of the pagan Scandinavians were a survival of
this Poseidon-worship, which once prevailed along all the coasts of
Europe; they continued until the conversion of the people to
Christianity, and were then suppressed by the Church with great
difficulty.
We find in Plato’s narrative the names of some of the Ph?nician deities
among the kings of Atlantis. Where did the Greek, Plato, get these names
if the story is a fable?
Does Plato, in speaking of “the fruits having a hard rind, affording
drinks and meats and ointments,” refer to the cocoa nut?
Again: Plato tells us that Atlantis abounded in both cold and hot
springs. How did he come to hit upon the hot springs if he was drawing a
picture from his imagination? It is a singular confirmation of his story
that hot springs abound in the Azores, which are the surviving fragments
of Atlantis; and an experience wider than that possessed by Plato has
taught scientific men that hot springs are a common feature of regions
subject to volcanic convulsions.
Plato tells us, “The whole country was very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea, but the country immediately about and surrounding the city was a level plain, itself surrounded by mountains which descended toward the sea.” One has but to look at the profile of the “Dolphin’s Ridge,” as revealed by the deep-sea soundings of the Challenger, given as the frontispiece to this volume, to see that this is a faithful description of that precipitous elevation. “The surrounding mountains,” which sheltered the plain from the north, are represented in the present towering peaks of the Azores.
Plato tells us that the destruction of Atlantis filled the sea with mud, and interfered with navigation. For thousands of years the ancients believed the Atlantic Ocean to be “a muddy, shallow, dark, and misty sea, Mare tenebrosum.” (“Cosmos,” vol. ii., p. 151.)
The three-pronged sceptre or trident of Poseidon reappears constantly in ancient history. We find it in the hands of Hindoo gods, and at the base of all the religious beliefs of antiquity.
“Among the numerals the sacred three has ever been considered the mark
of perfection, and was therefore exclusively ascribed to the Supreme
Deity, or to its earthly representative–a king, emperor, or any
sovereign. For this reason triple emblems of various shapes are found on
the belts, neckties, or any encircling fixture, as can be seen on the
works of ancient art in Yucatan, Guatemala, Chiapas, Mexico, etc.,
whenever the object has reference to divine supremacy.” (Dr. Arthur
Schott, “Smith. Rep.,” 1869, p. 391.)
We are reminded of the, “tiara,” and the “triple round of sovereignty.”
In the same manner the ten kingdoms of Atlantis are perpetuated in all the ancient traditions.
“In the number given by the Bible for the Antediluvian patriarchs we
have the first instance of a striking agreement with the traditions of
various nations. Ten are mentioned in the Book of Genesis. Other
nations, to whatever epoch they carry back their ancestors, whether
before or after the Deluge, whether the mythical or historical character
prevail, they are constant to this sacred number ten, which some have
vainly attempted to connect with the speculations of later religious
philosophers on the mystical value of numbers. In Chaldea, Berosus
enumerates ten Antediluvian kings whose fabulous reign extended to
thousands of years. The legends of the Iranian race commence with the.
reign of ten Peisdadien (Poseidon?) kings, ‘men of the ancient law, who
lived on pure Homa (water of life)’ (nectar?), ‘and who preserved their
sanctity.’ In India we meet with the nine Brahmadikas, who, with Brahma,
their founder, make ten, and who are called the Ten Petris, or Fathers.
The Chinese count ten emperors, partakers of the divine nature, before
the dawn of historical times. The Germans believed in the ten ancestors
of Odin, and the Arabs in the ten mythical kings of the Adites.”
(Lenormant and Chevallier, “Anc. Hist. of the East,” vol. i., p. 13.)
The story of Plato finds confirmation from other sources.
An extract preserved in Proclus, taken from a work now lost, which is
quoted by Boeckh in his commentary on Plato, mentions islands in the
exterior sea, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and says it was known that
in one of these islands “the inhabitants preserved from their ancestors
a remembrance of Atlantis, all extremely large island, which for a long
time held dominion over all the islands of the Atlantic Ocean.”
Ælian, in his “Varia Historia” (book iii., chap. xviii.), tells us that
Theopompus (400 B.C.) related the particulars of an interview between
Midas, King of Phrygia, and Silenus, in which Silenus reported the
existence of a great continent beyond the Atlantic, “larger than Asia,
Europe, and Libya together.” He stated that a race of men called Meropes
dwelt there, and had extensive cities. They were persuaded that their
country alone was a continent. Out of curiosity some of them crossed the
ocean and visited the Hyperboreans.
“The Gauls possessed traditions upon the subject of Atlantis which were
collected by the Roman historian Timagenes, who lived in the first
century before Christ. He represents that three distinct people dwelt in
Gaul: 1. The indigenous population, which I suppose to be Mongoloids,
who had long dwelt in Europe; 2. The invaders from a distant island,
which I understand to be Atlantis; 3. The Aryan Gauls.” (“Preadamites,”
p. 380.)
Marcellus, in a work on the Ethiopians, speaks of seven islands lying in
the Atlantic Ocean–probably the Canaries–and the inhabitants of these
islands, he says, preserve the memory of a much greater island,
Atlantis, “which had for a long time exercised dominion over the smaller
ones.” (Didot Müller, “Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum,” vol. iv., p.
443.)
Diodorus Siculus relates that the Ph?nicians discovered “a large island
in the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, several days’
sail from the coast of Africa. This island abounded in all manner of
riches. The soil was exceedingly fertile; the scenery was diversified by
rivers, mountains, and forests. It was the custom of the inhabitants to
retire during the summer to magnificent country-houses, which stood in
the midst of beautiful gardens. Fish and game were found in great
abundance; the climate was delicious, and the trees bore fruit at all
seasons of the year.” Homer, Plutarch, and other ancient writers mention
islands situated in the Atlantic, “several thousand stadia from the
Pillars of Hercules.” Silenus tells Midas that there was another
continent besides Europe, Asia, and Africa–“a country where gold and
silver are so plentiful that they are esteemed no more than we esteem
iron.” St. Clement, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, says that there
were other worlds beyond the ocean.
Attention may here be called to the extraordinary number of instances in
which allusion is made in the Old Testament to the “islands of the sea,”
especially in Isaiah and Ezekiel. What had an inland people, like the
Jews, to do with seas and islands? Did these references grow out of
vague traditions linking their race with “islands in the sea?”
The Orphic Argonaut sings of the division of the ancient Lyktonia into
separate islands. He says,” When the dark-haired Poseidon, in anger with
Father Kronion, struck Lyktonia with the golden trident.”
Plato states that the Egyptians told Solon that the destruction of
Atlantis occurred 9000 years before that date, to wit, about 9600 years
before the Christian era. This looks like an extraordinarily long period
of time, but it must be remembered that geologists claim that the
remains of man found in the caves of Europe date back 500,000 years; and
the fossil Calaveras skull was found deep under the base of Table
Mountain, California, the whole mountain having been formed since the
man to whom it belonged lived and died.
“M. Oppert read an essay at the Brussels Congress to show, from the
astronomical observations of the Egyptians and Assyrians, that 11,542
years before our era man existed on the earth at such a stage of
civilization as to be able to take note of astronomical phenomena, and
to calculate with considerable accuracy the length of the year. The
Egyptians, says he, calculated by cycles of 1460 years–zodiacal cycles,
as they were called. Their year consisted of 365 days, which caused them
to lose one day in every four solar years, and, consequently, they would
attain their original starting-point again only after 1460 years (365 x
4). Therefore, the zodiacal cycle ending in the year 139 of our era
commenced in the year 1322 B.C. On the other hand, the Assyrian cycle
was 1805 years, or 22,325 lunations. An Assyrian cycle began 712 B.C.
The Chaldeans state that between the Deluge and their first historic
dynasty there was a period of 39,180 years. Now, what means, this
number? It stands for 12 Egyptian zodiacal cycles plus 12 Assyrian lunar
cycles.
+——————–+———-+
| 12 X 1460 = 17,520 | |
+——————–+———-+
| | = 39,180 |
+——————–+———-+
| 12 X 1805 = 21,660 | |
+——————–+———-+
“These two modes of calculating time are in agreement with each other, and were known simultaneously to one people, the Chaldeans. Let us now build up the series of both cycles, starting from our era, and the result will be as follows:
+—————–+————–+
| Zodiacal Cycle. | Lunar Cycle. |
+—————–+————–+
| 1,460 | 1,805 |
+—————–+————–+
| 1,822 | 712 |
+—————–+————–+
| _____ | _____ |
+—————–+————–+
| 2,782 | 2,517 |
+—————–+————–+
| 4,242 | 4,322 |
+—————–+————–+
| 5,702 | 6,127 |
+—————–+————–+
| 7,162 | 7,932 |
+—————–+————–+
| 8,622 | 9,737 |
+—————–+————–+
| 110,082 | 11,542 |
+—————–+————–+
| 11,542 | |
+—————–+————–+
“At the year 11,542 B.C. the two cycles came together, and consequently they had on that year their common origin in one and the same astronomical observation.”
That observation was probably made in Atlantis.
The wide divergence of languages which is found to exist among the
Atlanteans at the beginning of the Historical Period implies a vast
lapse of time. The fact that the nations of the Old World remembered so
little of Atlantis, except the colossal fact of its sudden and
overwhelming destruction, would also seem to remove that event into a
remote past.
Herodotus tells us that he learned from the Egyptians that Hercules was
one of their most ancient deities, and that he was one of the twelve
produced from the eight gods, 17,000 years before the reign of Amasis.
In short, I fail to see why this story of Plato, told as history,
derived from the Egyptians, a people who, it is known, preserved most
ancient records, and who were able to trace their existence back to a
vast antiquity, should have been contemptuously set aside as a fable by
Greeks, Romans, and the modern world. It can only be because our
predecessors, with their limited knowledge of the geological history of
the world, did not believe it possible that any large part of the
earth’s surface could have been thus suddenly swallowed up by the sea.
Let us then first address ourselves to that question.
CHAPTER IV.
WAS SUCH A CATASTROPHE POSSIBLE?
All that is needed to answer this question is to briefly refer to some of the facts revealed by the study of geology.
In the first place, the earth’s surface is a record of successive
risings and fallings of the land. The accompanying picture represents a
section of the anthracite coal-measures of Pennsylvania. Each of the
coal deposits here shown, indicated by the black lines, was created when
the land had risen sufficiently above the sea to maintain vegetation;
each of the strata of rock, many of them hundreds of feet in thickness,
was deposited under water. Here we have twenty-three different changes
of the level of the land during the formation of 2000 feet of rock and
coal; and these changes took place over vast areas, embracing thousands
of square miles.
All the continents which now exist were, it is well understood, once,
under water, and the rocks of which they are composed were deposited
beneath the water; more than this, most of the rocks so deposited were
the detritus or washings of other continents, which then stood where the
oceans now roll, and whose mountains and plains were ground down by the
action of volcanoes and earthquakes, and frost, ice, wind, and rain, and
washed into the sea, to form the rocks upon which the nations now dwell;
so that we have changed the conditions of land and water: that which is
now continent was once sea, and that which is now sea was formerly
continent. There can be no question that the Australian Archipelago is
simply the mountain-tops of a drowned continent, which once reached from
India to South America. Science has gone so far as to even give it a
name; it is called “Lemuria,” and here, it is claimed, the human race
originated. An examination of the geological formation of our Atlantic
States proves beyond a doubt, from the manner in which the sedimentary
rocks, the sand, gravel, and mud–aggregating a thickness of 45,000
feet–are deposited, that they came from the north and east. “They
represent the detritus of pre-existing lands, the washings of rain,
rivers, coast-currents, and other agencies of erosion; and since the
areas supplying the waste could scarcely have been of less extent than
the new strata it formed, it is reasonably inferred that land masses of
continental magnitude must have occupied the region now covered by the
North Atlantic before America began to be, and onward at least through
the palæozoic ages of American history. The proof of this fact is that
the great strata of rocks are thicker the nearer we approach their
source in the east: the maximum thickness of the palæozoic rocks of the
Appalachian formation is 25,000 to 35,000 feet in Pennsylvania and
Virginia, while their minimum thickness in Illinois and Missouri is from
3000 to 4000 feet; the rougher and grosser-textured rocks predominate in
the east, while the farther west we go the finer the deposits were of
which the rocks are composed; the finer materials were carried farther
west by the water.” (“New Amer. Cyclop.,” art. Coal.)
DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII
The history of the growth of the European Continent, as recounted by
Professor Geikie, gives an instructive illustration of the relations of
geology to geography. The earliest European land, he says, appears to
have existed in the north and north-west, comprising Scandinavia,
Finland, and the northwest of the British area, and to have extended
thence through boreal and arctic latitudes into North America. Of the
height and mass of this primeval land some idea may be formed by
considering the enormous bulk of the material derived from its
disintegration. In the Silurian formations of the British Islands alone
there is a mass of rock, worn from the land, which would form a
mountain-chain extending from Marseilles to the North Cape (1800 miles),
with a mean breadth of over thirty-three miles, and an average height of
16,000 feet.
As the great continent which stood where the Atlantic Ocean now is wore
away, the continents of America and Europe were formed; and there seems
to have been from remote times a continuous rising, still going on, of
the new lands, and a sinking of the old ones. Within five thousand
years, or since the age of the “polished stone,” the shores of Sweden,
Denmark, and Norway have risen from 200 to 600 feet.
Professor Winchell says (“The Preadamites,” p. 437):
“We are in the midst of great, changes, and are scarcely conscious of
it. We have seen worlds in flames, and have felt a cornet strike the
earth. We have seen the whole coast of South America lifted up bodily
ten or fifteen feet and let down again in an hour. We have seen the
Andes sink 220 feet in seventy years. . . Vast transpositions have taken
place in the coast-line of China. The ancient capital, located, in all
probability, in an accessible position near the centre of the empire,
has now become nearly surrounded by water, and its site is on the
peninsula of Corea. . . . There was a time when the rocky barriers of
the Thracian Bosphorus gave way and the Black Sea subsided. It had
covered a vast area in the north and east. Now this area became drained,
and was known as the ancient Lectonia: it is now the prairie region of
Russia, and the granary of Europe.”
There is ample geological evidence that at one time the entire area of
Great Britain was submerged to the depth of at least seventeen hundred
feet. Over the face of the submerged land was strewn thick beds of sand,
gravel, and clay, termed by geologists “the Northern Drift.” The British
Islands rose again from the sea, bearing these water-deposits on their
bosom. What is now Sicily once lay deep beneath the sea: A subsequently
rose 3000 feet above the sea-level. The Desert of Sahara was once under
water, and its now burning sands are a deposit of the sea.
Geologically speaking, the submergence of Atlantis, within the
historical period, was simply the last of a number of vast changes, by
which the continent which once occupied the greater part of the Atlantic
had gradually sunk under the ocean, while the new lands were rising on
both sides of it.
We come now to the second question, Is it possible that Atlantis could
have been suddenly destroyed by such a convulsion of nature as is
described by Plato? The ancients regarded this part of his story as a
fable. With the wider knowledge which scientific research has afforded
the modern world, we can affirm that such an event is not only possible,
but that the history of even the last two centuries has furnished us
with striking parallels for it. We now possess the record of numerous
islands lifted above the waters, and others sunk beneath the waves,
accompanied by storms and earthquakes similar to those which marked the
destruction of Atlantis.
In 1783 Iceland was visited by convulsions more tremendous than any
recorded in the modern annals of that country. About a month previous to
the eruption on the main-land a submarine volcano burst forth in the
sea, at a distance of thirty miles from the shore. It ejected so much
pumice that the sea was covered with it for a distance of 150 miles, and
ships were considerably impeded in their course. A new island was thrown
up, consisting of high cliffs, which was claimed by his Danish Majesty,
and named “Nyöe,” or the New Island; but before a year had elapsed it
sunk beneath the sea, leaving a reef of rocks thirty fathoms under water.
The earthquake of 1783 in Iceland destroyed 9000 people out of a
population of 50,000; twenty villages were consumed by fire or inundated
by water, and a mass of lava thrown out “greater than the entire bulk of
Mont Blanc.”
On the 8th of October, 1822, a great earthquake occurred on the island
of Java, near the mountain of Galung Gung. “A loud explosion was heard,
the earth shook, and immense columns of hot water and boiling mud, mixed
with burning brimstone, ashes, and lapilli, of the size of nuts, were
projected from the mountain like a water-spout, with such prodigious
violence that large quantities fell beyond the river Tandoi, which is
forty miles distant. . . . The first eruption lasted nearly five hours;
and on the following days the rain fell ill torrents, and the rivers,
densely charged with mud, deluged the country far and wide. At the end
of four days (October 12th), a second eruption occurred, more violent
than the first, in which hot water and mud were again vomited, and great
blocks of basalt were thrown to the distance of seven miles from the
volcano. There was at the same time a violent earthquake, the face of
the mountain was utterly changed, its summits broken down, and one side,
which had been covered with trees, became an enormous gulf in the form
of a semicircle. Over 4000 persons were killed and 114 villages
destroyed.” (Lyell’s “Principles of Geology,” p. 430.)
In 1831 a new island was born in the Mediterranean, near the coast of
Sicily. It was called Graham’s Island. It came up with an earthquake,
and “a water-spout sixty feet high and eight hundred yards in
circumference rising from the sea.” In about a month the island was two
hundred feet high and three miles in circumference; it soon, however,
stink beneath the sea.
The Canary Islands were probably a part of the original empire of
Atlantis. On the 1st of September, 1730, the earth split open near Year,
in the island of Lancerota. In one night a considerable hill of ejected
matter was thrown up; in a few days another vent opened and gave out a
lava stream which overran several villages. It flowed at first rapidly,
like water, but became afterward heavy and slow, like honey. On the 11th
of September more lava flowed out, covering up a village, and
precipitating itself with a horrible roar into the sea. Dead fish
floated on the waters in indescribable multitudes, or were thrown dying
on the shore; the cattle throughout the country dropped lifeless to the
ground, suffocated by putrid vapors, which condensed and fell down in
drops. These manifestations were accompanied by a storm such as the
people of the country had never known before. These dreadful commotions
lasted for five years. The lavas thrown out covered one-third of the
whole island of Lancerota.
CALABRIAN PEASANTS INGULFED BY CREVASSES (1783).
The Gulf of Santorin, in the Grecian Archipelago, has been for two
thousand years a scene of active volcanic operations. Pliny informs us
that in the year 186 B.C. the island of “Old Kaimeni,” or the Sacred
Isle, was lifted up from the sea; and in A.D. 19 the island of “Thia”
(the Divine) made its appearance. In A.D. 1573 another island was
created, called “the small sunburnt island.” In 1848 a volcanic
convulsion of three months’ duration created a great shoal; an
earthquake destroyed many houses in Thera, and the sulphur and hydrogen
issuing from the sea killed 50 persons and 1000 domestic animals. A
recent examination of these islands shows that the whole mass of
Santorin has sunk, since its projection from the sea, over 1200 feet.
The fort and village of Sindree, on the eastern arm of the Indus, above
Luckput, was submerged in 1819 by an earthquake, together with a tract
of country 2000 square miles in extent.
“In 1828 Sir A. Burnes went in a boat to the ruins of Sindree, where a
single remaining tower was seen in the midst of a wide expanse of sea.
The tops of the ruined walls still rose two or three feet above the
level of the water; and, standing on one of these, he could behold
nothing in the horizon but water, except in one direction, where a blue
streak of land to the north indicated the Ullah Bund. This scene,” says
Lyell (“Principles of Geology,” p. 462), “presents to the imagination a
lively picture of the revolutions now in progress on the earth-a waste
of waters where a few years before all was land, and the only land
visible consisting of ground uplifted by a recent earthquake.”
We give from Lyell’s great work the following curious pictures of the
appearance of the Fort of Sindree before and after the inundation.
FORT OF SINDEE, ON THE EASTERN BRANCH OF THE INDUS, BEFORE IT WAS
SUBMERGED BY THE EARTHQUAKE OF 1819.
In April, 1815, one of the most frightful eruptions recorded in history
occurred in the province of Tomboro, in the island of Sumbawa, about two
hundred miles from the eastern extremity of Java. It lasted from April
5th to July of that year; but was most violent on the 11th and 12th of
July. The sound of the explosions was heard for nearly one thousand
miles. Out of a population of 12,000, in the province of Tombora, only
twenty-six individuals escaped. “Violent whirlwinds carried up men,
horses, and cattle into the air, tore up the largest trees by the
roots, and covered the whole sea with floating timber.” (Raffles’s
“History of Java,” vol. i., p. 28.) The ashes darkened the air; “the
floating cinders to the westward of Sumatra formed, on the 12th of
April, a mass two feet thick and several miles in extent, through which
ships with difficulty forced their way.” The darkness in daytime was
more profound than the blackest night. “The town called Tomboro, on the
west side of Sumbawa, was overflowed by the sea, which encroached upon
the shore, so that the water remained permanently eighteen feet deep in
places where there was land before”. The area covered by the convulsion
was 1000 English miles in circumference. “In the island of Amboyna, in
the same month and year, the ground opened, threw out water and then
closed again.” (Raffles’s “History of Java,” vol. i., p. 25.)
VIEW OF THE FORT OF SINDREE FROM THE WEST IN MARCH, 1839.
But it is at that point of the European coast nearest to the site of
Atlantis at Lisbon that the most tremendous earthquake of modern times
has occurred. On the 1st of November, 1775, a sound of thunder was heard
underground, and immediately afterward a violent shock threw down the
greater part of the city. In six minutes 60,000 persons perished. A
great concourse of people had collected for safety upon a new quay,
built entirely of marble; but suddenly it sunk down with all the people
on it, and not one of the dead bodies ever floated to the surface. A
great number of small boats and vessels anchored near it, and, full of
people, were swallowed up as in a whirlpool. No fragments of these
wrecks ever rose again to the surface; the water where the quay went
down is now 600 feet deep. The area covered by this earthquake was very
great. Humboldt says that a portion of the earth’s surface, four times
as great as the size of Europe, was simultaneously shaken. It extended
from the Baltic to the West Indies, and from Canada to Algiers. At eight
leagues from Morocco the ground opened and swallowed a village of 10,000
inhabitants, and closed again over them.
It is very probable that the centre of the convulsion was in the bed of the Atlantic, at or near the buried island of Atlantis, and that it was a successor of the great earth throe which, thousands of years before, had brought destruction upon that land.
ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS IN 1737.
Ireland also lies near the axis of this great volcanic area, reaching
from the Canaries to Iceland, and it has been many times in the past the
seat of disturbance. The ancient annals contain numerous accounts of
eruptions, preceded by volcanic action. In 1490, at the Ox Mountains,
Sligo, one occurred by which one hundred persons and numbers of cattle
were destroyed; and a volcanic eruption in May, 1788, on the hill of
Knocklade, Antrim, poured a stream of lava sixty yards wide for
thirty-nine hours, and destroyed the village of Ballyowen and all the
inhabitants, save a man and his wife and two children. (“Amer. Cyclop.,”
art. Ireland.)
While we find Lisbon and Ireland, east of Atlantis, subjected to these
great earthquake shocks, the West India Islands, west of the same
centre, have been repeatedly visited in a similar manner. In 1692
Jamaica suffered from a violent earthquake. The earth opened, and great
quantities of water were cast out; many people were swallowed up in
these rents; the earth caught some of them by the middle and squeezed
them to death; the heads of others only appeared above-ground. A tract
of land near the town of Port Royal, about a thousand acres in extent,
sunk down in less than one minute, and the sea immediately rolled in.
The Azore Islands are undoubtedly the peaks of the mountains of
Atlantis. They are even yet the centre of great volcanic activity. They
have suffered severely from eruptions and earthquakes. In 1808 a volcano
rose suddenly in San Jorge to the height of 3500 feet, and burnt for six
days, desolating the entire island. In 1811 a volcano rose from the sea,
near San Miguel, creating an island 300 feet high, which was named
Sambrina, but which soon sunk beneath the sea. Similar volcanic
eruptions occurred in the Azores in 1691 and 1720.
Along a great line, a mighty fracture in the surface of the globe,
stretching north and south through the Atlantic, we find a continuous
series of active or extinct volcanoes. In Iceland we have Oerafa, Hecla,
and Rauda Kamba; another in Pico, in the Azores; the peak of Teneriffe;
Fogo, in one of the Cape de Verde Islands: while of extinct volcanoes we
have several in Iceland, and two in Madeira; while Fernando de Noronha,
the island of Ascension, St. Helena, and Tristan d’Acunha are all of
volcanic origin. (“Cosmos,” vol. v., p. 331.)
The following singular passage we quote entire from Lyell’s Principles of Geology,” p. 436:
“In the Nautical Magazine for 1835, p. 642, and for 1838, p. 361, and in
the Comptes Rendus, April, 1838, accounts are given of a series of
volcanic phenomena, earthquakes, troubled water, floating scoria, and
columns of smoke, which have been observed at intervals since the middle
of the last century, in a space of open sea between longitudes 20° and
22′ W., about half a degree south of the equator. These facts, says Mr.
Darwin, seem to show that an island or archipelago is in process of
formation in the middle of the Atlantic. A line joining St. Helena and
Ascension would, if prolonged, intersect this slowly nascent focus of
volcanic action. Should land be eventually formed here, it will not be
the first that has been produced by igneous action in this ocean since
it was inhabited by the existing species of testacea. At Porto Praya, in
St. Jago, one of the Azores, a horizontal, calcareous stratum occurs,
containing shells of recent marine species, covered by a great sheet of
basalt eighty feet thick. It would be difficult to estimate too highly
the commercial and political importance which a group of islands might
acquire if, in the next two or three thousand years, they should rise in
mid-ocean between St. Helena and Ascension.”
These facts would seem to show that the great fires which destroyed
Atlantis are still smouldering in the depths of the ocean; that the vast
oscillations which carried Plato’s continent beneath the sea may again
bring it, with all its buried treasures, to the light; and that even the
wild imagination of Jules Verne, when he described Captain Nemo, in his
diving armor, looking down upon the temples and towers of the lost
island, lit by the fires of submarine volcanoes, had some groundwork of
possibility to build upon.
But who will say, in the presence of all the facts here enumerated, that
the submergence of Atlantis, in some great world-shaking cataclysm, is
either impossible or improbable? As will be shown hereafter, when we
come to discuss the Flood legends, every particular which has come down
to us of the destruction of Atlantis has been duplicated in some of the
accounts just given.
We conclude, therefore: 1. That it is proven beyond question, by
geological evidence, that vast masses of land once existed in the region
where Atlantis is located by Plato, and that therefore such an island
must have existed; 2. That there is nothing improbable or impossible in
the statement that it was destroyed suddenly by an earthquake “in one
dreadful night and day.”
CHAPTER. V.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE SEA.
Suppose we were to find in mid-Atlantic, in front of the Mediterranean,
in the neighborhood of the Azores, the remains of an immense island,
sunk beneath the sea–one thousand miles in width, and two or three
thousand miles long–would it not go far to confirm the statement of
Plato that, “beyond the strait where you place the Pillars of Hercules,
there was an island larger than Asia (Minor) and Libya combined,” called
Atlantis? And suppose we found that the Azores were the mountain peaks
of this drowned island, and were torn and rent by tremendous volcanic
convulsions; while around them, descending into the sea, were found
great strata of lava; and the whole face of the sunken land was covered
for thousands of miles with volcanic débris, would we not be obliged to
confess that these facts furnished strong corroborative proofs of the
truth of Plato’s statement, that “in one day and one fatal night there
came mighty earthquakes and inundations which ingulfed that mighty
people? Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea; and then that sea became
inaccessible on account of the quantity of mud which the ingulfed island
left in its place.”
MAP OF ATLANTIS, WITH ITS ISLANDS AND CONNECTING RIDGES, FROM DEEP-SEA
SOUNDINGS
And all these things recent investigation has proved conclusively.
Deep-sea soundings have been made by ships of different nations; the
United States ship Dolphin, the German frigate Gazelle, and the British
ships Hydra, Porcupine, and Challenger have mapped out the bottom of the
Atlantic, and the result is the revelation of a great elevation,
reaching from a point on the coast of the British Islands southwardly to
the coast of South America, at Cape Orange, thence south-eastwardly to
the coast of Africa, and thence southwardly to Tristan d’Acunha. I give
one map showing the profile of this elevation in the frontispiece, and
another map, showing the outlines of the submerged land, on page 47. It
rises about 9000 feet above the great Atlantic depths around it, and in
the Azores, St. Paul’s Rocks, Ascension, and Tristan d’Acunha it reaches
the surface of the ocean.
Evidence that this elevation was once dry land is found in the fact that
“the inequalities, the mountains and valleys of its surface, could never
have been produced in accordance with any laws for the deposition of
sediment, nor by submarine elevation; but, on the contrary, must have
been carved by agencies acting above the water level.” (Scientific
American, July 28th, 1877.)
Mr. J. Starke Gardner, the eminent English geologist, is of the opinion
that in the Eocene Period a great extension of land existed to the west
of Cornwall. Referring to the location of the “Dolphin” and “Challenger”
ridges, he asserts that “a great tract of land formerly existed where
the sea now is, and that Cornwall, the Scilly and Channel Islands,
Ireland and Brittany, are the remains of its highest summits.” (Popular
Science Review, July, 1878.)
Here, then, we have the backbone of the ancient continent which once
occupied the whole of the Atlantic Ocean, and from whose washings Europe
and America were constructed; the deepest parts of the ocean, 3500
fathoms deep, represent those portions which sunk first, to wit, the
plains to the east and west of the central mountain range; some of the
loftiest peaks of this range–the Azores, St. Paul’s, Ascension, Tristan
d’Acunba–are still above the ocean level; while the great body of
Atlantis lies a few hundred fathoms beneath the sea. In these
“connecting ridges” we see the pathway which once extended between the
New World and the Old, and by means of which the plants and animals of
one continent travelled to the other; and by the same avenues black men
found their way, as we will show hereafter, from Africa to America, and
red men from America to Africa.
And, as I have shown, the same great law which gradually depressed the
Atlantic continent, and raised the lands east and west of it, is still
at work: the coast of Greenland, which may be regarded as the northern
extremity of the Atlantic continent, is still sinking “so rapidly that
ancient buildings on low rock-islands are now submerged, and the
Greenlander has learned by experience never to build near the water’s
edge,” (“North Amer. of Antiq.,” p. 504.) The same subsidence is going
on along the shore of South Carolina and Georgia, while the north of
Europe and the Atlantic coast of South America are rising rapidly. Along
the latter raised beaches, 1180 miles long and from 100 to 1300 feet
high, have been traced.
When these connecting ridges extended from America to Europe and Africa,
they shut off the flow of the tropical waters of the ocean to the north:
there was then no “Gulf Stream;” the land-locked ocean that laved the
shores of Northern Europe was then intensely cold; and the result was
the Glacial Period. When the barriers of Atlantis sunk sufficiently to
permit the natural expansion of the heated water of the tropics to the
north, the ice and snow which covered Europe gradually disappeared; the
Gulf Stream flowed around Atlantis, and it still retains the circular
motion first imparted to it by the presence of that island.
The officers of the Challenger found the entire ridge of Atlantis
covered with volcanic deposits; these are the subsided mud which, as
Plato tells us, rendered the sea impassable after the destruction of the
island.
It does not follow that, at the time Atlantis was finally ingulfed, the
ridges connecting it with America and Africa rose above the water-level;
these may have gradually subsided into the sea, or have gone down in
cataclysms such as are described in the Central American books. The
Atlantis of Plato may have been confined to the “Dolphin Ridge” of our
map.
ANCIENT ISLANDS BETWEEN ATLANTIS AND THE MEDITERRANEAN, FROM DEEP-SEA
SOUNDINGS
The United States sloop Gettysburg has also made some remarkable
discoveries in a neighboring field. I quote from John James Wild (in
Nature, March 1st, 1877, p. 377):
“The recently announced discovery by Commander Gorringe, of the United
States sloop Gettysburg, of a bank of soundings bearing N. 85° W., and
distant 130 miles from Cape St. Vincent, during the last voyage of the
vessel across the Atlantic, taken in connection with previous soundings
obtained in the same region of the North Atlantic, suggests the probable
existence of a submarine ridge or plateau connecting the island of
Madeira with the coast of Portugal, and the probable subaerial
connection in prehistoric times of that island with the south-western
extremity of Europe.” . . . “These soundings reveal the existence of a
channel of an average depth of from 2000 to 3000 fathoms, extending in a
northeasterly direction from its entrance between Madeira and the Canary
Islands toward Cape St. Vincent. . . . Commander Gorringe, when about
150 miles from the Strait of Gibraltar, found that the soundings
decreased from 2700 fathoms to 1600 fathoms in the distance of a few
miles. The subsequent soundings (five miles apart) gave 900, 500, 400,
and 100 fathoms; and eventually a depth of 32 fathoms was obtained, in
which the vessel anchored. The bottom was found to consist of live pink
coral, and the position of the bank in lat. 36° 29′ N., long. 11° 33′ W.”
The map on page 51 shows the position of these elevations. They must
have been originally islands;–stepping-stones, as it were, between
Atlantis and the coast of Europe.
Sir C. Wyville Thomson found that the specimens of the fauna of the
coast of Brazil, brought up in his dredging-machine, are similar to
those of the western coast of Southern Europe. This is accounted for by
the connecting ridges reaching from Europe to South America.
A member of the Challenger staff, in a lecture delivered in London, soon
after the termination of the expedition, gave it as his opinion that the
great submarine plateau is the remains of “the lost Atlantis.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE FLORA AND FAUNA.
Proofs are abundant that there must have been at one time uninterrupted land communication between Europe and America. In the words of a writer upon this subject,
“When the animals and plants of the Old and New World are compared, one
cannot but be struck with their identity; all or nearly all belong to
the same genera, while many, even of the species, are common to both
continents. This is most important in its bearing on our theory, as
indicating that they radiated from a common centre after the Glacial
Period. . . . The hairy mammoth, woolly-haired rhinoceros, the Irish
elk, the musk-ox, the reindeer, the glutton, the lemming, etc., more or
less accompanied this flora, and their remains are always found in the
post-glacial deposits of Europe as low down as the South of France. In
the New World beds of the same age contain similar remains, indicating
that they came from a common centre, and were spread out over both
continents alike.” (Westminster Review, January, 1872, p. 19.)
Recent discoveries in the fossil beds of the Bad Lands of Nebraska prove
that the horse originated in America. Professor Marsh, of Yale College,
has identified the several preceding forms from which it was developed,
rising, in the course of ages, from a creature not larger than a fox
until, by successive steps, it developed into the true horse. How did
the wild horse pass from America to Europe and Asia if there was not
continuous land communication between the two continents? He seems to
have existed in Europe in a wild state prior to his domestication by man.
The fossil remains of the camel are found in India, Africa, South America, and in Kansas. The existing alpacas and llamas of South America are but varieties of the camel family.
The cave bear, whose remains are found associated with the hones of the
mammoth and the bones and works of man in the caves of Europe, was
identical with the grizzly bear of our Rocky Mountains. The musk-ox,
whose relics are found in the same deposits, now roams the wilds of
Arctic America. The glutton of Northern Europe, in the Stone Age, is
identical with the wolverine of the United States. According to
Rutimeyer, the ancient bison (Bos priscus) of Europe was identical with
the existing American buffalo. “Every stage between the ancient cave
bison and the European aurochs can be traced.” The Norway elk, now
nearly extinct, is identical with the American moose. The Cervus
Americanus found in Kentucky was as large as the Irish elk, which it
greatly resembled. The lagomys, or tailless hare, of the European eaves,
is now found in the colder regions of North America. The reindeer, which
once occupied Europe as far down as France, was the same as the reindeer
of America. Remains of the cave lion of Europe (Felix speloæ), a larger
beast than the largest of the existing species, have been found at
Natchez, Mississippi. The European cave wolf was identical with the
American wolf.
Cattle were domesticated among the people of Switzerland during the
earliest part of the Stone Period (Darwin’s “Animals Under
Domestication,” vol. i., p. 103), that is to say, before the Bronze Age
and the Age of Iron. Even at that remote period they had already, by
long-continued selection, been developed out of wild forms akin to the
American buffalo. M. Gervais (“Hist. Nat. des Mammifores,” vol. xi., p.
191) concludes that the wild race from which our domestic sheep was
derived is now extinct. The remains of domestic sheep are found in the
debris of the Swiss lake-dwellings during the Stone Age. The domestic
horse, ass, lion, and goat also date back to a like great antiquity. We
have historical records 7000 years old, and during that time no similar
domestication of a wild animal has been made. This fact speaks volumes
as to the vast period, of time during which man must have lived in a
civilized state to effect the domestication of so many and such useful
animals.
And when we turn from the fauna to the flora, we find the same state of
things.
An examination of the fossil beds of Switzerland of the Miocene Age
reveals the remains of more than eight hundred different species of
flower-bearing plants, besides mosses, ferns, etc. The total number of
fossil plants catalogued from those beds, cryptogamous as well as
phænogamous, is upward of three thousand. The majority of these species
have migrated to America. There were others that passed into Asia,
Africa, and even to Australia. The American types are, however, in the
largest proportion. The analogues of the flora of the Miocene Age of
Europe now grow in the forests of Virginia, North and South Carolina,
and Florida; they include such familiar examples as magnolias,
tulip-trees, evergreen oaks, maples, plane-trees, robinas, sequoias,
etc. It would seem to be impossible that these trees could have migrated
from Switzerland to America unless there was unbroken land communication
between the two continents.
It is a still more remarkable fact that a comparison of the flora of the
Old World and New goes to show that not only was there communication by
land, over which the plants of one continent could extend to another,
but that man must have existed, and have helped this transmigration, in
the case of certain plants that were incapable of making the journey
unaided.
Otto Kuntze, a distinguished German botanist, who has spent many years
in the tropics, announces his conclusion that “In America and in Asia
the principal domesticated tropical plants are represented by the same
species.” He instances the Manihot utilissima, whose roots yield a fine
flour; the tarro (Colocasia esculenta), the Spanish or red pepper, the
tomato, the bamboo, the guava, the mango-fruit, and especially the
banana. He denies that the American origin of tobacco, maize, and the
cocoa-nut is proved. He refers to the Paritium tiliaceum, a malvaceous
plant, hardly noticed by Europeans, but very highly prized by the
natives of the tropics, and cultivated everywhere in the East and West
Indies; it supplies to the natives of these regions so far apart their
ropes and cordage. It is always seedless in a cultivated state. It
existed in America before the arrival of Columbus.
But Professor Kuntze pays especial attention to the banana, or plantain.
The banana is seedless. It is found throughout tropical Asia and Africa.
Professor Kuntze asks, “In what way was this plant, which cannot stand a
voyage through the temperate zone, carried to America?” And yet it was
generally cultivated in America before 1492. Says Professor Kuntze, “It
must be remembered that the plantain is a tree-like, herbaceous plant,
possessing no easily transportable bulbs, like the potato or the dahlia,
nor propagable by cuttings, like the willow or the poplar. It has only a
perennial root, which, once planted, needs hardly any care, and yet
produces the most abundant crop of any known tropical plant.” He then
proceeds to discuss how it could have passed from Asia to America. He
admits that the roots must have been transported from one country to the
other by civilized man. He argues that it could not have crossed the
Pacific from Asia to America, because the Pacific is nearly thrice or
four times as wide as the Atlantic. The only way he can account for the
plantain reaching America is to suppose that it was carried there when
the North Pole had a tropical climate! Is there any proof that civilized
man existed at the North Pole when it possessed the climate of Africa?
Is it not more reasonable to suppose that the plantain, or banana, was
cultivated by the people of Atlantis, and carried by their civilized
agricultural colonies to the east and the west? Do we not find a
confirmation of this view in the fact alluded to by Professor Kuntze in
these words: “A cultivated plant which does not possess seeds must have
been under culture for a very long period–we have not in Europe a
single exclusively seedless, berry-bearing, cultivated plant–and hence
it is perhaps fair to infer that these plants were cultivated as early
as the beginning of the middle of the Diluvial Period.”
Is it possible that a plant of this kind could have been cultivated for
this immense period of time in both Asia and America? Where are the two
nations, agricultural and highly civilized, on those continents by whom
it was so cultivated? What has become of them? Where are the traces of
their civilization? All the civilizations of Europe, Asia, and Africa
radiated from the Mediterranean; the Hindoo-Aryans advanced from the
north-west; they were kindred to the Persians, who were next-door
neighbors to the Arabians (cousins of the Ph?nicians), and who lived
along-side of the Egyptians, who had in turn derived their civilization
from the Ph?nicians.
It would be a marvel of marvels if one nation, on one continent, had
cultivated the banana for such a vast period of time until it became
seedless; the nation retaining a peaceful, continuous, agricultural
civilization during all that time. But to suppose that two nations could
have cultivated the same plant, under the same circumstances, on two
different continents, for the same unparalleled lapse of time, is
supposing an impossibility.
We find just such a civilization as was necessary, according to Plato,
and under just such a climate, in Atlantis and nowhere else. We have
found it reaching, by its contiguous islands, within one hundred and
fifty miles of the coast of Europe on the one side, and almost touching
the West India Islands on the other, while, by its connecting ridges, it
bound together Brazil and Africa.
But it may be said these animals and plants may have passed from Asia to
America across the Pacific by the continent of Lemuria; or there may
have been continuous land communication at one time at Behring’s Strait.
True; but an examination of the flora of the Pacific States shows that
very many of the trees and plants common to Europe and the Atlantic
States are not to be seen west of the Rocky Mountains. The magnificent
magnolias, the tulip-trees, the plane-trees, etc., which were found
existing in the Miocene Age in Switzerland, and are found at the present
day in the United States, are altogether lacking on the Pacific coast.
The sources of supply of that region seem to have been far inferior to
the sources of supply of the Atlantic States. Professor Asa Gray tells
us that, out of sixty-six genera and one hundred and fifty-five species
found in the forests cast of the Rocky Mountains, only thirty-one genera
and seventy-eight species are found west of the mountains. The Pacific
coast possesses no papaw, no linden or basswood, no locust-trees, no
cherry-tree large enough for a timber tree, no gum-trees, no
sorrel-tree, nor kalmia; no persimmon-trees, not a holly, only one ash
that may be called a timber tree, no catalpa or sassafras, not a single
elm or hackberry, not a mulberry, not a hickory, or a beech, or a true
chestnut. These facts would seem to indicate that the forest flora of
North America entered it from the east, and that the Pacific States
possess only those fragments of it that were able to struggle over or
around the great dividing mountain-chain.
We thus see that the flora and fauna of America and Europe testify not
only to the existence of Atlantis, but to the fact that in an earlier
age it must have extended from the shores of one continent to those of
the other; and by this bridge of land the plants and animals of one
region passed to the other.
The cultivation of the cotton-plant and the manufacture of its product
was known to both the Old and New World. Herodotus describes it (450
B.C.) as the tree of India that bears a fleece more beautiful than that
of the sheep. Columbus found the natives of the West Indies using cotton
cloth. It was also found in Mexico and Peru. It is a significant fact
that the cotton-plant has been found growing wild in many parts of
America, but never in the Old World. This would seem to indicate that
the plant was a native of America; and this is confirmed by the
superiority of American cotton, and the further fact that the plants
taken from America to India constantly degenerate, while those taken
from India to America as constantly improve.
There is a question whether the potato, maize, and tobacco were not
cultivated in China ages before Columbus discovered America. A recent
traveller says, “The interior of China, along the course of the
Yang-tse-Kiang, is a land full of wonders. In one place piscicultural
nurseries line the banks for nearly fifty miles. All sorts of
inventions, the cotton-gin included, claimed by Europeans and Americans,
are to be found there forty centuries old. Plants, yielding drugs of
great value, without number, the familiar tobacco and potato, maize,
white and yellow corn, and other plants believed to be indigenous to
America, have been cultivated there from time immemorial.”
Bonafous (“Histoire Naturelle du Mais,” Paris, 1826) attributes a
European or Asiatic origin to maize. The word maize, (Indian corn) is
derived from mahiz or mahis, the name of the plant in the language of
the Island of Hayti. And yet, strange to may, in the Lettish and
Livonian languages, in the north of Europe, mayse signifies bread; in
Irish, maise is food, and in the Old High German, maz is meat. May not
likewise the Spanish maiz have antedated the time of Columbus, and borne
testimony to early intercommunication between the people of the Old and
New Worlds?
It is to Atlantis we must look for the origin of nearly all our valuable
plants. Darwin says (“Animals and Plants under Domestication,” vol. i.,
p. 374), “It has often been remarked that we do not owe a single useful
plant to Australia, or the Cape of Good Hope–countries abounding to an
unparalleled degree with endemic species–or to New Zealand, or to
America south of the Plata; and, according to some authors, not to
America north of Mexico.” In other words, the domesticated plants are
only found within the limits of what I shall show hereafter was the
Empire of Atlantis and its colonies; for only here was to be found an
ancient, long-continuing civilization, capable of developing from a wild
state those plants which were valuable to man, including all the cereals
on which to-day civilized man depends for subsistence. M. Alphonse de
Candolle tells us that we owe 33 useful plants to Mexico, Peru, and
Chili. According to the same high authority, of 157 valuable cultivated
plants 85 can be traced back to their wild state; as to 40, there is
doubt as to their origin; while 32 are utterly unknown in their
aboriginal condition. (“Geograph. Botan. Raisonnée,” 1855, pp. 810-991.)
Certain roses–the imperial lily, the tuberose and the lilac–are said
to have been cultivated from such a vast antiquity that they are not
known in their wild state. (Darwin, “Animals and Plants,” vol. i., p.
370.) And these facts are the more remarkable because, as De Candolle
has shown, all the plants historically known to have been first
cultivated in Europe still exist there in the wild state. (Ibid.) The
inference is strong that the great cereals–wheat, oats, barley, rye,
and maize–must have been first domesticated in a vast antiquity, or in
some continent which has since disappeared, carrying the original wild
plants with it.
CEREALS OF THE AGE OF STONE IN EUROPE
Darwin quotes approvingly the opinion of Mr. Bentham (“Hist. Notes Cult.
Plants”), “as the result of all the most reliable evidence that none of
the Ceralia–wheat, rye, barley, and oats–exist or have existed truly
wild in their present state.” In the Stone Age of Europe five varieties
of wheat and three of barley were cultivated. (Darwin, “Animals and
Plants,” vol. i., p. 382.) He says that it may be inferred, from the
presence in the lake habitations of Switzerland of a variety of wheat
known as the Egyptian wheat, and from the nature of the weeds that grew
among their crops, “that the lake inhabitants either still kept up
commercial intercourse with some southern people, or had originally
proceeded as colonists from the south.” I should argue that they were
colonists from the land where wheat and barley were first domesticated,
to wit, Atlantis. And when the Bronze Age came, we find oats and rye
making their appearance with the weapons of bronze, together with a
peculiar kind of pea. Darwin concludes (Ibid., vol. i., p. 385) that
wheat, barley, rye, and oats were either descended from ten or fifteen
distinct species, “most of which are now unknown or extinct,” or from
four or eight species closely resembling our present forms, or so
“widely different as to escape identification;” in which latter case, he
says, “man must have cultivated the cereals at an enormously remote
period,” and at that time practised “some degree of selection.”
Rawlinson (“Ancient Monarchies,” vol. i., p. 578) expresses the opinion
that the ancient Assyrians possessed the pineapple. “The representation
on the monuments is so exact that I can scarcely doubt the pineapple
being intended.” (See Layard’s “Nineveh and Babylon,” p. 338.) The
pineapple (Bromelia ananassa) is supposed to be of American origin, and
unknown to Europe before the time of Columbus; and yet, apart from the
revelations of the Assyrian monuments, there has been some dispute upon
this point. (“Amer. Cyclop.,” vol. xiii., p. .528.)
ANCIENT IRISH PIPES
It is not even certain that the use of tobacco was not known to the
colonists from Atlantis settled in Ireland in an age long prior to Sir
Walter Raleigh. Great numbers of pipes have been found in the raths and
tumuli of Ireland, which, there is every reason to believe, were placed
there by men of the Prehistoric Period. The illustration on p. 63
represents some of the so-called “Danes’ pipes” now in the collection of
the Royal Irish Academy. The Danes entered Ireland many centuries before
the time of Columbus, and if the pipes are theirs, they must have used
tobacco, or some substitute for it, at that early period. It is
probable, however, that the tumuli of Ireland antedate the Danes
thousands of years.
ANCIENT INDIAN PIPE, NEW JERSEY
Compare these pipes from the ancient mounds of Ireland with the accompanying picture of an Indian pipe of the Stone Age of New Jersey. (“Smithsonian Rep.,” 1875, p. 342.)
Recent Portuguese travellers have found the most remote tribes of savage negroes in Africa, holding no commercial intercourse with Europeans, using strangely shaped pipes, in which they smoked a plant of the country. Investigations in America lead to the conclusion that tobacco was first burnt as an incense to the gods, the priest alone using the pipe; and from this beginning the extraordinary practice spread to the people, and thence over all the world. It may have crossed the Atlantic in a remote age, and have subsequently disappeared with the failure of retrograding colonists to raise the tobacco-plant.
PART II. THE DELUGE.
CHAPTER I.
THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS DESCRIBED IN THE DELUGE LEGENDS.
Having demonstrated, as we think successfully, that there is no
improbability in the statement of Plato that a large island, almost a
continent, existed in the past in the Atlantic Ocean, nay, more, that it
is a geological certainty that it did exist; and having further shown
that it is not improbable but very possible that it may have sunk
beneath the sea in the manner described by Plato, we come now to the
next question, Is the memory of this gigantic catastrophe preserved
among the traditions of mankind? We think there can be no doubt that an
affirmative answer must be given to this question.
An event, which in a few hours destroyed, amid horrible convulsions, an
entire country, with all its vast population-that Population the
ancestors of the great races of both continents, and they themselves the
custodians of the civilization of their age-could not fail to impress
with terrible force the minds of men, and to project its gloomy shadow
over all human history. And hence, whether we turn to the Hebrews, the
Aryans, the Ph?nicians, the Greeks, the Cushites, or the inhabitants of
America, we find everywhere traditions of the Deluge; and we shall see
that all these traditions point unmistakably to the destruction of
Atlantis.
François Lenormant says (Contemp. Rev., Nov., 1879):
“The result authorizes us to affirm the story of the Deluge to be a
universal tradition among all branches of the human race, with the one
exception, however, of the black. Now, a recollection thus precise and
concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily invented. No religious or
cosmogonic myth presents this character of universality. It must arise
from the reminiscence of a real and terrible event, so powerfully
impressing the imagination of the first ancestors of our race as never
to have been forgotten by their descendants. This cataclysm must have
occurred near the first cradle of mankind, and before the dispersion of
the families from which the principal races were to spring; for it would
be at once improbable and uncritical to admit that, at as many different
points of the globe as we should have to assume in order to explain the
wide spread of these traditions, local phenomena so exactly alike should
have occurred, their memory having assumed an identical form, and
presenting circumstances that need not necessarily have occurred to the
mind in such cases.
“Let us observe, however, that probably the diluvian tradition is not
primitive, but imported in America; that it undoubtedly wears the aspect
of an importation among the rare populations of the yellow race where it
is found; and lastly, that it is doubtful among the Polynesians of
Oceania. There will still remain three great races to which it is
undoubtedly peculiar, who have not borrowed it from each other, but
among whom the tradition is primitive, and goes back to the most ancient
times, and these three races are precisely the only ones of which the
Bible speaks as being descended from Noah–those of which it gives the
ethnic filiation in the tenth chapter of Genesis. This observation.
which I hold to be undeniable, attaches a singularly historic and exact
value to the tradition as recorded by the Sacred Book, even if, on the
other hand, it may lead to giving it a more limited geographical and
ethnological significance. . . .
“But, as the case now stands, we do not hesitate to declare that, far
from being a myth, the Biblical Deluge is a real and historical fact,
having, to say the least, left its impress on the ancestors of three
races–Aryan, or Indo-European, Semitic, or Syro-Arabian, Chamitic, or
Cushite–that is to say, on the three great civilized races of the
ancient world, those which constitute the higher humanity–before the
ancestors of those races had as yet separated, and in the part of Asia
they together inhabited.”
Such profound scholars and sincere Christians as M. Schw?bel (Paris,
1858), and M. Omalius d’Halloy (Bruxelles, 1866), deny the universality
of the Deluge, and claim that “it extended only to the principal centre
of humanity, to those who remained near its primitive cradle, without
reaching the scattered tribes who had already spread themselves far away
in almost desert regions. It is certain that the Bible narrative
commences by relating facts common to the whole human species, confining
itself subsequently to the annals of the race peculiarly chosen by the
designs of Providence.” (Lenormant and Chevallier, “Anc. Hist. of the
East,” p. 44.) This theory is supported by that eminent authority on
anthropology, M. de Quatrefages, as well as by Cuvier; the Rev. R. p.
Bellynck, S.J., admits that it has nothing expressly opposed to
orthodoxy.
Plato identifies “the great deluge of all” with the destruction of
Atlantis. The priest of Sais told Solon that before “the great deluge of
all” Athens possessed a noble race, who performed many noble deeds, the
last and greatest of which was resisting the attempts of Atlantis to
subjugate them; and after this came the destruction of Atlantis, and the
same great convulsion which overwhelmed that island destroyed a number
of the Greeks. So that the Egyptians, who possessed the memory of many
partial deluges, regarded this as “the great deluge of all.”
CHAPTER II.
THE DELUGE OF THE BIBLE
We give first the Bible history of the Deluge, as found in Genesis
(chap. vi. to chap. viii.):
“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the
earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the
daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all
which they chose.
“And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that
he also is flesh: yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when
the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare
children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of
renown.
“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man
whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and
the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I
have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
[“These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in
his generations, and Noah walked with God. And Noah begat three sons,
Shem, Ham, and Japheth.]
“The earth also was corrupt before God; and the earth was filled with
violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt;
for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto
Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled
with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the
earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the
ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the
fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be
three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of
it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit
shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in
the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make
it. And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth,
to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven;
and everything that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I
establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy
sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee. And of every living
thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to
keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after
their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of
the earth after his kind; two of every sort shall come unto thee, to
keep them alive. And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and
thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for
them.
“Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
“And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark;
for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every
clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female:
and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of
fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed
alive upon the face of all the earth. For yet seven days, and I will
cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every
living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of
the earth.
“And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him. And Noah
was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.
“And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with
him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts,
and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that
creepeth upon the earth, there went in two and two unto Noah into the
ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
“And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were
upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second
month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the
fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were
opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In
the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons
of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them,
into the ark; they, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle
after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth
after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.
And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh,
wherein is the breath of life. And they that went in, went in male and
female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the Lord shut him in.
“And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased,
and bare up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth. And the
waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark
went Upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly
upon the earth; and all the high bills, that were under the whole
heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and
the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the
earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils
was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every
living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground,
both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the
heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained
alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed
upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.
“And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle
that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the
earth, and the waters assuaged. The fountains also of the deep and the
windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.
And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the
end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark
rested in the seventh mouth, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon
the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the
tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the mouth, were the
tops of the mountains seen.
“And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the
window of the ark which he had made: and he sent forth a raven, which
went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the
earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were
abated from off the face of the ground. But the dove found no rest for
the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark; for the
waters were on the face of the whole earth. Then he put forth his hand,
and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet
other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And
the dove came in to him in the evening, and, lo, in her mouth was an
olive leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from
off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days, and sent forth the
dove, which returned not again unto him any more.
“And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first
month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the
earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and,
behold, the face of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on the
seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.
“And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy
wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee. Bring forth with thee
every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and of
cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that
they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply
upon the earth.
“And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him: every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.
“And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast,
and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And
the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will
not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination
of man’s heart is evil from his youth: neither will I again smite any
more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth,
seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day
and night shall not cease.”
Let us briefly consider this record.
It shows, taken in connection with the opening chapters of Genesis:
1. That the land destroyed by water was the country in which the civilization of the human race originated. Adam was at first naked (Gen., chap. iii., 7); then he clothed himself in leaves; then in the skins of animals (chap. iii., 21): be was the first that tilled the earth, having emerged from a more primitive condition in which be lived upon the fruits of the forest (chap. ii., 16); his son Abel was the first of those that kept flocks of sheep (chap. iv., 2); his son Cain was the builder of the first city (chap. iv., 17); his descendant, Tubal-cain, was the first metallurgist (chap. iv., 22); Jabal was the first that erected tents and kept cattle (chap. iv., 20); Jubal was the first that made musical instruments. We have here the successive steps by which a savage race advances to civilization. We will see hereafter that the Atlanteans passed through precisely similar stages of development.
2. The Bible agrees with Plato in the statement that these Antediluvians had reached great populousness and wickedness, and that it was on account of their wickedness God resolved to destroy them.
3. In both cases the inhabitants of the doomed land were destroyed in a great catastrophe by the agency of water; they were drowned.
4. The Bible tells us that in an earlier age, before their destruction, mankind had dwelt in a happy, peaceful, sinless condition in a Garden of Eden. Plato tells us the same thing of the earlier ages of the Atlanteans.
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5. In both the Bible history and Plato’s story the destruction of the people was largely caused by the intermarriage of the superior or divine race, “the sons of God,” with an inferior stock, “the children of men,” whereby they were degraded and rendered wicked.
We will see hereafter that the Hebrews and their Flood legend are closely connected with the Ph?nicians, whose connection with Atlantis is established in many ways.
It is now conceded by scholars that the genealogical table given in tho Bible (Gen., chap. x.) is not intended to include the true negro races, or the Chinese, the Japanese, the Finns or Lapps, the Australians, or the American red men. It refers altogether to the Mediterranean races, the Aryans, the Cushites, the Ph?nicians, the Hebrews, and the Egyptians. “The sons of Ham” were not true negroes, but the dark-brown races. (See Winchell’s “Preadamites,” chap. vii.)
If these races (the Chinese, Australians, Americans, etc.) are not descended from Noah they could not have been included in the Deluge. If neither China, Japan, America, Northern Europe, nor Australia were depopulated by the Deluge, the Deluge could not have been universal. But as it is alleged that it did destroy a country, and drowned all the people thereof except Noah and his family, the country so destroyed could not have been Europe, Asia, Africa, America, or Australia, for there has been no universal destruction of the people of those regions; or, if there had been, how can we account for the existence to-day of people on all of those continents whose descent Genesis does not trace back to Noah, and, in fact, about whom the writer of Genesis seems to have known nothing?
We are thus driven to one of two alternative conclusions: either the Deluge record of the Bible is altogether fabulous, or it relates to some land other than Europe, Asia, Africa, or Australia, some land that was destroyed by water. It is not fabulous; and the land it refers to is not Europe, Asia, Africa,
p. 74
or Australia–but Atlantis. No other land is known to history or tradition that was overthrown in a great catastrophe by the agency of water; that was civilized, populous, powerful, and given over to wickedness.
That high and orthodox authority, François Lenormant, says (“Ancient Hist. of the East,” vol. i., p. 64), “The descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, so admirably catalogued by Moses, include one only of the races of humanity, the white race, whose three chief divisions he gives us as now recognized by anthropologists. The other three races–yellow, black, and red–have no place in the Bible list of nations sprung from Noah.” As, therefore, the Deluge of the Bible destroyed only the land and people of Noah, it could not have been universal. The religious world does not pretend to fix the location of the Garden of Eden. The Rev. George Leo Haydock says, “The precise situation cannot be ascertained; bow great might be its extent we do not know;” and we will see hereafter that the unwritten traditions of the Church pointed to a region in the west, beyond the ocean which bounds Europe in that direction, as the locality in which “mankind dwelt before the Deluge.”
It will be more and more evident) as we proceed in the consideration. of the Flood legends of other nations, that the Antediluvian World was none other than Atlantis,
CHAPTER III.
THE DELUGE OF THE CHALDEANS.
WE have two versions of the Chaldean story–unequally developed, indeed, but exhibiting a remarkable agreement. The one most anciently known, and also the shorter, is that which Berosus took from the sacred books of Babylon, and introduced into the history that he wrote for the use of the Greeks. After speaking of the last nine antediluvian kings, the Chaldean priest continues thus.
“Obartès Elbaratutu being dead, his son Xisuthros (Khasisatra) reigned eighteen sares (64,800 years). It was under him that the Great Deluge took place, the history of which is told in the sacred documents as follows: Cronos (Ea) appeared to him in his sleep, and announced that on the fifteenth of the month of Daisios (the Assyrian month Sivan–a little before the summer solstice) all men should perish by a flood. He therefore commanded him to take the beginning, the middle, and the end of whatever was consigned to writing, and to bury it in the City of the Sun, at Sippara; then to build a vessel, and to enter it with his family and dearest friends; to place in this vessel provisions to eat and drink, and to cause animals, birds, and quadrupeds to enter it; lastly, to prepare everything, for navigation. And when Xisuthros inquired in what direction he should steer his bark, be was answered, ‘toward the gods,’ and enjoined to pray that good might come of it for men.
“Xisuthros obeyed, and constructed a vessel five stadia long and five broad; he collected all that had been prescribed to him, and embarked his wife, his children, and his intimate friends.
“The Deluge having come, and soon going down, Xisuthros
loosed some of the birds. These, finding no food nor place to alight on, returned to the ship. A few days later Xisuthros again let them free, but they returned again to the vessel, their feet fall of mud. Finally, loosed the third time, the birds came no more back. Then Xisuthros understood that the earth was bare. He made an opening in the roof of the ship, and saw that it had grounded on the top of a mountain. He then descended with his wife, his daughter, and his pilot, who worshipped the earth, raised an altar, and there sacrificed to the gods; at the same moment he vanished with those who accompanied him.
“Meanwhile those who had remained in the vessel, not seeing Xisutbros return, descended too, and began to seek him, calling him by his name. They saw Xisuthros no more; but a voice from heaven was heard commanding them piety toward the gods; that he, indeed, was receiving the reward of his piety in being carried away to dwell thenceforth in the midst of the gods, and that his wife, his daughter, and the pilot of the ship shared the same honor. The voice further said that they were to return to Babylon, and, conformably to the decrees of fate, disinter the writings buried at Sippara in order to transmit them to men. It added that the country in which they found themselves was Armenia. These, then, having heard the voice, sacrificed to the gods and returned on foot to Babylon. Of the vessel of Xisuthros, which had finally landed in Armenia, a portion is still to be found in the Gordyan Mountains in Armenia, and pilgrims bring thence asphalte that they have scraped from its fragments. It is used to keep off the influence of witchcraft. As to the companions of Xisuthros, they came to Babylon, disinterred the writings left at Sippara, founded numerous cities, built temples, and restored Babylon.”
“By the side of this version,” says Lenormant, “which, interesting though it be, is, after all, second-hand, we are now able to place an original Chaldeo-Babylonian edition, which the lamented George Smith was the first to decipher on the cuneiform tablets exhumed at Nineveh, and now in the British Museum. Here the narrative of the Deluge appears as an episode in the eleventh tablet, or eleventh chant of the great
epic of the town of Uruk. The hero of this poem, a kind of Hercules, whose name has not as yet been made out with certainty, being attacked by disease (a kind of leprosy), goes, with a view to its cure, to consult the patriarch saved from the Deluge, Khasisatra, in the distant land to which the gods have transported him, there to enjoy eternal felicity. He asks Khasisatra to reveal the secret of the events which led to his obtaining the privilege of immortality, and thus the patriarch is induced to relate the cataclysm.
“By a comparison of the three copies of the poem that the library of the palace of Nineveh contained, it has been possible to restore the narrative with hardly any breaks. These three copies were, by order of the King of Assyria, Asshurbanabal, made in the eighth century B.C., from a very ancient specimen in the sacerdotal library of the town of Uruk, founded by the monarchs of the first Chaldean empire. It is difficult precisely to fix the date of the original, copied by Assyrian scribes, but it certainly goes back to the ancient empire, seventeen centuries at least before our era, and even probably beyond; it was therefore much anterior to Moses, and nearly contemporaneous with Abraham. The variations presented by the three existing copies prove that the original was in the primitive mode of writing called the hieratic, a character which must have already become difficult to decipher in the eighth century B.C., as the copyists have differed as to the interpretation to be given to certain signs, and in other cases have simply reproduced exactly the forms of such as they did not understand. Finally, it results from a comparison of these variations, that the original, transcribed by order of Asshurbanabal, must itself have been a copy of some still more ancient manuscript, it, which the original text had already received interlinear comments. Some of the copyists have introduced these into their text, others have omitted them. With these preliminary observations, I proceed to give integrally the narrative ascribed ill the poem to Khasisatra:
“‘I will reveal to thee, O Izdhubar, the history of my preservation-and tell to thee the decision of the gods.
“‘The town of Shurippak, a town which thou knowest, is situated on the Euphrates–it was ancient, and in it [men did not honor] the gods. [I alone, I was] their servant, to the great gods–[The gods took counsel on the appeal of] Ann–[a deluge was proposed by] Bel–[and approved by Nabon, Nergal and] Adar.
“‘And the god [Ea], the immutable lord, repeated this command in a dream.–I listened to the decree of fate that he announced, and he said to me:–” Man of Shurippak, son of Ubaratutu–thou, build a vessel and finish it [quickly].–[By a deluge] I will destroy substance and life.–Cause thou to go up into the vessel the substance of all that has life.–The vessel thou shall build-600 cubits shall be the measure of its length–and 60 cubits the amount of its breadth and of its height. [Launch if] thus on the ocean, and cover it with a roof.”–I understood, and I said to Ea, my lord:–“The vessel] that thou commandest me to build thus–[when] I shall do it,–young and old [shall laugh at me.]”–[Ea opened his mouth and] spoke.–He said to me, his servant:–“[If they laugh at thee] thou shalt say to them:–[shall be punished] he who has insulted me, [for the protection of the gods] is over me.– . . . like to caverns . . . — . . . I will exercise my judgment on that which is on high and that which is below . . . .–. . . Close the vessel . . . — . . . At a given moment that I shall cause thee to know,–enter into it, and draw the door of the ship toward thee.–Within it, thy grains, thy furniture, thy provisions, thy riches, thy men-servants, and thy maid-servants, and thy young people–the cattle of the field, and the wild beasts of the plain that I will assemble-and that I will send thee, shall be kept behind thy door.”–Khasisatra opened his mouth and spoke;–he said to Ea, his lord:–“No one has made [such a] ship.–On the prow I will fix . . . –I shall see . . . and the vessel . . . –the vessel thou commandest me to build [thus]which in . . .”
“‘On the fifth day [the two sides of the bark] were raised.–In its covering fourteen in all were its rafters–fourteen in all did it count above.–I placed its roof, and I covered it.–I embarked in it on the sixth day; I divided its floors on the seventh;–I divided the interior compartments on the eighth.
[paragraph continues]I stopped up the chinks through which the water entered in;–I visited the chinks, and added what was wanting.–I poured on the exterior three times 3600 measures of asphalte,–and three times 3600 measures of asphalte within.–Three times 3600 men, porters, brought on their heads the chests of provisions.–I kept 3600 chests for the nourishment of my family,–and the mariners divided among themselves twice 3600 chests.–For [provisioning] I had oxen slain;–I instituted [rations] for each day.–In anticipation of the need of] drinks, of barrels, and of wine–[I collected in quantity] like to the waters of a river, [of provisions] in quantity like to the dust of the earth.-[To arrange them in] the chests I set my hand to.–. . . of the sun . . . the vessel was completed.– . . . strong and–I had carried above and below the furniture of the ship.–[This lading filled the two-thirds.]
‘All that I possessed I gathered together; all I possessed of silver I gathered together; all that I possessed of gold I gathered–all that I possessed of the substance of life of every kind I gathered together.–I made all ascend into the vessel; my servants, male and female,–the cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the plains, and the sons of the people, I made them all ascend.
“‘Shamash (the sun) made the moment determined, and he announced it in these terms:–“In the evening I will cause it to rain abundantly from heaven; enter into the vessel and close the door.”–The fixed Moment had arrived, which he announced in these terms:–“In the evening I will cause it to rain abundantly from heaven.”–When the evening of that day arrived, I was afraid,–I entered into the vessel and shut my door.–In shutting the vessel, to Buzur-shadi-rabi, the pilot,–I confided this dwelling, with all that it contained.
“‘Mu-sheri-ina-namari–rose from the foundations of heaven in a black cloud;–Ramman thundered in the midst of the cloud,–and Nabon and Sharru marched before;–they marched, devastating the mountain and the plain;–Nergal the powerful dragged chastisements after him;–Adar advanced, overthrowing;–before him;–the archangels of the abyss brought destruction,–in their terrors they agitated the earth.–The inundation of Ramman swelled up to the sky,–and [the earth] became without lustre, was changed into a desert.
‘They broke . . . of the surface of the earth like . . .;–
[paragraph continues][they destroyed] the living beings of the surface of the earth.–The terrible [Deluge] on men swelled up to [heaven].The brother no longer saw his brother; men no longer knew each other. In heaven–the gods became afraid of the water-spout, and–sought a refuge; they mounted up to the heaven of Anu.–The gods were stretched out motionless, pressing one against another like dogs.–Ishtar wailed like a child, the great goddess pronounced her discourse:–“Here is humanity returned into mud, and–this is the misfortune that I have announced in the presence of the gods.–So I announced the misfortune in the presence of the gods,–for the evil I announced the terrible [chastisement] of men who are mine.–I am the mother who gave birth to men, and–like to the race of fishes, there they are filling the sea;–and the gods, by reason of that–which the archangels of the abyss are doing, weep with me.”–The gods on their seats were seated in tears,–and they held their lips closed, [revolving] future things.
“‘Six days and as many nights passed; the wind, the water-spout, and the diluvian rain were in all their strength. At the approach of the seventh day the diluvian rain grew weaker, the terrible water-spout-which had assailed after the fashion of an earthquake–grew calm, the sea inclined to dry up, and the wind and the water-spout came to an end. I looked at the sea, attentively observing–and the whole of humanity had returned to mud; like unto sea-weeds the corpses floated. I opened the window, and the light smote on my face. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and I wept;-and my tears came over my face.
“‘I looked at the regions bounding the sea: toward the twelve points of the horizon; not any continent.–The vessel was borne above the land of Nizir,–the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over.–A day and a second day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over;–the third and fourth day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over;–the fifth and sixth day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over. At the approach of the seventh day, I sent out and loosed a dove. The dove went, turned, and–found no place to light on, and it came back. I sent out and loosed a swallow; the swallow went, turned, and–found no place to light on, and it came
back. I sent out and loosed a raven; the raven went and saw the corpses on the waters; it ate, rested, turned, and came not back.
“‘1 then sent out (what was in the vessel) toward the four winds, and I offered a sacrifice. I raised the pile of my burnt-offering on the peak of the mountain; seven by seven I disposed the measured vases,–and beneath I spread rushes, cedar, and juniper-wood. The gods were seized with the desire of it–the gods were seized with a benevolent desire of it;–and the gods assembled like flies above the master of the sacrifice. From afar, in approaching, the great goddess raised the great zones that Anu has made for their glory (the gods). These gods, luminous crystal before me, I will never leave them; in that day I prayed that I might never leave them. “Let the gods come to my sacrificial pile!–but never may Bel come to my sacrificial pile! for he did not master himself, and he has made the water-spout for the Deluge, and he has numbered my men for the pit.”
“‘From far, in drawing near, Bel–saw the vessel, and Bel stopped;–he was filled with anger against the gods and the celestial archangels:–
“‘”No one shall come out alive! No man shall be preserved from the abyss!”–Adar opened his mouth and said; he said to the warrior Bel:–“What other than Ea should have formed this resolution?–for Ea possesses knowledge, and [he foresees] all.”–Ea opened his mouth and spake; he said to the warrior Bel:–“O thou, herald of the gods, warrior,–as thou didst not master thyself, thou hast made the water-spout of the Deluge.–Let the sinner carry the weight of his sins, the blasphemer the weight of his blasphemy.–Please thyself with this good pleasure, and it shall never be infringed; faith in it never [shall be violated].–Instead of thy making a new deluge, let lions appear and reduce the number of men;–instead of thy making a new deluge, let hyenas appear and reduce the number of men;–instead of thy making a new deluge, let there be famine, and let the earth be [devastated];–instead of thy making a new deluge, let Dibbara appear, and let men be [mown down]. I have not revealed the decision of the great gods;–it is Khasisatra who interpreted a dream and comprehended what the gods had decided.”
“‘Then, when his resolve was arrested, Bel entered into the
vessel.–He took my hand and made me rise.–He made my wife rise, and made her place herself at my side-.-He turned around us and stopped short; he approached our group.–“Until now Khasisatra has made part of perishable humanity;–but lo, now Khasisatra and his wife are going to be carried away to live like the gods,–and Khasisatra will reside afar at the mouth of the rivers.”–They carried me away, and established me in a remote place at the mouth of the streams.’
“This narrative,” says Lenormant, “follows with great exactness the same course as that, or, rather, as those of Genesis; and the analogies are, on both sides, striking.”
When we consider these two forms of the same legend, we see many points wherein the story points directly to Atlantis.
1. In the first place, Berosus tells us that the god who gave warning of the coming of the Deluge was Chronos. Chronos, it is well known, was the same as Saturn. Saturn was an ancient king of Italy, who, far anterior to the founding of Rome, introduced civilization from some other country to the Italians. He established industry and social order, filled the land with plenty, and created the golden age of Italy. He was suddenly removed to the abodes of the gods. His name is connected, in the mythological legends, with “a great Saturnian continent” in the Atlantic Ocean, and a great kingdom which, in the remote ages, embraced Northern Africa and the European coast of the Mediterranean as far as the peninsula of Italy, and “certain islands in the sea;” agreeing, in this respect, with the story of Plato as to the dominions of Atlantis. The Romans called the Atlantic Ocean “Chronium Mare,” the Sea of Chronos, thus identifying Chronos with that ocean. The pillars of Hercules were also called by the ancients “the pillars of Chronos.”
Here, then, we have convincing testimony that the country referred to in the Chaldean legends was the land of Chronos, or Saturn–the ocean world, the dominion of Atlantis.
2. Hea or Ea, the god of the Nineveh tablets, was a fish-god:
he was represented in the Chaldean monuments as half man and half fish; he was described as the god, not of the rivers and seas, but of “the abyss”–to wit, the ocean. He it was who was said to have brought civilization and letters to the ancestors of the Assyrians. He clearly represented an ancient, maritime, civilized nation; he came from the ocean, and was associated with some land and people that had been destroyed by rain and inundations. The fact that the scene of the Deluge is located on the Euphrates proves nothing, for we will see hereafter that almost every nation had its especial mountain on which, according to its traditions, the ark rested; just as every Greek tribe had its own particular mountain of Olympos. The god Bel of the legend was the Baal of the Ph?nicians, who, as we shall show, were of Atlantean origin. Bel, or Baal, was worshipped on the western and northern coasts of Europe, and gave his name to the Baltic, the Great and Little Belt, Balesbaugen, Balestranden, etc.; and to many localities, in the British Islands, as, for instance, Belan and the Baal hills in Yorkshire.
3. In those respects wherein the Chaldean legend, evidently the older form of the tradition, differs from the Biblical record, we see that in each instance we approach nearer to Atlantis. The account given in Genesis is the form of the tradition that would be natural to an inland people. Although there is an allusion to “the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep” (about which I shall speak more fully hereafter), the principal destruction seems to have been accomplished by rain; hence the greater period allowed for the Deluge, to give time enough for the rain to fall, and subsequently drain off from the land. A people dwelling in the midst of a continent could not conceive the possibility of a whole world sinking beneath the sea; they therefore supposed the destruction to have been, caused by a continuous down-pour of rain for forty days and forty nights.
In the Chaldean legend, on the contrary, the rain lasted but
seven days; and we see that the writer had a glimpse of the fact that the destruction occurred in the midst of or near the sea. The ark of Genesis (têbâh) was simply a chest, a coffer, a big box, such as might be imagined by an inland people. The ark of the Chaldeans was a veritable ship; it had a prow, a helm, and a pilot, and men to manage it; and it navigated “the sea.”
4. The Chaldean legend represents not a mere rain-storm, but a tremendous cataclysm. There was rain, it is true, but there was also thunder, lightning, earthquakes, wind, a water-spout, and a devastation of mountain and land by the war of the elements. All the dreadful forces of nature were fighting together over the doomed land: “the archangel of the abyss brought destruction,” “the water rose to the sky,” “the brother no longer saw his brother; men no longer knew each other;” the men “filled the sea like fishes;” the sea was filled with mud, and “the corpses floated like sea-weed.” When the storm abated the land had totally disappeared-there was no longer “any continent.” Does not all this accord with “that dreadful day and night” described by Plato?
5. In the original it appears that Izdhubar, when he started to find the deified Khasisatra, travelled first, for nine days’ journey, to the sea; then secured the services of a boatman, and, entering a ship, sailed for fifteen days before finding the Chaldean Noah. This would show that Khasisatra dwelt in a far country, one only attainable by crossing the water; and this, too, seems like a reminiscence of the real site of Atlantis. The sea which a sailing-vessel required fifteen days to cross must have been a very large body of water; in fact, an ocean.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DELUGE LEGENDS OF OTHER NATIONS.
A COLLECTION of the Deluge legends of other nations will throw light upon the Biblical and Chaldean records of that great event.
The author of the treatise “On the Syrian Goddess” acquaints us with the diluvian tradition of the Arameans, directly derived from that of Chaldea, as it was narrated in the celebrated Sanctuary of Hierapolis, or Bambyce.
“The generality of people,” be says, “tells us that the founder of the temple was Deucalion Sisythes–that Deucalion in whose time the great inundation occurred. I have also heard the account given by the Greeks themselves of Deucalion; the myth runs thus: The actual race of men is not the first, for there was a previous one, all the members of which perished. We belong to a second race, descended from Deucalion, and multiplied in the course of time. As to the former men, they are said to have been full of insolence and pride, committing many crimes, disregarding their oath, neglecting the rights of hospitality, unsparing to suppliants; accordingly, they were punished by an immense disaster. All on a sudden enormous volumes of water issued from the earth, and rains of extraordinary abundance began to fall; the rivers left their beds, and the sea overflowed its shores; the whole earth was covered with water, and all men perished. Deucalion alone, because of his virtue and piety, was preserved alive to give birth to a new race. This is how he was saved: He placed himself, his children, and his wives in a great coffer that he had, in which pigs, horses, lions, serpents, and all other terrestrial animals came to seek refuge with him. He received them all; and while they
were in the coffer Zeus inspired them with reciprocal amity, which prevented their devouring one another. In this manner, shut up within one single coffer, they floated as long as the waters remained in force. Such is the account given by the Greeks of Deucalion.
“But to this, which they equally tell, the people of Hierapolis add a marvellous narrative: That in their country a great chasm opened, into which all the waters of the Deluge poured. Then Deucalion raised an altar, and dedicated a temple to Hera (Atargatis) close to this very chasm. I have seen it; it is very narrow, and situated under the temple. Whether it was once large, and has now shrunk, I do not know; but I have seen it, and it is quite small. In memory of the event the following is the rite accomplished: Twice a year sea-water is brought to the temple. This is not only done by the priests, but numerous pilgrims come from the whole of Syria and Arabia, and even from beyond the Euphrates, bringing water. It is poured out in the temple and goes into the cleft, which, narrow as it is, swallows up a considerable quantity. This is said to be in virtue of a religious law instituted by Deucalion to preserve the memory of the catastrophe, and of the benefits that he received from the gods. Such is the ancient tradition of the temple.”
“It appears to me difficult,” says Lenormant, “not to recognize an echo of fables popular in all Semitic countries about this chasm of Hierapolis, and the part it played in the Deluge, in the enigmatic expressions of the Koran respecting the oven (tannur) which began to bubble and disgorge water all around at the commencement of the Deluge. We know that this tannur has been the occasion of most grotesque imaginings of Mussulman commentators, who had lost the tradition of the story to which Mohammed made allusion. And, moreover, the Koran formally states that the waters of the Deluge were absorbed in the bosom of the earth.”
Here the Xisuthros of Berosus becomes Deucalion-Sisythes. The animals are not collected together by Deucalion, as in the case of Noah and Khasisatra, but they crowded into the vessel of their own accord, driven by the terror with which the storm
had inspired them; as in great calamities the creatures of the forest have been known to seek refuge in the houses of men.
India affords us art account of the Deluge which, by its poverty, strikingly contrasts with that of the Bible and the Chaldeans. Its most simple and ancient form is found in the Çatapatha Brâhmana of the Rig-Veda. It has been translated for the first time by Max Müller.
“One morning water for washing was brought to Manu, and when he had washed himself a fish remained in his hands, and it addressed these words to him: ‘Protect me, and I will save thee.’ ‘From what wilt thou save me?’ ‘A deluge will sweep all creatures away; it is from that I will save thee.’ ‘How shall I protect thee?’ The fish replied, ‘While we are small we run great dangers, for fish swallow fish. Keep me at first in a vase; when I become too large for it, dig a basin to put me into. When I shall have grown still more, throw me into the ocean; then I shall be preserved from destruction.’ Soon it grew a large fish. It said to Manu, ‘The very year I shall have reached my full growth the Deluge will happen. Then build a vessel and worship me. When the waters rise, enter the vessel, and I will save thee.’
“After keeping him thus, Manu carried the fish to the sea. In the year indicated Manu built a vessel and worshipped the fish. And when the Deluge came he entered the vessel. Then the fish came swimming up to him, and Manu fastened the cable of the ship to the horn of the fish, by which means the latter made it pass over the Mountain of the North. The fish said, ‘I have saved thee; fasten the vessel to a tree, that the water may not sweep it away while thou art on the mountain; and in proportion as the waters decrease thou shalt descend.’ Manu descended with the waters, and this is what is called the descent of Manu on the Mountain of the North. The Deluge had carried away all creatures, and Manu remained alone.”
There is another form of the Hindoo legend in the Purânas. Lenormant says:
“We must also ‘remark that in the Purânas it is no longer Manu Vaivasata that the divine fish saves from the Deluge, but a different personage, the King of the Dâstas–i. e., fishers
[paragraph continues]–Satyravata,’ the man who loves justice and truth,’ strikingly corresponding to the Chaldean Khasisatra. Nor is the Puranic version of the Legend of the Deluge to be despised, though it be of recent date, and full of fantastic and often puerile details. In certain aspects it is less Aryanized than that of Brâhmana or than the Mahâbhârata; and, above all, it gives some circumstances omitted in these earlier versions, which must yet have belonged to the original foundation, since they appear in the Babylonian legend; a circumstance preserved, no doubt, by the oral tradition–popular, and not Brahmanic–with which the Purânas are so deeply imbued. This has already been observed by Pictet, who lays due stress on the following passage of the Bhâgavata-Purâna: ‘In seven days,’ said Vishnu to Satyravata, ‘the three worlds shall be submerged.’ There is nothing like this in the Brâhmana nor the Mahâbhârata, but in Genesis the Lord says to Noah, ‘Yet seven days and I will cause it to rain upon the earth;’ and a little farther we read, ‘After seven days the waters of the flood were upon the earth.’. . . Nor must we pay less attention to the directions given by the fish-god to Satyravata for the placing of the sacred Scriptures in a safe place, in order to preserve them from Hayagriva, a marine horse dwelling in the abyss. . . . We recognize in it, under an Indian garb, the very tradition of the interment of the sacred writings at Sippara by Khasisatra, such as we have seen it in the fragment of Berosus.”
The references to “the three worlds” and the “fish-god” in these legends point to Atlantis. The “three worlds” probably refers to the great empire of Atlantis, described by Plato, to wit, the western continent, America, the eastern continent, Europe and Africa, considered as one, and the island of Atlantis. As we have seen, Poseidon, the founder of the civilization of Atlantis, is identical with Neptune, who is always represented riding a dolphin, bearing a trident, or three-pronged symbol, in his hand, emblematical probably of the triple kingdom. He is thus a sea-god, or fish-god, and be comes to save the representative of his country.
And we have also a new and singular form of the legend in the following. Lenormant says:
“Among the Iranians, in the sacred books containing the fundamental Zoroastrian doctrines, and dating very far back, we meet with a tradition which must assuredly be looked upon as a variety of that of the Deluge, though possessing a special character, and diverging in some essential particulars from those we have been examining. It relates how Yima, who, in the original and primitive conception, was the father of the human race, was warned by Ahuramazda, the good deity, of the earth being about to be devastated by a flood. The god ordered Yima to construct a refuge, a square garden, vara, protected by an enclosure, and to cause the germs of men, beasts, and plants to enter it, in order to escape annihilation. Accordingly, when the inundation occurred, the garden of Yima, with all that it contained, was alone spared, and the message of safety was brought thither by the bird Karshipta, the envoy of Ahuramazda.” (“Vendûdid,” vol. ii., p. 46.)
This clearly signifies that, prior to the destruction of Atlantis, a colony had been sent out to some neighboring country. These emigrants built a walled town, and brought to it the grains and domestic animals of the mother country; and when the island of Atlantis sunk in the ocean, a messenger brought the terrible tidings to them in a ship.
“The Greeks had two principal legends as to the cataclysm by which primitive humanity was destroyed. The first was connected with the name of Ogyges, the most ancient of the kings of B?otia or Attica–a quite mythical personage, lost in the night of ages, his very name seemingly derived from one signifying deluge in Aryan idioms, in Sanscrit Angha. It is said that in his time the whole land was covered by a flood, whose waters reached the sky, and from which he, together with some companions, escaped in a vessel.
“The second tradition is the Thessalian legend of Deucalion. Zeus having worked to destroy the men of the age of bronze, with whose crimes be was wroth, Deucalion, by the advice of Prometheus, his father, constructed a coffer, in which he took refuge with his wife, Pyrrha. The Deluge came; the chest, or coffer, floated at the mercy of the waves for nine days and nine nights, and was finally stranded on Mount Parnassus. Deucalion and Pyrrha leave it, offer sacrifice, and,
according to the command of Zeus, repeople the world by throwing behind them ‘the bones of the earth’–namely, stones, which change into men. This Deluge of Deucalion is, in Grecian tradition, what most resembles a universal deluge. Many authors affirm that it extended to the whole earth, and that the whole human race perished. At Athens, in memory of the event, and to appease the manes of its victims, a ceremony called Hydrophoria was observed, having so close a resemblance to that in use at Hierapolis, in Syria, that we can hardly fail to look upon it as a Syro-Ph?nician importation, and the result of an assimilation established in remote antiquity between the Deluge of Deucalion and that of Khasisatra, as described by the author of the treatise ‘On the Syrian Goddess.’ Close to the temple of the Olympian Zeus a fissure in the soil was shown, in length but one cubit, through which it was said the waters of the Deluge had been swallowed tip. Thus,, every year, on the third day of the festival of the Anthestéria, a day of mourning consecrated to the dead–that is, on the thirteenth of the month of Anthestérion, toward the beginning of March–it was customary, as at Bambyce, to pour water into the fissure, together with flour mixed with honey, poured also into the trench dug to the west of the tomb, in the funeral sacrifices of the Athenians.”
In this legend, also, there are passages which point to Atlantis. We will see hereafter that the Greek god Zeus was one of the kings of Atlantis. “The men of the age of bronze” indicates the civilization of the doomed people; they were the great metallurgists of their day, who, as we will see, were probably the source of the great number of implements and weapons of bronze found all over Europe. Here, also, while no length of time is assigned to the duration of the storm, we find that the ark floated but nine days and nights. Noah was one year and ten days in the ark, Khasisatra was not half that time, while Deucalion was afloat only nine days.
At Megara, in Greece, it was the eponym of the city, Megaros, son of Zeus and one of the nymphs, Sithnides, who, warned by the cry of cranes of the imminence of the danger of the coming flood, took refuge on Mount Geranien. Again, there
was the Thessalian Cerambos, who was said to have escaped the flood by rising into the air on wings given him by the nymphs; and it was Perirrhoos, son of Eolus, that Zeus Naios had preserved at Dodona. For the inhabitants of the Isle of Cos the hero of the Deluge was Merops, son of Hyas, who there assembled under his rule the remnant of humanity preserved with him. The traditions of Rhodes only supposed the Telchines, those of Crete Sasion, to have escaped the cataclysm. In Samothracia the same character was attributed to Saon, said to be the son of Zeus or of Hermes.
It will be observed that in all these legends the name of Zeus, King of Atlantis, reappears. It would appear probable that many parties had escaped from the catastrophe, and had landed at the different points named in the traditions; or else that colonies had already been established by the Atlanteans at those places. It would appear impossible that a maritime people could be totally destroyed; doubtless many were on shipboard in the harbors, and others going and coming on distant voyages.
“The invasion of the East,” says Baldwin (‘Prehistoric Nations,’ p. 396), “to which the story of Atlantis refers, seems to have given rise to the Panathenæ, the oldest, greatest, and most splendid festivals in honor of Athena celebrated in Attica. These festivals are said to have been established by Erichthonis in the most ancient times remembered by the historical traditions of Athens. Boeckh says of them, in his ‘Commentary on Plato:’
“‘In the greater Panathenæ there was carried in procession a peplum of Minerva, representing the war with the giants and the victory of the gods of Olympus. In the lesser Panathenæ they carried another peplum (covered with symbolic devices), which showed how the Athenians, supported by Minerva, had the advantage in the war with the Atlantes.’ A scholia quoted from Proclus by Humboldt and Boeckh says: ‘The historians who speak of the islands of the exterior sea
tell us that in their time there were seven islands consecrated, to Proserpine, and three others of immense extent, of which the first was consecrated to Pluto, the second to Ammon, and the third to Neptune. The inhabitants of the latter had preserved a recollection (transmitted to them by their ancestors) of the island of Atlantis, which was extremely large, and for a long time held sway over all the islands of the Atlantic Ocean. Atlantis was also consecrated to Neptune.”‘ (See Humboldt’s “Histoire de la Géographie du Nouveau Continent,” vol. i.)
No one can read these legends and doubt that the Flood watt an historical reality. It is impossible that in two different places in the Old World, remote from each other, religious ceremonies should have been established and perpetuated from age to age in memory of an event which never occurred. We have seen that at Athens and at Hierapolis, in Syria, pilgrims came from a distance to appease the god of the earthquake, by pouring offerings into fissures of the earth said to have been made at the time Atlantis was destroyed.
More than this, we know from Plato’s history that the Athenians long preserved in their books the memory of a victory won over the Atlanteans in the early ages, and celebrated it by national festivals, with processions and religious ceremonies.
It is too much to ask us to believe that Biblical history, Chaldean, Iranian, and Greek legends signify nothing, and that even religious pilgrimages and national festivities were based upon a myth.
I would call attention to the farther fact that in the Deluge legend of the Isle of Cos the hero of the affair was Merops. Now we have seen that, according to Theopompus, one of the names of the people of Atlantis was “Meropes.”
But we have not reached the end of our Flood legends. The Persian Magi possessed a tradition in which the waters issued from the oven of an old woman. Mohammed borrowed this story, and in the Koran he refers to the Deluge as coming from an oven. “All men were drowned save Noah and his family; and then God said, ‘O earth, swallow up thy waters;
and thou, O heaven, withhold thy rain;’ and immediately the waters abated.”
In the bardic poems of Wales we have a tradition of the Deluge which, although recent, under the concise forms of the triads, is still deserving of attention. As usual, the legend is localized in the country, and the Deluge counts among three terrible catastrophes of the island of Prydian, or Britain, the other two consisting of devastation by fire and by drought.
“The first of these events,” it is said, “was the eruption of Llyn-llion, or ‘the lake of waves,’ and the inundation (bawdd) of the whole country, by which all mankind was drowned with the exception of Dwyfam and Dwyfach, who saved themselves in a vessel without rigging, and it was by them that the island of Prydian was repeopled.”
Pictet here observes:
“Although the triads in their actual form hardly date farther than the thirteenth or fourteenth century, some of them are undoubtedly connected with very ancient traditions, and nothing here points to a borrowing from Genesis.
“But it is not so, perhaps, with another triad, speaking of the vessel Nefyddnaf-Neifion, which at the time of the overflow of Llyon-llion, bore a pair of all living creatures, and rather too much resembles the ark of Noah. The very name of the patriarch may have suggested this triple epithet, obscure as to its meaning, but evidently formed on the principle of Cymric alliteration. In the same triad we have the enigmatic story of the horned oxen (ychain banog) of Hu the mighty, who drew out of Llyon-llion the avanc (beaver or crocodile?), in order that the lake should not overflow. The meaning of these enigmas could only be hoped from deciphering the chaos of barbaric monuments of the Welsh middle age; but meanwhile we cannot doubt that the Cymri possessed an indigenous tradition of the Deluge.”
We also find a vestige of the same tradition in the Scandinavian Ealda. Here the story is combined with a cosmogonic myth. The three sons of Borr–Othin, Wili, and We–grandsons of Buri, the first man, slay Ymir, the father of the Hrimthursar,
or ice giants, and his body serves them for the construction of the world. Blood flows from his wounds in such abundance that all the race of giants is drowned in it except Bergelmir, who saves himself, with his wife, in a boat, and reproduces the race.
In the Edda of S?mund, “The Vala’s Prophecy” (stz. 48-56, p. 9), we seem to catch traditional glimpses of a terrible catastrophe, which reminds us of the Chaldean legend:
“Then trembles Yggdrasil’s ash yet standing, groans that ancient tree, and the Jötun Loki is loosed. The shadows groan on the ways of Hel (the goddess of death), until the fire of Surt has consumed the tree. Hyrm steers from the east, the waters rise, the mundane snake is coiled in jötun-rage. The worm beats the water and the eagle screams; the pale of beak tears carcasses; (the ship) Naglfar is loosed. Surt from the south comes with flickering flame; shines from his sword the Valgod’s sun. The stony hills are dashed together, the giantesses totter; men tread the path of Hel, and heaven is cloven. The sun darkens, earth in ocean sinks, fall from heaven the bright stars, fire’s breath assails the all-nourishing, towering fire plays against heaven itself.”
Egypt does not contain a single allusion to the Flood. Lenormant says:
“While the tradition of the Deluge holds so considerable a place in the legendary memories of all branches of the Aryan race, the monuments and original texts of Egypt, with their many cosmogonic speculations, have not afforded one, even distant, allusion to this cataclysm. When the Greeks told the Egyptian priests of the Deluge of Deucalion, their reply was that they had been preserved from it as well as from the conflagration produced by Phaëthon; they even added that the Hellenes were childish in attaching so much importance to that event, as there had been several other local catastrophes resembling it. According to a passage in Manetho, much suspected, however, of being an interpolation, Thoth, or Hermes Trismegistus, had himself, before the cataclysm, inscribed on stelæ, in hieroglyphical and sacred language, the principles of all knowledge. After it the second Thoth translated into the
vulgar tongue the contents of these stelæ. This would be the only Egyptian mention of the Deluge, the same Manetho not speaking of it in what remains to us of his ‘Dynasties,’ his only complete authentic work. The silence of all other myths of the Pharaonic religion on this head render it very likely that the above is merely a foreign tradition, recently introduced, and no doubt of Asiatic and Chaldean origin.”
To my mind the explanation of this singular omission is very plain. The Egyptians had preserved in their annals the precise history of the destruction of Atlantis, out of which the Flood legends grew; and, as they told the Greeks, there had been no universal flood, but only local catastrophes. Possessing the real history of the local catastrophe which destroyed Atlantis, they did not indulge in any myths about a universal deluge covering the mountain-tops of all the world. They had no Ararat in their neighborhood.
The traditions of the early Christian ages touching the Deluge pointed to the
 THE WORLD, ACCORDING TO COSMOS |
quarter of the world in which Atlantis was situated.
There was a quaint old monk named Cosmos, who, about one thousand years ago, published a book, “Topographia Christiana,” accompanied by a map, in which he gives his view of the world as it was then understood. It was a body surrounded by water, and resting on nothing. “The earth,” says Cosmos, “presses downward, but the igneous parts tend upward,” and between the conflicting forces the earth hangs suspended,, like Mohammed’s coffin in the old story. The accompanying illustration
(page 95) represents the earth surrounded by the ocean, and beyond this ocean was “the land where men dwelt before the Deluge.”
He then gives us a more accurate map, in detail, of the known world of his day.
I copy this map, not to show how much more we know than poor Cosmos, but because be taught that all around this habitable world there was yet another world, adhering closely on all sides to the circumscribing walls of heaven. “Upon the eastern side of this transmarine land he judges man was created; and that there the paradise of gladness was located,
such as here on the eastern edge is described, where it received our first parents, driven out of Paradise to that extreme point of land on the sea-shore. Hence, upon the coming of the Deluge, Noah and his sons were borne by the ark to the earth we now inhabit. The four rivers he supposes to be gushing up the spouts of Paradise.” They are depicted on the above map: O is the Mediterranean Sea; P, the Arabian Gulf; L, the Caspian Sea; Q, the Tigris; M, the river Pison; “and J, the land where men dwelt before the Flood.”
It will be observed that, while he locates Paradise in the east, he places the scene of the Deluge in the west; and he supposes that Noah came from the scene of the Deluge to Europe.
This shows that the traditions in the time of Cosmos looked to the west as the place of the Deluge, and that after the Deluge Noah came to the shores of the Mediterranean. The fact, too, that there was land in the west beyond the ocean is recognized by Cosmos, and is probably a dim echo from Atlantean times.
The following rude cut, from Cosmos, represents the high mountain in the north behind which the sun hid himself at night, thus producing the alternations of day and night. His solar majesty is just getting behind the mountain, while Luna looks calmly on at the operation. The mountain is as crooked as Culhuacan, the crooked mountain of Atzlan described by the Aztecs.
THE MOUNTAIN THE SUN GOES BEHIND AT NIGHT.
CHAPTER V
THE DELUGE LEGENDS OF AMERICA.
“IT is a very remarkable fact,” says Alfred Maury, “that we find in America traditions of the Deluge coming infinitely nearer to that of the Bible and the Chaldean religion than among any people of the Old World. It is difficult to suppose that the emigration that certainly took place from Asia into North America by the Kourile and Aleutian Islands, and still does so in our day, should have brought in these memories, since no trace is found of them among those Mongol or Siberian populations which were fused with the natives of the New World. . . . The attempts that have been made to trace the origin of Mexican civilization to Asia have not as vet led to any sufficiently conclusive facts. Besides, had Buddhism, which we doubt, made its way into America, it could not have introduced a myth not found in its own scriptures. The cause of these similarities between the diluvian traditions of the nations of the New World and that of the Bible remains therefore unexplained.”
The cause of these similarities can be easily explained: the legends of the Flood did not pass into America by way of the Aleutian Islands, or through the Buddhists of Asia, but were derived from an actual knowledge of Atlantis possessed by the people of America.
Atlantis and the western continent had from an immemorial age held intercourse with each other: the great nations of America were simply colonies from Atlantis, sharing in its civilization, language, religion, and blood. From Mexico to the peninsula of Yucatan, from the shores of Brazil to the heights of Bolivia and Peru, from the Gulf of Mexico to the head-waters of the Mississippi River, the colonies of Atlantis
extended; and therefore it is not strange to find, as Alfred Maury says, American traditions of the Deluge coming nearer to that of the Bible and the Chaldean record than those of any people of the Old World.
“The most important among the American traditions are the Mexican, for they appear to have been definitively fixed by symbolic and mnemonic paintings before any contact with Europeans. According to these documents, the Noah of the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain peoples Teocipactli or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together with his wife Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft made of cypress-wood (Cupressus disticha). Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs, and Mechoacaneses. The tradition of the latter is still more strikingly in conformity with the story as we have it in Genesis, and in Chaldean sources. It tells how Tezpi embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife, his children, and several animals, and grain, whose preservation was essential to the subsistence of the human race. When the great god Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture from the bark. The bird, feeding on the carcasses with which the earth was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the humming-bird only came back with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi, seeing that the country began to vegetate, left his bark on the mountain of Colhuacan.
“The document, however, that gives the most valuable information,” says Lenormant, “as to the cosmogony of the Mexicans is one known as ‘Codex Vaticanus,’ from the library where it is preserved. It consists of four symbolic pictures, representing the four ages of the world preceding the actual one. They were copied at Chobula from a manuscript anterior to the conquest, and accompanied by the explanatory commentary of Pedro de los Rios, a Dominican monk, who, in 1566, less than fifty years after the arrival of Cortez, devoted himself to the research of indigenous traditions as being necessary to his missionary work.”
There were, according to this document, four ages of the world. The first was an age of giants (the great mammalia?)
who were destroyed by famine; the second age ended in a conflagration; the third age was an age of monkeys.
“Then comes the fourth age, Atonatiuh, ‘Sun of Water,’ whose number is 10 X 400 + 8, or 4008. It ends by a great inundation, a veritable deluge. All mankind are changed into fish, with the exception of one man and his wife, who save themselves in a bark made of the trunk of a cypress-tree. The picture represents Matlalcueye, goddess of waters, and consort of Tlaloc, god of rain, as darting down toward earth. Coxcox and Xochiquetzal, the two human beings preserved, are seen seated on a tree-trunk and floating in the midst of the waters. This flood is represented as the last cataclysm that devastates the earth.”
The learned Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg translates from the Aztec language of the “Codex Chimalpopoca” the following Flood legend:
“This is the sun called Nahui-atl, ‘4 water.’ Now the water was tranquil for forty years, plus twelve, and men lived for the third and fourth times. When the sun Nahui-atl came there had passed away four hundred years, plus two ages, plus seventy-six years. Then all mankind was lost and drowned, and found themselves changed into fish. The sky came nearer the water. In a single day all was lost, and the day Nahui-xochitl, ‘4 flower,’ destroyed all our flesh.
“And that year was that of cé-calli, ‘1 house,’ and the day Nahui-atl all was lost. Even the mountains sunk into the water, and the water remained tranquil for fifty-two springs.
“Now at the end of the year the god Titlacahuan had warned Nata and his spouse Nena, saying, ‘Make no more wine of Agave, but begin to hollow out a great cypress, and you will enter into it when in the month Tozontli the water approaches the sky.’
“Then they entered in, and when the god had closed the door, he said, ‘Thou shalt eat but one ear of maize, and thy wife one also.’
“But as soon as they had finished they went out, and the water remained calm, for the wood no longer moved, and, on opening it, they began to see fish.
“Then they lit a fire, by rubbing together pieces of wood, and they roasted fish.
The gods Citlallinicué and Citlalatonac, instantly looking down said: ‘Divine Lord, what is that fire that is making there? Why do they thus smoke the sky?’ At once Titlacahuan-Tezcatlipoca descended. He began to chide, saying, ‘Who has made this fire here?’ And, seizing hold of the fish, he shaped their loins and heads, and they were transformed into dogs (chichime).”
Here we note a remarkable approximation to Plato’s account of the destruction of Atlantis. “In one day and one fatal night,” says Plato, “there came mighty earthquakes and inundations that ingulfed that warlike people.” “In a single day all was lost,” says the Aztec legend. And, instead of a rainfall of forty days and forty nights, as represented in the Bible, here we see “in a single day. . . even the mountains sunk into the water;” not only the land on which the people dwelt who were turned into fish, but the very mountains of that land sunk into the water. Does not this describe the fate of Atlantis? In the Chaldean legend “the great goddess Ishtar wailed like a child,” saying, “I am the mother who gave birth to men, and, like to the race of fishes, they are filling the sea.”
In the account in Genesis, Noah “builded an altar unto the Lord, and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake.’” In the Chaldean legend we are told that Khasisatra also offered a sacrifice, a burnt offering, “and the gods assembled like flies above the master of the sacrifice.” But Bel came in a high state of indignation, just as the Aztec god did, and was about to finish the work of the Deluge, when the great god Ea took ”pity in his heart and interfered to save the remnant of mankind.
These resemblances cannot be accidental; neither can they be the interpolations of Christian missionaries, for it will be observed the Aztec legends differ from the Bible in points
where they resemble on the one hand Plato’s record, and on the other the Chaldean legend.
The name of the hero of the Aztec story, Nata, pronounced with the broad sound of the a, is not far from the name of Noah or Noe. The Deluge of Genesis is a Ph?nician, Semitic, or Hebraic legend, and yet, strange to say, the name of Noah, which occurs in it, bears no appropriate meaning in those tongues, but is derived from Aryan sources; its fundamental root is Na, to which in all the Aryan language is attached the meaning of water–?????, to flow; ????, water; Nympha, Neptunus, water deities. (Lenormant and Chevallier, “Anc. Hist. of the East,” vol. i., p. 15.) We find the root Na repeated in the name of this Central American Noah, Na-ta, and probably in the word “Na-hui-atl”–the age of water.
But still more striking analogies exist between the Chaldean legend and the story of the Deluge as told in the “Popul Vuh” (the Sacred Book) of the Central Americans:
“Then the waters were agitated by the will of the Heart of Heaven (Hurakan), and a great inundation came upon the heads of these creatures. . . . They were ingulfed, and a resinous thickness descended from heaven; . . . the face of the earth was obscured, and a heavy darkening rain commenced-rain by day and rain by night. . . . There was beard a great noise above their heads, as if produced by fire. Then were men seen running, pushing each other, filled with despair; they wished to climb upon their houses, and the houses, tumbling down, fell to the ground; they wished to climb upon the trees, and the trees shook them off; they wished to enter into the grottoes (eaves), and the grottoes closed themselves before them. . . . Water and fire contributed to the universal ruin at the time of the last great cataclysm which preceded the fourth creation.”
Observe the similarities here to the Chaldean legend. There is the same graphic description of a terrible event. The “black cloud” is referred to in both instances; also the dreadful noises. the rising water, the earthquake rocking the trees, overthrowing the houses, and crushing even the mountain caverns;
[paragraph continues]“the men running and pushing each other, filled with despair,” says the “Popul Vuh;” “the brother no longer saw his brother,” says the Assyrian legend.
And here I may note that this word hurakan–the spirit of the abyss, the god of storm, the hurricane–is very suggestive, and testifies to an early intercourse between the opposite shores of the Atlantic. We find in Spanish the word huracan; in Portuguese, furacan; in French,ouragan; in German, Danish, and Swedish, orcan–all of them signifying a storm; while in Latin furo, or furio, means to rage. And are not the old Swedish hurra, to be driven along; our own word hurried; the Icelandic word hurra, to be rattled over frozen ground, all derived from the same root from which the god of the abyss, Hurakan, obtained his name? The last thing a people forgets is the name of their god; we retain to this day, in the names of the days of the week, the designations of four Scandinavian gods and one Roman deity.
It seems to me certain the above are simply two versions of the same event; that while ships from Atlantis carried terrified passengers to tell the story of the dreadful catastrophe to the people of the Mediterranean shores, other ships, flying from the tempest, bore similar awful tidings to the civilized races around the Gulf of Mexico.
The native Mexican historian, Ixtlilxochitl, gave this as the Toltec legend of the Flood:
“It is found in the histories of the Toltecs that this age and first world, as they call it, lasted 1716 years; that men were destroyed by tremendous rains and lightning from the sky, and even all the land, without the exception of anything, and the highest mountains, were covered up and submerged in water fifteen cubits (caxtolmolatli); and here they added other fables of how men came to multiply from the few who escaped from this destruction in a “toptlipetlocali;” that this word nearly signifies a close chest; and how, after men had multiplied, they erected a very high “zacuali,” which is to-day a tower of great height, in order to take refuge in it should the
second world (age) be destroyed. Presently their languages were confused, and, not being able to understand each other, they went to different parts of the earth.
“The Toltecs, consisting of seven friends, with their wives, who understood the same language, came to these parts, having first passed great land and seas, having lived in caves, and having endured great hardships in order to reach this land; . . . they wandered 104 years through different parts of the world before they reached Hue Hue Tlapalan, which was in Ce Tecpatl, 520 years after the Flood.” (“Ixtlilxochitl Relaciones,” in Kingsborough’s “Mex. Ant.,” vol. ix., pp. 321, 322.)
It will of course be said that this account, in those particulars where it agrees with the Bible, was derived from the teachings of the Spanish priests; but it must be remembered that Ixtlilxochitl was an Indian, a native of Tezeuco, a son of the queen, and that his “Relaciones” were drawn from the archives of his family and the ancient writings of his nation: he had no motive to falsify documents that were probably in the hands of hundreds at that time.
Here we see that the depth of the water over the earth, “fifteen cubits,” given in the Toltec legend, is precisely the same as that named in the Bible: “fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail.” (Gen., chap. vii., 20.)
In the two curious picture-histories of the Aztecs preserved in the Boturini collection, and published by Gamelli Careri
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and others, there is a record of their migrations from their original location through various parts of the North American continent until their arrival in Mexico. In both cases their starting-point is an island, from which they pass in a boat; and the island contains in one case a mountain, and in the other a high temple in the midst thereof. These things seem to be reminiscences of their origin in Atlantis.
In each case we see the crooked mountain of the Aztec legends, the Calhuacan, looking not unlike the bent mountain of the monk, Cosmos.
In the legends of the Chibchas of Bogota we seem to have distinct reminiscences of Atlantis. Bochica was their leading divinity. During two thousand years he employed himself in elevating his subjects. He lived in the sun, while his wife Chia occupied the moon. This would appear to be an allusion to the worship of the sun and moon. Beneath Bochica in their mythology was Chibchacum. In an angry mood he brought a deluge on the people of the table-land. Bochica punished him for this act, and obliged him ever after, like Atlas, to bear the burden of the earth on his back. Occasionally be shifts the earth from one shoulder to another, and this causes earthquakes!
Here we have allusions to an ancient people who, during thousands of years, were elevated in the scale of civilization, and were destroyed by a deluge; and with this is associated an Atlantean god bearing the world on his back. We find even the rainbow appearing in connection with this legend. When Bochica appeared in answer to prayer to quell the deluge he is seated on a rainbow. He opened a breach in the earth at Tequendama, through which the waters of the flood escaped, precisely as we have seen them disappearing through the crevice in the earth near Bambyce, in Greece.
The Toltecs traced their migrations back to a starting-point called “Aztlan,” or “Atlan.” This could be no other than, Atlantis. (Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. v., p. 221.) “The
original home of the Nahuatlacas was Aztlan, the location of which has been the subject of much discussion. The causes that led to their exodus from that country can only be conjectured; but they may be supposed to have been driven out by their enemies, for Aztlan is described as a land too fair and beautiful to be left willingly in the mere hope of finding a better.” (Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. v., p. .306.) The Aztecs also claimed to have come originally from Aztlan. (Ibid., p. 321.) Their very name, Aztecs, was derived from Aztlan. (Ibid., vol. ii., p. 125). They were Atlanteans.
The “Popul Vuh” tells us that after the migration from Aztlan three sons of the King of the Quiches, upon the death of their father, “determined to go as their fathers had ordered to the East, on the shores of the sea whence their fathers had come, to receive the royalty, ‘bidding adieu to their brothers and friends, and promising to return.’ Doubtless they passed over the sea when they went to the East to receive the royalty. Now this is the name of the lord, of the monarch of the people of the East where they went. And when they arrived before the lord Nacxit, the name of the great lord, the only judge, whose power was without limit, behold he granted them the sign of royalty and all that represents it . . . and the insignia of royalty . . . all the things, in fact, which they brought on their return, and which they went to receive from the other side of the sea–the art of painting from Tulan, a system of writing, they said, for the things recorded in their histories.” (Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. v., p. 553 “Popul Vuh,” p. 294.)
This legend not only points to the East as the place of origin of these races, but also proves that this land of the East, this Aztlan, this Atlantis, exercised dominion over the colonies in Central America, and furnished them with the essentials of civilization. How completely does this agree with the statement of Plato that the kings of Atlantis held dominion over parts of “the great opposite continent!”
Professor Valentini (“Maya Archæol.,” p. 23) describes an Aztec picture in the work of Gemelli (“Il giro del mondo,” vol. vi.) of the migration of the Aztecs from Aztlan:
“Out of a sheet of water there projects the peak of a mountain; on it stands a tree, and on the tree a bird spreads its wings. At the foot of the mountain-peak there comes out of the water the heads of a man and a woman. The one wears on his head the symbol of his name, Coxcox, a pheasant. The other head bears that of a hand with a bouquet (xochitl, a flower, and quetzal, shining in green gold). In the foreground is a boat, out of which a naked man stretches out his hand imploringly to heaven. Now turn to the sculpture in the Flood tablet (on the great Calendar stone). There you will find represented the Flood, and with great emphasis, by the accumulation of all those symbols with which the ancient Mexicans conveyed the idea of water: a tub of standing water, drops springing out–not two, as heretofore in the symbol for Atl, water–but four drops; the picture for moisture, a snail; above, a crocodile, the king of
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the rivers. In the midst of these symbols you notice the profile of a man with a fillet, and a smaller one of a woman. There can be doubt these are the Mexican Noah, Coxcox, and his wife, Xochiquetzal; and at the same time it is evident (the Calendar stone, we know, was made in A.D., 1478) that the story of them, and the pictures representing the story, have not been invented by the Catholic clergy, but really existed among these nations long before the Conquest.”
The above figure represents the Flood tablet on the great Calendar stone.
When we turn to the uncivilized Indians of America, while we still find legends referring to the Deluge, they are, with one exception, in such garbled and uncouth forms that we can only see glimpses of the truth shining through a mass of fable.
The following tradition was current among the Indians of the Great Lakes:
“In former times the father of the Indian tribes dwelt toward the rising sun. Having been warned in a dream that a deluge was coming upon the earth, be built a raft, on which be saved himself, with his family and all the animals. He floated thus for several months. The animals, who at that time spoke, loudly complained and murmured against him. At last a new earth appeared, on which he landed with all the animals, who from that time lost the power of speech, as a punishment for their murmurs against their deliverer.”
According to Father Charlevoix, the tribes of Canada and the valley of the Mississippi relate in their rude legends that all mankind was destroyed by a flood, and that the Good Spirit, to repeople the earth, had changed animals into men. It is to J. S. Kohl we owe our acquaintance with the version of the Chippeways–full of grotesque and perplexing touches–in which the man saved from the Deluge is called Menaboshu. To know if the earth be drying, he sends a bird, the diver, out of his bark; then becomes the restorer of the human race and the founder of existing society.
A clergyman who visited the Indians north-west of the Ohio in 1764 met, at a treaty, a party of Indians from the west of the Mississippi.
“They informed him that one of their most ancient traditions was that, a great while ago, they had a common father, who lived toward the rising of the sun, and governed the whole world; that all the white people’s heads were under his feet; that he had twelve sons, by whom he administered the government; that the twelve sons behaved very bad, and tyrannized over the people, abusing their power; that the Great Spirit, being thus angry with them, suffered the white people to introduce spirituous liquors among them, made them drunk, stole the special gift of the Great Spirit from them, and by this means usurped power over them; and ever since the Indians’ heads were under the white people’s feet.” (Boudinot’s “Star in the West,” p. 111.)
Here we note that they looked “toward the rising sun”–toward Atlantis–for the original home of their race; that this
region governed “the whole world;” that it contained white people, who were at first a subject race, but who subsequently rebelled, and acquired dominion over the darker races. We will see reason hereafter to conclude that Atlantis had a composite population, and that the rebellion of the Titans in Greek mythology was the rising up of a subject population.
In 1836 C. S. Rafinesque published in Philadelphia, Pa., a work called “The American Nations,” in which he gives the historical songs or chants of the Lenni-Lenapi, or Delaware Indians, the tribe that originally dwelt along, the Delaware River. After describing a time “when there was nothing but sea-water on top of the land,” and the creation of sun, moon, stars, earth, and man, the legend depicts the Golden Age and the Fall in these words: “All were willingly pleased, all were easy-thinking, and all were well-happified. But after a while a snake-priest,Powako, brings on earth secretly the snake-worship (Initako) of the god of the snakes, Wakon. And there came wickedness, crime, and unhappiness. And bad weather was coming, distemper was coming, with death was coming. All this happened very long ago, at the first land, Netamaki, beyond the great ocean Kitahikau.” Then follows the Song of the Flood:
“There was, long ago, a powerful snake, Maskanako, when the men had become bad beings, Makowini. This strong snake had become the foe of the Jins, and they became troubled, hating each other. Both were fighting, both were, spoiling, both were never peaceful. And they were fighting, least man Mattapewi with dead-keeper Nihaulowit. And the strong snake readily resolved to destroy or fight the beings or the men. The dark snake he brought, the monster (Amanyam) he brought, snake-rushing water he brought (it). Much water is rushing, much go to hills, much penetrate, much destroying. Meanwhile at Tula (this is the same Tula referred to in the Central American legends), at THAT ISLAND, Nana-Bush (the great hare Nana) becomes the ancestor of beings and men. Being born creeping, he is ready to move and dwell at Tula. The beings and men all go forth from the flood creeping in shallow water or
swimming afloat, asking which is the way to the turtle-back, Tula-pin. But there are many monsters in the way, and some men were devoured by them. But the daughter of a spirit helped them in a boat, saying, ‘Come, come;’ they were coming and were helped. The name of the boat or raft is Mokol. . . . Water running off, it is drying; in the plains and the mountains, at the path of the cave, elsewhere went the powerful action or motion.” Then follows Song 3, describing the condition of mankind after the Flood. Like the Aryans, they moved into a cold country: “It freezes was there; it snows was there; it is cold was there.” They move to a milder region to hunt cattle; they divided their forces into tillers and hunters. “The good and the holy were the hunters;” they spread themselves north, south, east, and west.” Meantime all the snakes were afraid in their huts, and the Snake-priest Nakopowa said to all, ‘Let us go.’ Eastwardly they go forth at Snakeland (Akhokink), and they went away earnestly grieving.” Afterward the fathers of the Delawares, who “were always boating and navigating,” find that the Snake-people have taken possession of a fine country; and they collect together the people from north, south, east, and west, and attempt “to pass over the waters of the frozen sea to possess that land.” They seem to travel in the dark of an Arctic winter until they come to a gap of open sea. They can go no farther; but some tarry at Firland, while the rest return to where they started from, “the old turtle land.”
Here we find that the land that was destroyed was the “first land;” that it was an island “beyond the great ocean.” In all early age the people were happy and peaceful; they became wicked; “snake worship” was introduced, and was associated, as in Genesis, with the “fall of man;” Nana-Bush became the ancestor of the new race; his name reminds us of the Toltec Nata and the Hebrew Noah. After the flood came a dispersing of the people, and a separation into hunters and tillers of the soil.
Among the Mandan Indians we not only find flood legends, but, more remarkable still, we find an image of the ark preserved from generation to generation, and a religious ceremony performed
which refers plainly to the destruction of Atlantis, and to the arrival of one of those who escaped from the Flood, bringing the dreadful tidings of the disaster. It must be remembered, as we will show hereafter, that many of these Mandan Indians were white men, with hazel, gray, and blue eyes, and all shades of color of the hair from black to pure white; that they dwelt in houses in fortified towns, and manufactured earthen-ware pots in which they could boil water–an art unknown to the ordinary Indians, who boiled water by putting heated stones into it.
I quote the very interesting account of George Catlin, who visited the Mandans nearly fifty years ago, lately republished in London in the “North American Indians,” a very curious and valuable work. He says (vol. i., p. 88):
“In the centre of the village is an open space, or public square, 150 feet in diameter and circular in form, which is used for all public games and festivals, shows and exhibitions. The lodges around this open space front in, with their doors toward. the centre; and in the middle of this stands an object of great religious veneration, on account of the importance it has in connection with the annual religious ceremonies. This object is in the form of a large hogshead, some eight or ten feet high, made of planks and hoops, containing within it some of their choicest mysteries or medicines. They call it the ‘Big Canoe.’”
This is a representation of the ark; the ancient Jews venerated a similar image, and some of the ancient Greek States followed in processions a model of the ark of Deucalion. But it is indeed surprising to find this practice perpetuated, even to our own times, by a race of Indians in the heart of America. On page 158 of the first volume of the same work Catlin describes the great annual mysteries and religious ceremonials of which this image of the ark was the centre. He says:
“On the day set apart for the commencement of the ceremonies a solitary figure is seen approaching the village.
“During the deafening din and confusion within the pickets
of the village the figure discovered on the prairie continued to approach with a dignified step, and in a right line toward the village; all eyes were upon him, and he at length made his appearance within the pickets, and proceeded toward the centre of the village, where all the chiefs and braves stood ready to receive him, which they did in a cordial manner by shaking hands, recognizing him as an old acquaintance, and pronouncing his name, Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah (the first or only man). The body of this strange personage, which was chiefly naked, was painted with white clay, so as to resemble at a distance a white man. He enters the medicine lodge, and goes through certain mysterious ceremonies.
“During the whole of this day Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah (the first or only man) travelled through the village, stopping in front of each man’s lodge, and crying until the owner of the lodge came out and asked who he was, and what was the matter? To which be replied by narrating the sad catastrophe which had happened on the earth’s surface by the overflowing of the waters, saying that ‘he was the only person saved from the universal calamity; that he landed his big canoe on a high mountain in the west, where he now resides; that be has come to open the medicine lodge, which must needs receive a present of an edged tool from the owner of every wigwam, that it may be sacrificed to the water; for,’ he says, ‘if this is not done there will be another flood, and no one will be saved, as it was with such tools that the big canoe was made.’
“Having visited every lodge in the village during the day, and having received such a present from each as a hatchet, a knife, etc. (which is undoubtedly always prepared ready for the occasion), be places them in the medicine lodge; and, on the last day of the ceremony, they are thrown into a deep place in the river–‘sacrificed to the Spirit of the Waters.”‘
Among the sacred articles kept in the great medicine lodge are four sacks of water, called Eeh-teeh-ka, sewed together, each of them in the form of a tortoise lying on its back, with a bunch of eagle feathers attached to its tail. “These four tortoises,” they told me, “contained the waters from the four quarters of the world–that those waters had been contained therein ever since the settling down of the waters,” “I did
not,” says Catlin, who knew nothing of an Atlantis theory, “think it best to advance anything against such a ridiculous belief.” Catlin tried to purchase one of these water-sacks, but could not obtain it for any price; he was told they were “a society property.”
He then describes a dance by twelve men around the ark: “They arrange themselves according to the four cardinal points; two are painted perfectly black, two are vermilion color, some were painted partially white. They dance a dance called ‘Bel-lohck-na-pie,’” with horns on their heads, like those used in Europe as symbolical of Bel, or Baal.
Could anything be more evident than the connection of these ceremonies with the destruction of Atlantis? Here we have the image of the ark; here we have a white man coming with the news that “the waters had overflowed the land,” and that all the people were destroyed except himself; here we have the sacrifice to appease the spirit that caused the Flood, just as we find the Flood terminating, in the Hebrew, Chaldean, and Central American legends, with a sacrifice. Here, too, we have the image of the tortoise, which we find in other flood legends of the Indians, and which is a very natural symbol for an island. As one of our own poets has expressed it,
Lay the island of St. Thomas;
Like a great green turtle slumbered
On the sea which it encumbered.”
But this is not all. The Mandans were evidently of the race
of Atlantis. They have another singular legend, which we find in the account of Lewis and Clarke:
“Their belief in a future state is connected with this theory of their origin: The whole nation resided in one large village, underground, near a subterranean lake. A grape-vine extended its roots down to their habitation, and gave them a view of the light. Some of the most adventurous climbed up the vine, and were delighted with the sight of the earth, which they found covered with buffalo, and rich with every kind of fruit. Returning with the grapes they had gathered, their countrymen were so pleased with the taste of them that the whole nation resolved to leave their dull residence for the charms of the upper region. Men, women, and children ascended by means of the vine, but, when about half the nation had reached the surface of the earth, a corpulent woman, who was clambering up the vine, broke it with her weight, and closed upon herself and the rest of the nation the light of the sun.”
This curious tradition means. that the present nation dwelt in a large settlement underground, that is, beyond the land, in the sea; the sea being represented by “the subterranean lake.” At one time the people had free intercourse between this “large village” and the American continent, and they founded extensive colonies on this continent; whereupon some mishap cut them off from the mother country. This explanation is confirmed by the fact that in the legends of the Iowa Indians, who were a branch of the Dakotas, or Sioux Indians, and relatives of the Mandans (according to Major James W. Lynd), “all the tribes of Indians were formerly one, and all dwelt together on an island, or at least across a large water toward the east or sunrise. They crossed this water in skin canoes, or by swimming; but they know not how long they were in crossing, or whether the water was salt or fresh.” While the Dakotas, according to Major Lynd, who lived among them for nine years, possessed legends of “huge skiffs, in which the Dakotas of old floated for weeks, finally gaining dry land”–a reminiscence of ships and long sea-voyages.
The Mandans celebrated their great religious festival above described in the season when the willow is first in leaf, and a dove is mixed up in the ceremonies; and they further relate a legend that “the world was once a great tortoise, borne on the waters, and covered with earth, and that when one day, in digging the soil, a tribe of white men, who had made holes in the earth to a great depth digging for badgers, at length pierced the shell of the tortoise, it sank, and the water covering it drowned all men with the exception of one, who saved himself in a boat; and when the earth re-emerged, sent out a dove, who returned with a branch of willow in its beak.”
The holes dug to find badgers were a savage’s recollection of mining operations; and when the great disaster came, and the island sunk in the sea amid volcanic convulsions, doubtless men said it was due to the deep mines, which had opened the way to the central fires. But the recurrence of “white men” as the miners, and of a white man as “the last and only man,” and the presence of white blood in the veins of the people, all point to the same conclusion–that the Mandans were colonists from Atlantis.
And here I might add that Catlin found the following singular resemblances between the Mandan tongue and the Welsh:
|
English. |
Mandan. |
Welsh. |
Pronounced. |
| I | Me. | Mi. | Me. |
| You. | Ne. | Chwi. | Chwe. |
| He. | E. | A. | A. |
| She. | Ea. | E. | A. |
| It. | Ount. | Hwynt. | Hooynt. |
| We. | Noo. | Ni. | Ne. |
| They. | Eonah. | Hona, fem. | Hona. |
| No; or there is not. | Megosh. | Nagoes. | Nagosh. |
| No. | Na. | ||
| Head. | Pan. | Pen. | Pan. |
| The Great Spirit. | Maho Peneta. | Mawr Penæthir. |
Mosoor Panæther. |
Major Lynd found the following resemblances between the Dakota tongue and the languages of the Old World:
COMPARISON OF DAKOTA, OR SIOUX, WITH OTHER LANGUAGES.
| Latin. | English. | Saxon | Sanscrit. | German. | Danish. | Sioux. | Other Languages. | Primary Signification. |
| See, seen | Seon | Sehen | Sigt | Sin | Appearing, visible. | |||
| Pinso | Pound | Punian | Pau | W., Pwynian | Beating | |||
| Vado | Went Wend |
Wendan | Winta | Passage. | ||||
| Town | Tun | Zaun | Tun | Tonwe | Gaelic, Dun | |||
| Qui | Who | Hwa | Kwas | Wir | Tuwe | |||
| Weapon | Wepn | Wapen | Vaapen | Wipe | Sioux dimin. Wipena | |||
| Ego | I | Ic | Agam | Ich | Jeg | Mish | ||
| Cor | Core | Co | Gr., Kear | Centre, heart | ||||
| Eight | Achta | Aute | Acht | Otte | Shaktogan | Gr., Okto | ||
| Canna | Cane | Can | Heb., Can W., Cawn |
Reed, weed, wood. | ||||
| Pock | Pock | Poc | Pocke | Pukkel | Poka | Dutch, Poca | Swelling. | |
| With | With | Wider | Wita | Goth., Gewithan. | ||||
| Doughty | Dohtig | Taugen | Digtig | Dita Ditaya |
Hot, brave, daring. | |||
| Tight | Tian | Dicht | Digt | Titan | Strain. | |||
| Tango Tactus |
Touch Take |
Taecan | Ticken | Tekkan | Tan Htaka |
Touch, take. | ||
| Child | Cild | Kind | Kuld | Cin | Progeny. | |||
| Work | Wercan | Woccas Hecon |
Dutch, Werk Span.,Hecho |
Labor, motion. | ||||
| Shackle | Seoacul | Shka | Ar., Schakala, Dutch, Schakel Teton, Shakalan |
to bind (a link). | ||||
| Query | Kuiva | |||||||
| Shabby | Schabig | Schabbig | Shabya |
According to Major Lynd, the Dakotas, or Sioux, belonged to the same race as the Mandans; hence the interest which .attaches to these verbal similarities.
“Among the Iroquois there is a tradition that the sea and waters infringed upon the land, so that all human life was destroyed. The Chickasaws assert that the world was once destroyed by water, but that one family was saved, and two animals of every kind. The Sioux say there was a time when there was no dry land, and all men had disappeared from existence.” (See Lynd’s “MS. History of the Dakotas,” Library of Historical Society of Minnesota.)
“The Okanagaus have a god, Skyappe, and also one called Chacha, who appear to be endowed with omniscience; but their principal divinity is their great mythical ruler and heroine, Scomalt. Long ago, when the sun was no bigger than a star, this strong medicine-woman ruled over what appears to have now become a lost island. At last the peace of the island was destroyed by war, and the noise of battle was heard, with which Scomalt was exceeding wroth, whereupon she rose up in her might and drove her rebellious subjects to one end of the island, and broke off the piece of land on which they were huddled and pushed it out to sea, to drift whither it would. This floating island was tossed to and fro and buffeted by the winds till all but two died. A man and woman escaped in a canoe, and arrived on the main-land; and from these the Okanagaus are descended.” (Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii., p. 149.)
Here we have the Flood legend clearly connected with a lost island.
The Nicaraguans believed “that ages ago the world was destroyed by a flood, in which the most part of mankind perished. Afterward theteotes, or gods, restored the earth as at the beginning.” (Ibid., p. 75.) The wild Apaches, “wild from their natal hour,” have a legend that “the first days of the world were happy and peaceful days;” then came a great flood, from which Montezuma and the coyote alone escaped. Montezuma became then very wicked, and attempted to build a house that would reach to heaven, but the Great
Spirit destroyed it with thunderbolts. (Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii., p. 76.)
The Pimas, an Indian tribe allied to the Papagos, have a peculiar flood legend. The son of the Creator was called Szeu-kha (Ze-us?). An eagle prophesied the deluge to the prophet of the people three times in succession, but his warning was despised; “then in the twinkling of an eye there came a peal of thunder and an awful crash, and a green mound of water reared itself over the plain. It seemed to stand upright for a second, then, cut incessantly by the lightning, goaded on like a great beast, it flung itself upon the prophet’s hut. When the morning broke there was nothing to be seen alive but one man–if indeed be were a man; Szeu-kha, the son of the Creator, had saved himself by floating on a ball of gum or resin.” This instantaneous catastrophe reminds one forcibly of the destruction of Atlantis. Szeu-kha killed the eagle, restored its victims to life, and repeopled the earth with them, as Deucalion repeopled the earth with the stones.
The Fountains of the Great Deep.–As Atlantis perished in a volcanic convulsion, it must have possessed volcanoes. This is rendered the more probable when we remember that the ridge of land of which it was a part, stretching from north to south, from Iceland to St. Helena, contains even now great volcanoes–as in Iceland, the Azores, the Canaries, etc.–and that the very sea-bed along the line of its original axis is, to this day, as we have shown, the scene of great volcanic disturbances.
If, then, the mountains of Atlantis contained volcanoes, of which the
peaks of the Azores are the surviving representatives, it is not
improbable that the convulsion which drowned it in the sea was
accompanied by great discharges of water. We have seen that such
discharges occurred in the island of Java, when four thousand people
perished. “Immense columns of hot water and boiling mud were thrown out”
of the volcano of Galung Gung; the water was projected from the mountain
“like a water-spout.” When a volcanic island was created near Sicily in
1831, it was accompanied by “a waterspout sixty feet high.”
In the island of Dominica, one of the islands constituting the Leeward
group of the West Indies, and nearest to the site of Atlantis, on the
4th of January, 1880, occurred a series of convulsions which reminds us
forcibly of the destruction of Plato’s island; and the similarity
extends to another particular: Dominica contains, like Atlantis, we are
told, numerous hot and sulphur springs. I abridge the account given by
the New York Herald of January 28th, 1880:
“A little after 11 o’clock A.M., soon after high-mass in the Roman
Catholic cathedral, and while divine service was still going on in the
Anglican and Wesleyan chapels, all the indications of an approaching
thunder-storm suddenly showed themselves; the atmosphere, which just
previously had been cool and pleasant–slight showers falling since
early morning–became at once nearly stifling hot; the rumbling of
distant thunder was heard, and the light-blue and fleecy white of the
sky turned into a heavy and lowering black. Soon the thunder-peals came
near and loud, the lightning flashes, of a blue and red color, more
frequent and vivid; and the rain, first with a few heavy drops,
commenced to pour as if the floodgates of heaven were open. In a moment
it darkened, as if night had come; a strong, nearly overpowering smell
of sulphur announced itself; and people who happened to be out in the
streets felt the rain-drops falling on their heads, backs, and shoulders
like showers of hailstones. The cause of this was to be noted by looking
at the spouts, from which the water was rushing like so many cataracts
of molten lead, while the gutters below ran swollen streams of thick
gray mud, looking like nothing ever seen in them before. In the mean
time the Roseau River had worked itself into a state of mad fury,
overflowing its banks, carrying down rocks and large trees, and
threatening destruction to the bridges over it and the houses in its
neighborhood. When the storm ceased–it lasted till twelve, mid-day–the
roofs and walls of the buildings in town, the street pavement, the
door-steps and back-yards were found covered with a deposit of volcanic
débris, holding together like clay, dark-gray in color, and in some
places more than an inch thick, with small, shining metallic particles
on the surface, which could be easily identified as iron pyrites.
Scraping up some of the stuff, it required only a slight examination to
determine its main constituents–sandstone and magnesia, the pyrites
being slightly mixed, and silver showing itself in even smaller
quantity. This is, in fact, the composition of the volcanic mud thrown
up by the soufrières at Watton Waven and in the Boiling Lake country,
and it is found in solution as well in the lake water. The Devil’s
Billiard-table, within half a mile of the Boiling Lake, is composed
wholly of this substance, which there assumes the character of stone in
formation. Inquiries instituted on Monday morning revealed the fact
that, except on the south-east, the mud shower had not extended beyond
the limits of the town. On the north-west, in the direction of Fond Colo
and Morne Daniel, nothing but pure rain-water had fallen, and neither
Loubière nor Pointe Michel had seen any signs of volcanic disturbance. .
. .
“But what happened at Pointe Mulâtre enables us to spot the locale of
the eruption. Pointe Mulâtre lies at the foot of the range of mountains
on the top of which the Boiling Lake frets and seethes. The only outlet
of the lake is a cascade which falls into one of the branches of the
Pointe Mulâtre River, the color and temperature of which, at one time
and another, shows the existence or otherwise of volcanic activity in
the lake-country. We may observe, en passant, that the fall of the water
from the lake is similar in appearance to the falls on the sides of
Roairama, in the interior of British Guiana; there, is no continuous
stream, but the water overleaps its basin like a kettle boiling over,
and comes down in detached cascades from the top. May there not be a
boiling lake on the unapproachable summit of Roairama? The phenomena
noted at Pointe Mulâtre on Sunday were similar to what we witnessed in
Roseau, but with every feature more strongly marked. The fall of mud was
heavier, covering all the fields; the atmospheric disturbance was
greater, and the change in the appearance of the running water about the
place more surprising. The Pointe Mulâtre River suddenly began to run
volcanic mud and water; then the mud predominated, and almost buried the
stream under its weight, and the odor of sulphur in the air became
positively oppressive. Soon the fish in the water–brochet, camoo, meye,
crocro, mullet, down to the eel, the crawfish, the loche, the tétar, and
the dormer–died, and were thrown on the banks. The mud carried down by
the river has formed a bank at the month which nearly dams up the
stream, and threatens to throw it back over the low-lying lands of the
Pointe Mulâtre estate. The reports from the Laudat section of the
Boiling Lake district are curious. The Bachelor and Admiral rivers, and
the numerous mineral springs which arise in that part of the island, are
all running a thick white flood, like cream milk. The face of the entire
country, from the Admiral River to the Solfatera Plain, has undergone
some portentous change, which the frightened peasants who bring the news
to Roseau seem unable clearly and connectedly to describe, and the
volcanic activity still continues.”
From this account it appears that the rain of water and mud came from a
boiling lake on the mountains; it must have risen to a great height,
“like a water-spout,” and then fallen in showers over the face of the
country. We are reminded, in this Boiling Lake of Dominica, of the Welsh
legend of the eruption of the Llyn-llion, “the Lake of Waves,” which
“inundated the whole country.” On the top of a mountain in the county of
Kerry, Ireland, called Mangerton, there is a deep lake known as
Poulle-i-feron, which signifies Hell-hole; it frequently overflows, and
rolls down the mountain in frightful torrents. On Slieve-donart, in the
territory of Mourne, in the county of Down, Ireland, a lake occupies the
mountain-top, and its overflowings help to form rivers.
If we suppose the destruction of Atlantis to have been, in like manner,
accompanied by a tremendous outpour of water from one or more of its
volcanoes, thrown to a great height, and deluging the land, we can
understand the description in the Chaldean legend of “the terrible
water-spout,” which even “the gods grew afraid of,” and which “rose to
the sky,” and which seems to have been one of the chief causes, together
with the earthquake, of the destruction of the country. And in this view
we are confirmed by the Aramæan legend of the Deluge, probably derived
at an earlier age from the Chaldean tradition. In it we are told, “All
on a sudden enormous volumes of water issued from the earth, and rains
of extraordinary abundance began to fall; the rivers left their beds,
and the ocean overflowed its banks.” The disturbance in Dominica
duplicates this description exactly: “In a moment” the water and mud
burst from the mountains, “the floodgates of heaven were opened,” and
“the river overflowed its banks.”
And here, again, we are reminded of the expression in Genesis, “the same
day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up” (chap. vii.,
11). That this does not refer to the rain is clear from the manner in
which it is stated: “The same day were all the fountains of the great
deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was
upon the earth,” etc. And when the work of destruction is finished, we
are told “the fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were
stopped.” This is a reminiscence by an inland people, living where such
tremendous volcanic disturbances were nearly unknown, of “the terrible
water-spout which “rose to the sky,” of the Chaldean legend, and of “the
enormous volumes of water issuing from the earth” of the Aramæan
tradition. The Hindoo legend of the Flood speaks of “the marine god
Hayagriva, who dwelt in the abyss,” who produced the cataclysm. This is
doubtless “the archangel of the abyss” spoken of in the Chaldean
tradition.
The Mountains of the North.–We have in Plato the following reference to
the mountains of Atlantis:
“The whole country was described as being very lofty and precipitous on
the side of the sea. . . . The whole region of the island lies toward
the south, and is sheltered from the north. . . . The surrounding
mountains exceeded all that are to be seen now anywhere.”
These mountains were the present Azores. One has but to contemplate
their present elevation, and remember the depth to which they descend in
the ocean, to realize their tremendous altitude and the correctness of
the description given by Plato.
In the Hindoo legend we find the fish-god, who represents Poseidon,
father of Atlantis, helping Mann over “the Mountain of the North.” In
the Chaldean legend Khasisatra’s vessel is stopped by “the Mountain of
Nizir” until the sea goes down.
The Mud which Stopped Navigation.–We are told by Plato, “Atlantis
disappeared beneath the sea, and then that sea became inaccessible, so
that navigation on it ceased, on account of the quantity of mud which
the ingulfed island left in its place.” This is one of the points of
Plato’s story which provoked the incredulity and ridicule of the
ancient, and even of the modern, world. We find in the Chaldean legend
something of the same kind: Khasisatra says, “I looked at the sea
attentively, observing, and the whole of humanity had returned to mud.”
In the “Popol Vuh” we are told that a “resinous thickness descended from
heaven,” even as in Dominica the rain was full of “thick gray mud,”
accompanied by an “overpowering smell of sulphur.”
The explorations of the ship Challenger show that the whole of the
submerged ridge of which Atlantis is a part is to this day thickly
covered with volcanic débris.
We have but to remember the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which
were covered with such a mass of volcanic ashes from the eruption of
A.D. 79 that for seventeen centuries they remained buried at a depth of
from fifteen to thirty feet; a new population lived and labored above
them; an aqueduct was constructed over their heads; and it was only when
a farmer, in digging for a well, penetrated the roof of a house, that
they were once more brought to the light of day and the knowledge of
mankind.
We have seen that, in 1783, the volcanic eruption in Iceland covered the
sea with pumice for a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, “and
ships were considerably impeded in their course.”
The eruption in the island of Sumbawa, in April, 1815, threw out such
masses of ashes as to darken the air. “The floating cinders to the west
of Sumatra formed, on the 12th of April, a mass two feet thick and
several miles in extent, through which ships with difficulty forced
their way.”
It thus appears that the very statement of Plato which has provoked the
ridicule of scholars is in itself one of the corroborating features of
his story. It is probable that the ships of the Atlanteans, when they
returned after the tempest to look for their country, found the sea
impassable from the masses of volcanic ashes and pumice. They returned
terrified to the shores of Europe; and the shock inflicted by the
destruction of Atlantis upon the civilization of the world probably led
to one of those retrograde periods in the history of our race in which
they lost all intercourse with the Western continent.
The Preservation of a Record.–There is a singular coincidence in the
stories of the Deluge in another particular.
The legends of the Ph?nicians, preserved by Sanchoniathon, tell us that
Taautos, or Taut, was the inventor of the alphabet and of the art of
writing.
Now, we find in the Egyptian legends a passage of Manetho, in which
Thoth (or Hermes Trismegistus), before the Deluge, inscribed on stelæ,
or tablets, in hieroglyphics, or sacred characters, the principles of
all knowledge. After the Deluge the second Thoth translated the contents
of these stelæ into the vulgar tongue.
Josephus tells us that “The patriarch Seth, in order that wisdom and
astronomical knowledge should not perish, erected, in prevision of the
double destruction by fire and water predicted by Adam, two columns, one
of brick, the other of stone, on which this knowledge was engraved, and
which existed in the Siriadic country.”
In the Chaldean legends the god Ea ordered Khasisatra to inscribe the
divine learning, and the principles of all sciences, on tables of
terra-cotta, and bury them, before the Deluge, “in the City of the Sun
at Sippara.”
Berosus, in his version of the Chaldean flood, says:
“The deity, Chronos, appeared to him (Xisuthros) in a vision, and warned
him that, upon the 15th day of the month D?sius, there would be a flood
by which mankind would be destroyed. He therefore enjoined him to write
a history of the beginning, procedure, and conclusion of all things, and
to bury it in the City of the Sun at Sippara, and to build a vessel,”
etc.
The Hindoo Bhâgavata-Purâna tells us that the fish-god, who warned
Satyravata of the coming of the Flood, directed him to place the sacred
Scriptures in a safe place, “in order to preserve them from Hayagriva, a
marine horse dwelling in the abyss.”
Are we to find the original of these legends in the following passage
from Plato’s history of Atlantis?
“Now, the relations of their governments to one another were regulated
by the injunctions of Poseidon, as the law had handed them down. These
were inscribed by the first then on a column of orichalcum, which was
situated in the middle of the island, at the Temple of Poseidon, whither
the people were gathered together. . . . They received and gave
judgments, and at daybreak they wrote down their sentences on a golden
tablet, and deposited them as memorials with their robes. There were
many special laws which the several kings had inscribed about the
temples.” (Critias, p. 120.)
A Succession of Disasters.–The Central American books, translated by De
Bourbourg, state that originally a part of the American continent
extended far into the Atlantic Ocean. This tradition is strikingly
confirmed by the explorations of the ship Challenger, which show that
the “Dolphin’s Ridge” was connected with the shore of South America
north of the mouth of the Amazon. The Central American books tell us
that this region of the continent was destroyed by a succession of
frightful convulsions, probably at long intervals apart; three of these
catastrophes are constantly mentioned, and sometimes there is reference
to one or two more.
“The land,” in these convulsions, “was shaken by frightful earthquakes,
and the waves of the sea combined with volcanic fires to overwhelm and
ingulf it. . . . Each convulsion swept away portions of the land until
the whole disappeared, leaving the line of coast as it now is. Most of
the inhabitants, overtaken amid their regular employments, were
destroyed; but some escaped in ships, and some fled for safety to the
summits of high mountains, or to portions of the land which for a time
escaped immediate destruction.” (Baldwin’s “Ancient America,” p. 176.)
This accords precisely with the teachings of geology. We know that the
land from which America and Europe were formed once covered nearly or
quite the whole space now occupied by the Atlantic between the
continents; and it is reasonable to believe that it went down piecemeal,
and that Atlantis was but the stump of the ancient continent, which at
last perished from the same causes and in the same way.
The fact that this tradition existed among the inhabitants of America is
proven by the existence of festivals, “especially one in the month
Izcalli, which were instituted to commemorate this frightful destruction
of land and people, and in which, say the sacred books, ‘princes and
people humbled themselves before the divinity, and besought him to
withhold a return of such terrible calamities.’”
Can we doubt the reality of events which we thus find confirmed by
religious ceremonies at Athens, in Syria, and on the shores of Central
America?
And we find this succession of great destructions of the Atlantic
continent in the triads of Wales, where traditions are preserved of
“three terrible catastrophes.” We are told by the explorations of the
ship Challenger that the higher lands reach in the direction of the
British Islands; and the Celts had traditions that a part of their
country once extended far out into the Atlantic, and was subsequently
destroyed.
And the same succession of destructions is referred to in the Greek
legends, where a deluge of Ogyges–“the most ancient of the kings of
B?otia or Attica, a quite mythical person, lost in the night of
ages”–preceded that of Deucalion.
We will find hereafter the most ancient hymns of the Aryans praying God
to hold the land firm. The people of Atlantis, having seen their country
thus destroyed, section by section, and judging that their own time must
inevitably come, must have lived under a great and perpetual terror,
which will go far to explain the origin of primeval religion, and the
hold which it took upon the minds of men; and this condition of things
may furnish us a solution of the legends which have come down to us of
their efforts to perpetuate their learning on pillars, and also an
explanation of that other legend of the Tower of Babel, which, as I will
show hereafter, was common to both continents, and in which they sought
to build a tower high enough to escape the Deluge.
All the legends of the preservation of a record prove that the united
voice of antiquity taught that the antediluvians had advanced so far in
civilization as to possess an alphabet and a system of writing; a
conclusion which, as we will see hereafter, finds confirmation in the
original identity of the alphabetical signs used in the old world and
the new.
PART III
THE CIVILIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD AND NEW COMPARED.
CHAPTER I.
CIVILIZATION AN INHERITANCE.
Material civilization might be defined to be the result of a series of
inventions and discoveries, whereby man improves his condition, and
controls the forces of nature for his own advantage.
The savage man is a pitiable creature; as Menabosbu says, in the
Chippeway legends, he is pursued by a “perpetual hunger;” he is exposed
unprotected to the blasts of winter and the heats of summer. A great
terror sits upon his soul; for every manifestation of nature–the storm,
the wind, the thunder, the lightning, the cold, the heat–all are
threatening and dangerous demons. The seasons bring him neither
seed-time nor harvest; pinched with hunger, appeasing in part the
everlasting craving of his stomach with seeds, berries, and creeping
things, he sees the animals of the forest dash by him, and he has no
means to arrest their flight. He is powerless and miserable in the midst
of plenty. Every step toward civilization is a step of conquest over
nature. The invention of the bow and arrow was, in its time, a far
greater stride forward for the human race than the steam-engine or the
telegraph. The savage could now reach his game–his insatiable hunger
could be satisfied; the very eagle, “towering in its pride of place,”
was not beyond the reach of this new and wonderful weapon. The discovery
of fire and the art of cooking was another immense step forward. The
savage, having nothing but wooden vessels in which to cook, covered the
wood with clay; the day hardened in the fire. The savage gradually
learned that he could dispense with the wood, and thus pottery was
invented. Then some one (if we are to believe the Chippeway legends, on
the shores of Lake Superior) found fragments of the pure copper of that
region, beat them into shape, and the art of metallurgy was begun; iron
was first worked in the same way by shaping meteoric iron into
spear-heads.
But it must not be supposed that these inventions followed one another
in rapid succession. Thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of years
intervened between each step; many savage races have not to this day
achieved some of these steps. Prof. Richard Owen says, “Unprepossessed
and sober experience teaches that arts, language, literature are of slow
growth, the results of gradual development.”
I shall undertake to show hereafter that nearly all the arts essential
to civilization which we possess date back to the time of
Atlantis–certainly to that ancient Egyptian civilization which was
coeval with, and an outgrowth from, Atlantis.
In six thousand years the world made no advance on the civilization
which it received from Atlantis.
Ph?nicia, Egypt, Chaldea, India, Greece, and Rome passed the torch of
civilization from one to the other; but in all that lapse of time they
added nothing to the arts which existed at the earliest period of
Egyptian history. In architecture, sculpture, painting, engraving,
mining, metallurgy, navigation, pottery, glass-ware, the construction of
canals, roads, and aqueducts, the arts of Ph?nicia and Egypt extended,
without material change or improvement, to a period but two or three
hundred years ago. The present age has entered upon a new era; it has
added a series of wonderful inventions to the Atlantean list; it has
subjugated steam and electricity to the uses of man. And its work has
but commenced: it will continue until it lifts man to a plane as much
higher than the present as the present is above the barbaric condition;
and in the future it will be said that between the birth of civilization
in Atlantis and the new civilization there stretches a period of many
thousands of years, during which mankind did not invent, but simply
perpetuated.
Herodotus tells us (“Euterpe,” cxlii.) that, according to the
information he received from the Egyptian priests, their written history
dated back 11,340 years before his era, or nearly 14,000 years prior to
this time. They introduced him into a spacious temple, and showed him
the statues of 341 high-priests who had in turn succeeded each other;
and yet the age of Columbus possessed no arts, except that of printing
(which was ancient in China), which was not known to the Egyptians; and
the civilization of Egypt at its first appearance was of a higher order
than at any subsequent period of its history, thus testifying that it
drew its greatness from a fountain higher than itself. It was in its
early days that Egypt worshipped one only God; in the later ages this
simple and sublime belief was buried under the corruptions of
polytheism. The greatest pyramids were built by the Fourth Dynasty, and
so universal was education at that time among the people that the stones
with which they were built retain to this day the writing of the
workmen. The first king was Menes.
“At the epoch of Menes,” says Winchell, “the Egyptians were already a
civilized and numerous people. Manetho tells us that Athotis, the son of
this first king, Menes, built the palace at Memphis; that he was a
physician, and left anatomical books. All these statements imply that
even at this early period the Egyptians were in a high state of
civilization.” (Winchell’s “Preadamites,” p. 120.) “In the time of Menes
the Egyptians had long been architects, sculptors, painters,
mythologists, and theologians.” Professor Richard Owen says, “Egypt is
recorded to have been a civilized and governed community before the time
of Menes. The pastoral community of a group of nomad families, as
portrayed in the Pentateuch, may be admitted as an early step in
civilization. But how far in advance of this stage is a nation
administered by a kingly government, consisting of grades of society,
with divisions of labor, of which one kind, assigned to the priesthood,
was to record or chronicle the names and dynasties of the kings, the
duration and chief events of their reigns!” Ernest Renan points out that
“Egypt at the beginning appears mature, old, and entirely without
mythical and heroic ages, as if the country had never known youth. Its
civilization has no infancy, and its art no archaic period. The
civilization of the Old Monarchy did not begin with infancy. It was
already mature.”
We shall attempt to show that it matured in Atlantis, and that the
Egyptian people were unable to maintain it at the high standard at which
they had received it, as depicted in the pages of Plato. What king of
Assyria, or Greece, or Rome, or even of these modern nations, has ever
devoted himself to the study of medicine and the writing of medical
books for the benefit of mankind? Their mission has been to kill, not to
heal the people; yet here, at the very dawn of Mediterranean history, we
find the son of the first king of Egypt recorded “as a physician, and as
having left anatomical books.”
I hold it to be incontestable that, in some region of the earth,
primitive mankind must have existed during vast spaces of time, and
under most favorable circumstances, to create, invent, and discover
those arts and things which constitute civilization. When we have it
before our eyes that for six thousand years mankind in Europe, Asia, and
Africa, even when led by great nations, and illuminated by marvellous
minds, did not advance one inch beyond the arts of Egypt, we may
conceive what lapses, what aeons, of time it must have required to bring
savage man to that condition of refinement and civilization possessed by
Egypt when it first comes within the purview of history.
That illustrious Frenchman, H. A. Taine (” History of English
Literature,” p. 23), sees the unity of the Indo-European races manifest
in their languages, literature, and philosophies, and argues that these
pre-eminent traits are “the great marks of an original model,” and that
when we meet with them “fifteen, twenty, thirty centuries before our
era, in an Aryan, an Egyptian, a Chinese, they represent the work of a
great many ages, perhaps of several myriads of centuries. . . . Such is
the first and richest source of these master faculties from which
historical events take their rise; and one sees that if it be powerful
it is because this is no simple spring, but a kind of lake, a deep
reservoir, wherein other springs have, for a multitude of centuries,
discharged their several streams.” In other words, the capacity of the
Egyptian, Aryan, Chaldean, Chinese, Saxon, and Celt to maintain
civilization is simply the result of civilized training during “myriads
of centuries” in some original home of the race.
I cannot believe that the great inventions were duplicated
spontaneously, as some would have us believe, in different countries;
there is no truth in the theory that men pressed by necessity will
always hit upon the same invention to relieve their wants. If this were
so, all savages would have invented the boomerang; all savages would
possess pottery, bows and arrows, slings, tents, and canoes; in short,
all races would have risen to civilization, for certainly the comforts
of life are as agreeable to one people as another.
Civilization is not communicable to all; many savage tribes are
incapable of it. There are two great divisions of mankind, the civilized
and the savage; and, as we shall show, every civilized race in the world
has had something of civilization from the earliest ages; and as “all
roads lead to Rome,” so all the converging lines of civilization lead to
Atlantis. The abyss between the civilized man and the savage is simply
incalculable; it represents not alone a difference in arts and methods
of life, but in the mental constitution, the instincts, and the
predispositions of the soul. The child of the civilized races in his
sports manufactures water-wheels, wagons, and houses of cobs; the savage
boy amuses himself with bows and arrows: the one belongs to a building
and creating race; the other to a wild, hunting stock. This abyss
between savagery and civilization has never been passed by any nation
through its own original force, and without external influences, during
the Historic Period; those who were savages at the dawn of history are
savages still; barbarian slaves may have been taught something of the
arts of their masters, and conquered races have shared some of the
advantages possessed by their conquerors; but we will seek in vain for
any example of a savage people developing civilization of and among
themselves. I may be reminded of the Gauls, Goths, and Britons; but
these were not savages, they possessed written languages, poetry,
oratory, and history; they were controlled by religious ideas; they
believed in God and the immortality of the soul, and in a state of
rewards and punishments after death. Wherever the Romans came in contact
with Gauls, or Britons, or German tribes, they found them armed with
weapons of iron. The Scots, according to Tacitus, used chariots and iron
swords in the battle of the Grampians–“enormes gladii sine mucrone.”
The Celts of Gaul are stated by Diodorus Siculus to have used
iron-headed spears and coats-of-mail, and the Gauls who encountered the
Roman arms in B.C. 222 were armed with soft iron swords, as well as at
the time when Caesar conquered their country. Among the Gauls men would
lend money to be repaid in the next world, and, we need not add, that no
Christian people has yet reached that sublime height of faith; they
cultivated the ground, built houses and walled towns, wove cloth, and
employed wheeled vehicles; they possessed nearly all the cereals and
domestic animals we have, and they wrought in iron, bronze, and steel.
The Gauls had even invented a machine on wheels to cut their grain, thus
anticipating our reapers and mowers by two thousand years. The
difference between the civilization of the Romans under Julius Caesar
and the Gauls under Vercingetorix was a difference in degree and not in
kind. The Roman civilization was simply a development and perfection of
the civilization possessed by all the European populations; it was drawn
from the common fountain of Atlantis.
If we find on both sides of the Atlantic precisely the same arts,
sciences, religious beliefs, habits, customs, and traditions, it is
absurd to say that the peoples of the two continents arrived separately,
by precisely the same steps, at precisely the same ends. When we
consider the resemblance of the civilizations of the Mediterranean
nations to one another, no man is silly enough to pretend that Rome,
Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Ph?nicia, each spontaneously and separately
invented the arts, sciences, habits, and opinions in which they agreed;
but we proceed to trace out the thread of descent or connection from one
to another. Why should a rule of interpretation prevail, as between the
two sides of the Atlantic, different from that which holds good as to
the two sides of the Mediterranean Sea? If, in the one case, similarity
of origin has unquestionably produced similarity of arts, customs, and
condition, why, in the other, should not similarity of arts, customs,
and condition prove similarity of origin? Is there any instance in the
world of two peoples, without knowledge of or intercourse with each
other, happening upon the same invention, whether that invention be an
arrow-head or a steam-engine? If it required of mankind a lapse of at
least six thousand years before it began anew the work of invention, and
took up the thread of original thought where Atlantis dropped it, what
probability is there of three or four separate nations all advancing at
the same speed to precisely the same arts and opinions? The proposition
is untenable.
If, then, we prove that, on both sides of the Atlantic, civilizations
were found substantially identical, we have demonstrated that they must
have descended one from the other, or have radiated from some common
source.
CHAPTER II
THE IDENTITY OF THE CIVILIZATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW
MOSAICS AT MITLA, MEXICO
Architecture.–Plato tells us that the Atlanteans possessed
architecture; that they built walls, temples, and palaces.
We need not add that this art was found in Egypt and all the civilized
countries of Europe, as well as in Peru, Mexico, and Central America.
Among both the Peruvians and Egyptians the walls receded inward, and the
doors were narrower at, the top than at the threshold.
The obelisks of Egypt, covered with hieroglyphics, are paralleled by the
round columns of Central America, and both are supposed to have
originated in Phallus-worship. “The usual symbol of the Phallus was an
erect stone, often in its rough state, sometimes sculptured.” (Squier,
“Serpent Symbol,” p. 49; Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii., p. 504.)
The worship of Priapus was found in Asia, Egypt, along the European
shore of the Mediterranean, and in the forests of Central America.
The mounds of Europe and Asia were made in the same way and for the same
purposes as those of America. Herodotus describes the burial of a
Scythian king; he says, “After this they set to work to raise a vast
mound above the grave, all of them vying with each other, and seeking to
make it as tall as possible.” “It must be confessed,” says Foster
(“Prehistoric Races,” p. 193), “that these Scythic burial rites have a
strong resemblance to those of the Mound Builders.” Homer describes the
erection of a great symmetrical mound over Achilles, also one over
Hector. Alexander the Great raised a great mound over his friend
Hephæstion, at a cost of more than a million dollars; and Semiramis
raised a similar mound over her husband. The pyramids of Egypt, Assyria,
and Ph?nicia had their duplicates in Mexico and Central America.
CARVING ON THE BUDDHIST TOWER, SARNATH, INDIA
The grave-cists made of stone of the American mounds are exactly like
the stone chests, or kistvaen for the dead, found in the British mounds.
(Fosters “Prehistoric Races,” p. 109.) Tumuli have been found in
Yorkshire enclosing wooden coffins, precisely as in the mounds of the
Mississippi Valley. (Ibid., p. 185.) The articles associated with the
dead are the same in both continents: arms, trinkets, food, clothes, and
funeral urns. In both the Mississippi Valley and among the Chaldeans
vases were constructed around the bones, the neck of the vase being too
small to permit the extraction of the skull. (Foster’s “Prehistoric
Races,” p. 200.)
The use of cement was known alike to the European and American nations.
The use of the arch was known on both sides of the Atlantic.
The manufacture of bricks was known in both the Old and New Worlds.
The style of ornamentation in architecture was much the same on both
hemispheres, as shown in the preceding designs, pages 137, 139.
Metallurgy.–The Atlanteans mined ores, and worked in metals; they used
copper, tin, bronze, gold, and silver, and probably iron.
The American nations possessed all these metals. The age of bronze, or
of copper combined with tin, was preceded in America, and nowhere else,
by a simpler age of copper; and, therefore, the working of metals
probably originated in America, or in some region to which it was
tributary. The Mexicans manufactured bronze, and the Incas mined iron
near Lake Titicaca; and the civilization of this latter region, as we
will show, probably dated back to Atlantean times. The Peruvians called
gold the tears of the sun: it was sacred to, the sun, as silver was to
the moon.
Sculpture.–The Atlanteans possessed this art; so did the American and
Mediterranean nations.
Dr. Arthur Schott (“Smith. Rep.,” 1869, p. 391), in describing the “Cara
Gigantesca,” or gigantic face, a monument of Yzamal, in Yucatan, says,
“Behind and on both sides, from under the mitre, a short veil falls upon
the shoulders, so as to protect the back of the head and the neck. This
particular appendage vividly calls to mind the same feature in the
symbolic adornments of Egyptian and Hindoo priests, and even those of
the Hebrew hierarchy.” Dr. Schott sees in the orbicular wheel-like
plates of this statue the wheel symbol of Kronos and Saturn; and, in
turn, it may be supposed that the wheel of Kronos was simply the cross
of Atlantis, surrounded by its encircling ring.
Painting.–This art was known on both sides of the Atlantic. The
paintings upon the walls of some of the temples of Central America
reveal a state of the art as high as that of Egypt.
Engraving.–Plato tells us that the Atlanteans engraved upon pillars.
The American nations also had this art in common with Egypt, Ph?nicia,
and Assyria.
Agriculture.–The people of Atlantis were pre-eminently an agricultural
people; so were the civilized nations of America and the Egyptians. In
Egypt the king put his hand to the plough at an annual festival, thus
dignifying and consecrating the occupation of husbandry. In Peru
precisely the same custom prevailed. In both the plough was known; in
Egypt it was drawn by oxen, and in Peru by men. It was drawn by men in
the North of Europe down to a comparatively recent period.
Public Works.–The American nations built public works as great as or
greater than any known in Europe. The Peruvians had public roads, one
thousand five hundred to two thousand miles long, made so thoroughly as
to elicit the astonishment of the Spaniards. At every few miles taverns
or hotels were established for the accommodation of travellers. Humboldt
pronounced these Peruvian roads “among the most useful and stupendous
works ever executed by man.” They built aqueducts for purposes of
irrigation some of which were five hundred miles long. They constructed
magnificent bridges of stone, and had even invented suspension bridges
thousands of years before they were introduced into Europe. They had,
both in Peru and Mexico, a system of posts, by means of which news was
transmitted hundreds of miles in a day, precisely like those known among
the Persians in the time of Herodotus, and subsequently among the
Romans. Stones similar to mile-stones were placed along the roads in
Peru. (See Prescott’s “Peru,”)
Navigation.–Sailing vessels were known to the Peruvians and the Central
Americans. Columbus met, in 1502, at an island near Honduras, a party of
the Mayas in a large vessel, equipped with sails, and loaded with a
variety of textile fabrics of divers colors.
ANCIENT IRISH VASE OF THE BRONZE AGE
Manufactures.–The American nations manufactured woollen and cotton
goods; they made pottery as beautiful as the wares of Egypt; they
manufactured glass; they engraved gems and precious stones. The
Peruvians had such immense numbers of vessels and ornaments of gold that
the Inca paid with them a ransom for himself to Pizarro of the value of
fifteen million dollars.
Music.–It has been pointed out that there is great resemblance between
the five-toned music of the Highland Scotch and that of the Chinese and
other Eastern nations. (“Anthropology,” p. 292.)
Weapons.–The weapons of the New World were identically the same as
those of the Old World; they consisted of bows and arrows, spears,
darts, short swords, battle-axes, and slings; and both peoples used
shields or bucklers, and casques of wood or hide covered with metal. If
these weapons had been derived from separate sources of invention, one
country or the other would have possessed implements not known to the
other, like the blow-pipe, the boomerang, etc. Absolute identity in so
many weapons strongly argues identity of origin.
Religion.–The religion of the Atlanteans, as Plato tells us, was pure
and simple; they made no regular sacrifices but fruits and flowers; they
worshipped the sun.
In Peru a single deity was worshipped, and the sun, his most glorious
work, was honored as his representative. Quetzalcoatl, the founder of
the Aztecs, condemned all sacrifice but that of fruits and flowers. The
first religion of Egypt was pure and simple; its sacrifices were fruits
and flowers; temples were erected to the sun, Ra, throughout Egypt. In
Peru the great festival of the sun was called Ra-mi. The Ph?nicians
worshipped Baal and Moloch; the one represented the beneficent, and the
other the injurious powers of the sun.
Religious Beliefs.–The Guanches of the Canary Islands, who were
probably a fragment of the old Atlantean population, believed in the
immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, and preserved
their dead as mummies. The Egyptians believed in the immortality of the
soul and the resurrection of the body, and preserved the bodies of the
dead by embalming them. The Peruvians believed in the immortality of the
soul and the resurrection of the body, and they too preserved the bodies
of their dead by embalming them. “A few mummies in remarkable
preservation have been found among the Chinooks and Flatheads.”
(Schoolcraft, vol. v., p. 693.) The embalmment of the body was also
practised in Central America and among the Aztecs. The Aztecs, like the
Egyptians, mummified their dead by taking out the bowels and replacing
them with aromatic substances. (Dorman, “Origin Prim. Superst.,” p.
173.) The bodies of the kings of the Virginia Indians were preserved by
embalming. (Beverly, p. 47.)
Here are different races, separated by immense distances of land and
ocean, uniting in the same beliefs, and in the same practical and
logical application of those beliefs.
The use of confession and penance was known in the religious ceremonies
of some of the American nations. Baptism was a religious ceremony with
them, and the bodies of the dead were sprinkled with water.
Vestal virgins were found in organized communities on both sides of the
Atlantic; they were in each case pledged to celibacy, and devoted to
death if they violated their vows. In both hemispheres the recreant were
destroyed by being buried alive. The Peruvians, Mexicans, Central
Americans, Egyptians, Ph?nicians, and Hebrews each had a powerful
hereditary priesthood.
The Ph?nicians believed in an evil spirit called Zebub; the Peruvians
had a devil called Cupay. The Peruvians burnt incense in their temples.
The Peruvians, when they sacrificed animals, examined their entrails,
and from these prognosticated the future.
I need not add that all these nations preserved traditions of the
Deluge; and all of them possessed systems of writing.
The Egyptian priest of Sais told Solon that the myth of Phaëthon, the
son of Helios, having attempted to drive the chariot of the sun, and
thereby burning up the earth, referred to “a declination of the bodies
moving round the earth and in the heavens” (comets), which caused a
“great conflagration upon the earth,” from which those only escaped who
lived near rivers and seas. The “Codex Chimalpopoca”–a Nahua, Central
American record–tells us that the third era of the world, or “third
sun,” is called, Quia Tonatiuh, or sun of rain, “because in this age
there fell a rain of fire, all which existed burned, and there fell a
rain of gravel;” the rocks “boiled with tumult, and there also arose the
rocks of vermilion color.” In other words, the traditions of these
people go back to a great cataclysm of fire, when the earth possibly
encountered, as in the Egyptian story, one of “the bodies moving round
the earth and in the heavens;” they had also memories of “the Drift
Period,” and of the outburst of Plutonic rocks. If man has existed on
the earth as long as science asserts, he must have passed through many
of the great catastrophes which are written upon the face of the planet;
and it is very natural that in myths and legends he should preserve some
recollection of events so appalling and destructive.
Among the early Greeks Pan was the ancient god; his wife was Maia. The
Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg calls attention to the fact that Pan was
adored in all parts of Mexico and Central America; and at Panuco, or
Panca, literally Panopolis, the Spaniards found, upon their entrance
into Mexico, superb temples and images of Pan. (Brasseur’s Introduction
in Landa’s “Relacion.”) The names of both Pan and Maya enter extensively
into the Maya vocabulary, Maia being the same as Maya, the principal
name of the peninsula; and pan, added to Maya, makes the name of the
ancient capital Mayapan. In the Nahua language pan, or pani, signifies
“equality to that which is above,” and Pentecatl was the progenitor of
all beings. (“North Americans of Antiquity,” p. 467.)
The ancient Mexicans believed that the sun-god would destroy the world
in the last night of the fifty-second year, and that he would never come
back. They offered sacrifices to him at that time to propitiate him;
they extinguished all the fires in the kingdom; they broke all their
household furniture; they bung black masks before their faces; they
prayed and fasted; and on the evening of the last night they formed a
great procession to a neighboring mountain. A human being was sacrificed
exactly at midnight; a block of wood was laid at once on the body, and
fire was then produced by rapidly revolving another piece of wood upon
it; a spark was carried to a funeral pile, whose rising flame proclaimed
to the anxious people the promise of the god not to destroy the world
for another fifty-two years. Precisely the same custom obtained among
the nations of Asia Minor and other parts of the continent of Asia,
wherever sun-worship prevailed, at the periodical reproduction of the
sacred fire, but not with the same bloody rites as in Mexico.
(Valentini, “Maya Archaeology,” p. 21.)
To this day the Brahman of India “churns” his sacred fire out of a board
by boring into it with a stick; the Romans renewed their sacred fire in
the same way; and in Sweden even now a “need-fire is kindled in this
manner when cholera or other pestilence is about.” (Tylor’s
“Anthropology,” p. 262.)
A belief in ghosts is found on both continents. The American Indians
think that the spirits of the dead retain the form and features which
they wore while living; that there is a hell and a heaven; that hell is
below the earth, and heaven above the clouds; that the souls of the
wicked sometimes wander the face of the earth, appearing occasionally to
mortals. The story of Tantalus is found among the Chippewayans, who
believed that bad souls stand up to their chins in water in sight of the
spirit-land, which they can never enter. The dead passed to heaven
across a stream of water by means of a narrow and slippery bridge, from
which many were lost. The Zuñis set apart a day in each year which they
spent among the graves of their dead, communing with their spirits, and
bringing them presents–a kind of All-souls-day. (Dorman, “Prim.
Superst.,” p. 35.) The Stygian flood, and Scylla and Charybdis, are
found among the legends of the Caribs. (Ibid., p. 37.) Even the boat of
Charon reappears in the traditions of the Chippewayans.
The Oriental belief in the transmigration of souls is found in every
American tribe. The souls of men passed into animals or other men.
(Schoolcraft, vol. i., p. 33.) The souls of the wicked passed into toads
and wild beasts. (Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 50.)
Among both the Germans and the American Indians lycanthropy, or the
metamorphosis of men into wolves, was believed in. In British Columbia
the men-wolves have often been seen seated around a fire, with their
wolf-hides hung upon sticks to dry! The Irish legend of hunters pursuing
an animal which suddenly disappears, whereupon a human being appears in
its place is found among all the American tribes.
That timid and harmless animal, the hare, was, singularly enough, an
object of superstitious reverence and fear in Europe, Asia, and America.
The ancient Irish killed all the hares they found on May-day among their
cattle, believing them to be witches. Cæsar gives an account of the
horror in which this animal was held by the Britons. The Calmucks
regarded the rabbit with fear and reverence. Divine honors were paid to
the hare in Mexico. Wabasso was changed into a white rabbit, and
canonized in that form.
The white bull, Apis, of the Egyptians, reappears in the Sacred white
buffalo of the Dakotas, which was supposed to possess supernatural
power, and after death became a god. The white doe of European legend
had its representative in the white deer of the Housatonic Valley, whose
death brought misery to the tribe. The transmission of spirits by the
laying on of hands, and the exorcism of demons, were part of the
religion of the American tribes.
The witches of Scandinavia, who produced tempests by their incantations,
are duplicated in America. A Cree sorcerer sold three days of fair
weather for one pound of tobacco! The Indian sorcerers around Freshwater
Bay kept the winds in leather bags, and disposed of them as they pleased.
Among the American Indians it is believed that those who are insane or
epileptic are “possessed of devils.” (Tylor, “Prim. Cult.,” vol. ii.,
pp. 123-126.) Sickness is caused by evil spirits entering into the sick
person. (Eastman’s “Sioux.”) The spirits of animals are much feared, and
their departure out of the body of the invalid is a cause of
thanksgiving. Thus an Omaha, after an eructation, says, “Thank you,
animal.” (Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 55.) The confession of their sins
was with a view to satisfy the evil spirit and induce him to leave them.
(Ibid., p. 57.)
In both continents burnt-offerings were sacrificed to the gods. In both
continents the priests divined the future from the condition of the
internal organs of the man or animal sacrificed. (Ibid., pp. 214, 226.)
In both continents the future was revealed by the flight of birds and by
dreams. In Peru and Mexico there were colleges of augurs, as in Rome,
who practised divination by watching the movements and songs of birds.
(Ibid., p. 261.)
Animals were worshipped in Central America and on the banks of the Nile.
(Ibid., p. 259.)
The Ojibbeways believed that the barking of a fox was ominous of ill.
(Ibid., p. 225). The peasantry of Western Europe have the same belief as
to the howling of a dog.
The belief in satyrs, and other creatures half man and half animal,
survived in America. The Kickapoos are Darwinians. “They think their
ancestors had tails, and when they lost them the impudent fox sent every
morning to ask how their tails were, and the bear shook his fat sides at
the joke.” (Ibid., p. 232.) Among the natives of Brazil the father cut a
stick at the wedding of his daughter; “this was done to cut off the
tails of any future grandchildren.” (Tylor, vol. i., p. 384.)
Jove, with the thunder-bolts in his hand, is duplicated in the Mexican god of thunder, Mixcoatl, who is represented holding a bundle of arrows. “He rode upon a tornado, and scattered the lightnings.” (Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 98.)
Dionysus, or Bacchus, is represented by the Mexican god Texcatzoncatl, the god of wine. (Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 418.)
Atlas reappears in Chibchacum, the deity of the Chibchas; he bears the world on his shoulders, and when be shifts the burden from one shoulder to another severe earthquakes are produced. (Bollært, pp. 12, 13.)
Deucalion repeopling the world is repeated in Xololt, who, after the
destruction of the world, descended to Mictlan, the realm of the dead,
and brought thence a bone of the perished race. This, sprinkled with
blood, grew into a youth, the father of the present race. The Quiche
hero-gods, Hunaphu and Xblanque, died; their bodies were burnt, their
bones ground to powder and thrown into the waters, whereupon they
changed into handsome youths, with the same features as before. (Dorman,
“Prim. Superst.,” p. 193.)
Witches and warlocks, mermaids and mermen, are part of the mythology of the American tribes, as they were of the European races. (Ibid., p. 79.) The mermaid of the Ottawas was “woman to the waist and fair;” thence fish-like. (Ibid., p. 278.)
The snake-locks of Medusa are represented in the snake-locks of At-otarho, an ancient culture-hero of the Iroquois.
A belief in the incarnation of gods in men, and the physical translation
of heroes to heaven, is part of the mythology of the Hindoos and the
American races. Hiawatha, we are told, rose to heaven in the presence of
the multitude, and vanished from sight in the midst of sweet music.
The vocal statues and oracles of Egypt and Greece were duplicated in America. In Peru, in the valley of Rimac, there was an idol which answered questions and became famous as an oracle. (Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 124.)
The Peruvians believed that men were sometimes metamorphosed into stones.
The Oneidas claimed descent from a stone, as the Greeks from the stones
of Deucalion. (Ibid., p. 132.)
Witchcraft is an article of faith among all the American races. Among
the Illinois Indians “they made small images to represent those whose
days they have a mind to shorten, and which they stab to the heart,”
whereupon the person represented is expected to die. (Charlevoix, vol.
ii., p. 166.) The witches of Europe made figures of wax of their
enemies, and gradually melted them at the fire, and as they diminished
the victim was supposed to sicken and die.
A writer in the Popular Science Monthly (April, 1881, p. 828) points out
the fact that there is an absolute identity between the folk-lore of the
negroes on the plantations of the South and the myths and stories of
certain tribes of Indians in South America, as revealed by Mr. Herbert
Smith’s “Brazil, the Amazons, and the Coast.” (New York: Scribner,
1879.) Mr. Harris, the author of a work on the folk-lore of the negroes,
asks this question, “When did the negro or the North American Indian
come in contact with the tribes of South America?”
Customs.–Both peoples manufactured a fermented, intoxicating drink, the
one deriving it from barley, the other from maize. Both drank toasts.
Both had the institution of marriage, an important part of the ceremony
consisting in the joining of hands; both recognized divorce, and the
Peruvians and Mexicans established special courts to decide cases of
this kind. Both the Americans and Europeans erected arches, and had
triumphal processions for their victorious kings, and both strewed the
ground before them with leaves and flowers. Both celebrated important
events with bonfires and illuminations; both used banners, both invoked
blessings. The Ph?nicians, Hebrews, and Egyptians practised
circumcision. Palacio relates that at Azori, in Honduras, the natives
circumcised boys before an idol called Icelca. (“Carta,” p. 84.) Lord
Kingsborough tells us the Central Americans used the same rite, and
McKenzie (quoted by Retzius) says he saw the ceremony performed by the
Chippeways. Both had bards and minstrels, who on great festivals sung
the deeds of kings and heroes. Both the Egyptians and the Peruvians held
agricultural fairs; both took a census of the people. Among both the
land was divided per capita among the people; in Judea a new division
was made every fifty years. The Peruvians renewed every year all the
fires of the kingdom from the Temple of the Sun, the new fire being
kindled from concave mirrors by the sun’s rays. The Romans under Numa
had precisely the same custom. The Peruvians had theatrical plays. They
chewed the leaves of the coca mixed with lime, as the Hindoo to-day
chews the leaves of the betel mixed with lime. Both the American and
European nations were divided into castes; both practised
planet-worship; both used scales and weights and mirrors. The Peruvians,
Egyptians, and Chaldeans divided the year into twelve months, and the
months into lesser divisions of weeks. Both inserted additional days, so
as to give the year three hundred and sixty-five days. The Mexicans
added five intercalary days; and the Egyptians, in the time of Amunoph
I., had already the same practice.
Humboldt, whose high authority cannot be questioned, by an elaborate
discussion (“Vues des Cordilleras,” p. 148 et. seq., ed. 1870), has
shown the relative likeness of the Nahua calendar to that of Asia. He
cites the fact that the Chinese, Japanese, Calmucks, Mongols, Mantchou,
and other hordes of Tartars have cycles of sixty years’ duration,
divided into five brief periods of twelve years each. The method of
citing a date by means of signs and numbers is quite similar with
Asiatics and Mexicans. He further shows satisfactorily that the majority
of the names of the twenty days employed by the Aztecs are those of a
zodiac used since the most remote antiquity among the peoples of Eastern
Asia.
Cabera thinks he finds analogies between the Mexican and Egyptian
calendars. Adopting the view of several writers that the Mexican year
began on the 26th of February, he finds the date to correspond with the
beginning of the Egyptian year.
The American nations believed in four great primeval ages, as the Hindoo
does to this day.
“In the Greeks of Homer,” says Volney, “I find the customs, discourse,
and manners of the Iroquois, Delawares, and Miamis. The tragedies of
Sophocles and Euripides paint to me almost literally the sentiments of
the red men respecting necessity, fatality, the miseries of human life,
and the rigor of blind destiny.” (Volney’s “View of the United States.”)
The Mexicans represent an eclipse of the moon as the moon being devoured
by a dragon; and the Hindoos have precisely the same figure; and both
nations continued to use this expression long after they had discovered
the real meaning of an eclipse.
The Tartars believe that if they cut with an axe near a fire, or stick a
knife into a burning stick, or touch the fire with a knife, they will
“cut the top off the fire.” The Sioux Indians will not stick an awl or a
needle into a stick of wood on the fire, or chop on it with an axe or a
knife.
Cremation was extensively practised in the New World. The dead were
burnt, and their ashes collected and placed in vases and urns, as in
Europe. Wooden statues of the dead were made.
There is a very curious and apparently inexplicable custom, called the
“Couvade,” which extends from China to the Mississippi Valley; it
demands “that, when a child is born, the father must take to his bed,
while the mother attends to all the duties of the household.” Marco Polo
found the custom among the Chinese in the thirteenth century.
The widow tells Hudibras–
“Chineses thus are said To lie-in in their ladies’ stead.”
The practice remarked by Marco Polo continues to this day among the
hill-tribes of China. “The father of a new-born child, as soon as the
mother has become strong enough to leave her couch, gets into bed
himself, and there receives the congratulations Of his acquaintances.”
(Max Müller’s “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. ii., p. 272.) Strabo
(vol. iii., pp. 4, 17) mentions that, among the Iberians of the North of
Spain, the women, after the birth of a child, tend their husbands,
putting them to bed instead of going themselves. The same custom existed
among the Basques only a few years ago. “In Biscay,” says M. F. Michel,
“the women rise immediately after childbirth and attend to the duties of
the household, while the husband goes to bed, taking the baby with him,
and thus receives the neighbors’ compliments.” The same custom was found
in France, and is said to exist to this day in some cantons of Béarn.
Diodorus Siculus tells us that among the Corsicans the wife was
neglected, and the husband put to bed and treated as the patient.
Apollonius Rhodius says that among the Tibereni, at the south of the
Black Sea, “when a child was born the father lay groaning, with his head
tied up, while the mother tended him with food and prepared his baths.”
The same absurd custom extends throughout the tribes of North and South
America. Among the Caribs in the West Indies (and the Caribs, Brasseur
de Bourbourg says, were the same as the ancient Carians of the
Mediterranean Sea) the man takes to his bed as soon as a child is born,
and kills no animals. And herein we find an explanation of a custom
otherwise inexplicable. Among the American Indians it is believed that,
if the father kills an animal during the infancy of the child, the
spirit of the animal will revenge itself by inflicting some disease upon
the helpless little one. “For six months the Carib father must not eat
birds or fish, for what ever animals he eats will impress their likeness
on the child, or produce disease by entering its body.” (Dorman, “Prim.
Superst.,” p. 58.) Among the Abipones the husband goes to bed, fasts a
number of days, “and you would think,” says Dobrizboffer, “that it was
he that had had the child.” The Brazilian father takes to his hammock
during and after the birth of the child, and for fifteen days eats no
meat and hunts no game. Among the Esquimaux the husbands forbear hunting
during the lying-in of their wives and for some time thereafter.
Here, then, we have a very extraordinary and unnatural custom, existing
to this day on both sides of the Atlantic, reaching back to a vast
antiquity, and finding its explanation only in the superstition of the
American races. A practice so absurd could scarcely have originated
separately in the two continents; its existence is a very strong proof
of unity of origin of the races on the opposite sides of the Atlantic;
and the fact that the custom and the reason for it are both found in
America, while the custom remains in Europe without the reason, would
imply that the American population was the older of the two.
The Indian practice of depositing weapons and food with the dead was universal in ancient Europe, and in German villages nowadays a needle and thread is placed in the coffin for the dead to mend their torn clothes with; “while all over Europe the dead man had a piece of money put in his hand to pay his way with.” (“Anthropology,” p. 347.)
The American Indian leaves food with the dead; the Russian peasant puts
crumbs of bread behind the saints’ pictures on the little iron shelf,
and believes that the souls of his forefathers creep in and out and eat
them. At the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise, Paris, on All-souls-day, they
“still put cakes and sweetmeats on the graves; and in Brittany the
peasants that night do not forget to make up the fire and leave the
fragments of the supper on the table for the souls of the dead.” (Ibid..
p. 351.)
The Indian prays to the spirits of his forefathers; the Chinese religion is largely “ancestor-worship;” and the rites paid to the dead ancestors, or lares, held the Roman family together.” (“Anthropology,” p. 351.)
We find the Indian practice of burying the dead in a sitting posture in
use among the Nasamonians, tribe of Libyans. Herodotus, speaking of the
wandering tribes of Northern Africa, says, “They bury their dead
according to the fashion of the Greeks. . . . They bury them sitting,
and are right careful, when the sick man is at the point of giving up
the ghost, to make him sit, and not let him die lying down.”
The dead bodies of the caciques of Bogota were protected from
desecration by diverting the course of a river and making the grave in
its bed, and then letting the stream return to its natural course.
Alaric, the leader of the Goths, was secretly buried in the same way.
(Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 195.)
Among the American tribes no man is permitted to marry a wife of the
same clan-name or totem as himself. In India a Brahman is not allowed to
marry a wife whose clan-name (her “cow-stall,” as they say) is the same
as his own; nor may a Chinaman take a wife of his own surname.
(“Anthropology,” p. 403.) “Throughout India the hill-tribes are divided
into septs or clans, and a man may not marry a woman belonging to his
own clan. The Calmucks of Tartary are divided into hordes, and a man may
not marry a girl of his own horde. The same custom prevails among the
Circassians and the Samoyeds of Siberia. The Ostyaks and Yakuts regard
it as a crime to marry a woman of the same family, or even of the same
name.” (Sir John Lubbock, “Smith. Rep.,” p. 347, 1869.)
Sutteeism–the burning of the widow upon the funeral-pile of the
husband–was extensively practised in America (West’s “Journal,” p.
141); as was also the practice of sacrificing warriors, servants, and
animals at the funeral of a great chief (Dorman, pp. 210-211.) Beautiful
girls were sacrificed to appease the anger of the gods, as among the
Mediterranean races. (Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 471.) Fathers offered up
their children for a like purpose, as among the Carthaginians.
The poisoned arrows of America had their representatives in Europe. Odysseus went to Ephyra for the man-slaying drug with which to smear his bronze-tipped arrows. (Tylor’s “Anthropology,” p. 237.)
“The bark canoe of America was not unknown in Asia and Africa” (Ibid.,
p. 254), while the skin canoes of our Indians and the Esquimaux were
found on the shores of the Thames and the Euphrates. In Peru and on the
Euphrates commerce was carried on upon rafts supported by inflated
skins. They are still used on the Tigris.
The Indian boils his meat by dropping red-hot stones into a water-vessel made of hide; and Linnæus found the Both land people brewing beer in this way–“and to this day the rude Carinthian boor drinks such stone-beer, as it is called.” (Ibid., p. 266.)
In the buffalo dance of the Mandan Indians the dancers covered their
heads with a mask made of the head and horns of the buffalo. To-day in
the temples of India, or among the lamas of Thibet, the priests dance
the demons out, or the new year in, arrayed in animal masks (Ibid., p.
297 ); and the “mummers” at Yule-tide, in England, are a survival of the
same custom. (Ibid., p. 298.) The North American dog and bear dances,
wherein the dancers acted the part of those animals, had their prototype
in the Greek dances at the festivals of Dionysia. (Ibid., p. 298.)
Tattooing was practised in both continents. Among the Indians it was
fetichistic in its origin; “every Indian had the image of an animal
tattooed on his breast or arm, to charm away evil spirits.” (Dorman,
“Prim. Superst.,” p. 156.) The sailors of Europe and America preserve to
this day a custom which was once universal among the ancient races.
Banners, flags, and armorial bearings are supposed to be survivals of
the old totemic tattooing. The Arab woman still tattoos her face, arms,
and ankles. The war-paint of the American savage reappeared in the woad
with which the ancient Briton stained his body; and Tylor suggests that
the painted stripes on the circus clown are a survival of a custom once
universal. (Tylor’s “Anthropology,” p. 327.)
In America, as in the Old World, the temples of worship were built over
the dead., (Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 178.) Says Prudentius, the
Roman bard, “there were as many temples of gods as sepulchres.”
The Etruscan belief that evil spirits strove for the possession of the
dead was found among the Mosquito Indians. (Bancroft, “Native Races,”
vol. i., p. 744.)
The belief in fairies, which forms so large a part of the folklore of
Western Europe, is found among the American races. The Ojibbeways see
thousands of fairies dancing in a sunbeam; during a rain myriads of them
bide in the flowers. When disturbed they disappear underground. They
have their dances, like the Irish fairies; and, like them, they kill the
domestic animals of those who offend them. The Dakotas also believe in
fairies. The Otoes located the “little people” in a mound at the mouth
of Whitestone River; they were eighteen inches high, with very large
heads; they were armed with bows and arrows, and killed those who
approached their residence. (See Dorman’s “Origin of Primitive
Superstitions,” p. 23.) “The Shoshone legends people the mountains of
Montana with little imps, called Nirumbees, two feet long, naked, and
with a tail.” They stole the children of the Indians, and left in their
stead the young of their own baneful race, who resembled the stolen
children so much that the mothers were deceived and suckled them,
whereupon they died. This greatly resembles the European belief in
“changelings.” (Ibid., p. 24.)
In both continents we find tree-worship. In Mexico and Central America
cypresses and palms were planted near the temples, generally in groups
of threes; they were tended with great care, and received offerings of
incense and gifts. The same custom prevailed among the Romans–the
cypress was dedicated to Pluto, and the palm to Victory.
Not only infant baptism by water was found both in the old Babylonian
religion and among the Mexicans, but an offering of cakes, which is
recorded by the prophet Jeremiah as part of the worship of the
Babylonian goddess-mother, “the Queen of Heaven,” was also found in the
ritual of the Aztecs. (“Builders of Babel,” p. 78.)
In Babylonia, China, and Mexico the caste at the bottom of the social
scale lived upon floating islands of reeds or rafts, covered with earth,
on the lakes and rivers.
In Peru and Babylonia marriages were made but once a year, at a public
festival.
Among the Romans, the Chinese, the Abyssinians, and the Indians of
Canada the singular custom prevails of lifting the bride over the
door-step of her husband’s home. (Sir John Lubbock, “Smith. Rep.,” 1869,
p. 352.)
“The bride-cake which so invariably accompanies a wedding among
ourselves, and which must always be cut by the bride, may be traced back
to the old Roman form of marriage by ‘conferreatio,’ or eating together.
So, also, among the Iroquois the bride and bridegroom used to partake
together of a cake of sagamite, which the bride always offered to her
husband.” (Ibid.)
Among many American tribes, notably in Brazil, the husband captured the
wife by main force, as the men of Benjamin carried off the daughters of
Shiloh at the feast, and as the Romans captured the Sabine women.
“Within a few generations the same old habit was kept up in Wales, where
the bridegroom and his friends, mounted and armed as for war, carried
off the bride; and in Ireland they used even to hurl spears at the
bride’s people, though at such a distance that no one was hurt, except
now and then by accident–as happened when one Lord Hoath lost an eye,
which mischance put an end to this curious relic of antiquity.” (Tylor’s
“Anthropology,” p. 409.)
Marriage in Mexico was performed by the priest. He exhorted them to
maintain peace and harmony, and tied the end of the man’s mantle to the
dress of the woman; he perfumed them, and placed on each a shawl on
which was painted a skeleton, “as a symbol that only death could now
separate them from one another.” (Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 379.)
The priesthood was thoroughly organized in Mexico and Peru. They were
prophets as well as priests. “They brought the newly-born infant into
the religious society; they directed their training and education; they
determined the entrance of the young men into the service of the state;
they consecrated marriage by their blessing; they comforted the sick and
assisted the dying.” (Ibid., p. 374.) There were five thousand priests
in the temples of Mexico. They confessed and absolved the sinners,
arranged the festivals, and managed the choirs in the churches. They
lived in conventual discipline, but were allowed to marry; they
practised flagellation and fasting, and prayed at regular hours. There
were great preachers and exhorters among them. There were also convents
into which females were admitted. The novice had her hair cut off and
took vows of celibacy; they lived holy and pious lives. (Ibid., pp. 375,
376.) The king was the high-priest of the religious orders. A new king
ascended the temple naked, except his girdle; he was sprinkled four
times with water which had been blessed; he was then clothed in a
mantle, and on his knees took an oath to maintain the ancient religion.
The priests then instructed him in his royal duties. (Ibid., p. 378.)
Besides the regular priesthood there were monks who were confined in
cloisters. (Ibid., p. 390.) Cortes says the Mexican priests were very
strict in the practice of honesty and chastity, and any deviation was
punished with death. They wore long white robes and burned incense.
(Dorman, “Prim. Superst.,” p. 379.) The first fruits of the earth were
devoted to the support of the priesthood. (Ibid., p. 383.) The priests
of the Isthmus were sworn to perpetual chastity.
The American doctors practised phlebotomy. They bled the sick man
because they believed the evil spirit which afflicted him would come
away with the blood. In Europe phlebotomy only continued to a late
period, but the original superstition out of which it arose, in this
case as in many others, was forgotten.
There is opportunity here for the philosopher to meditate upon the
perversity of human nature and the persistence of hereditary error. The
superstition of one age becomes the science of another; men were first
bled to withdraw the evil spirit, then to cure the disease; and a
practice whose origin is lost in the night of ages is continued into the
midst of civilization, and only overthrown after it has sent millions of
human beings to untimely graves. Dr. Sangrado could have found the
explanation of his profession only among the red men of America.
Folk-lore.–Says Max Müller: “Not only do we find the same words and the same terminations in Sanscrit and Gothic; not only do we find the same name for Zeus in Sanscrit, Latin, and German; not only is the abstract Dame for God the same in India, Greece, and Italy; but these very stories, these ‘Mährchen’ which nurses still tell, with almost the same words, in the Thuringian forest and in the Norwegian villages, and to which crowds of children listen under the Pippal-trees of India–these stories, too, belonged to the common heirloom of the Indo-European race, and their origin carries us back to the same distant past, when no Greek had set foot in Europe, no Hindoo had bathed in the sacred waters of the Ganges.”
And we find that an identity of origin can be established between the folk-lore or fairy tales of America and those of the Old World, precisely such as exists between the, legends of Norway and India.
Mr. Tylor tells us the story of the two brothers in Central America who,
starting on their dangerous journey to the land of Xibalba, where their
father had perished, plant each a cane in the middle of their
grandmother’s house, that she may know by its flourishing or withering
whether they are alive or dead. Exactly the same conception occurs in
Grimm’s “Mährchen,” when the two gold-children wish to see the world and
to leave their father; and when their father is sad, and asks them how
he shall bear news of them, they tell him, “We leave you the two golden
lilies; from these you can see how we fare. If they are fresh, we are
well; if they fade, we are ill; if they fall, we are dead.” Grimm traces
the same idea in Hindoo stories. “Now this,” says Max Müller, “is
strange enough, and its occurrence in India, Germany, and Central
America is stranger still.”
Compare the following stories, which we print in parallel columns, one from the Ojibbeway Indians, the other from Ireland:
+———————————-+————————————+
| THE OJIBBEWAY STORY. | THE IRISH STORY. |
| | |
| The birds met together one day | The birds all met together one |
| to try which could fly the | day, and settled among themselves |
| highest. Some flew up very | that whichever of them could fly |
| swift, but soon got tired, and | highest was to be the king of |
| were passed by others of | all. Well, just as they were on |
| stronger wing. But the eagle | the hinges of being off, what |
| went up beyond them all, and | does the little rogue of a wren |
| was ready to claim the victory, | do but hop up and perch himself |
| when the gray linnet, a very | unbeknown on the eagle’s tail. So |
| small bird, flew from the | they flew and flew ever so high, |
| eagle’s back, where it had | till the eagle was miles above |
| perched unperceived, and, being | all the rest, and could not fly |
| fresh and unexhausted, | another stroke, he was so tired. |
| succeeded in going the highest. | “Then,” says he, “I’m king of the |
| When the birds came down and | birds.” “You lie!” says the wren, |
| met in council to award the | darting up a perch and a half |
| prize it was given to the | above the big fellow. Well, the |
| eagle, because that bird had | eagle was so mad to think how he |
| not only gone up nearer to the | was done, that when the wren was |
| sun than any of the larger | coming down he gave him a stroke |
| birds, but it had carried the | of his wing, and from that day to |
| linnet on its back. | this the wren was never able to |
| | fly farther than a hawthorn-bush. |
| For this reason the eagle’s | |
| feathers became the most | |
| honorable marks of distinction | |
| a warrior could bear. | |
+———————————-+————————————+
Compare the following stories:
+————————————+———————————-+
| THE ASIATIC STORY. | THE AMERICAN STORY. |
| | |
| In Hindoo mythology Urvasi came | Wampee, a great hunter, once |
| down from heaven and became the | came to a strange prairie, |
| wife of the son of Buddha only on | where he heard faint sounds of |
| condition that two pet rams | music, and looking up saw a |
| should never be taken from her | speck in the sky, which proved |
| bedside, and that she should | itself to be a basket |
| never behold her lord undressed. | containing twelve most |
| The immortals, however, wishing | beautiful maidens, who, on |
| Urvasi back in heaven, contrived | reaching the earth, forthwith |
| to steal the rams; and, as the | set themselves to dance. He |
| king pursued the robbers with his | tried to catch the youngest, |
| sword in the dark, the lightning | but in vain; ultimately he |
| revealed his person, the compact | succeeded by assuming the |
| was broken, and Urvasi | disguise of a mouse. He was |
| disappeared. This same story is | very attentive to his new wife, |
| found in different forms among | who was really a daughter of |
| many people of Aryan and Turanian | one of the stars, but she |
| descent, the central idea being | wished to return home, so she |
| that of a man marrying some one | made a wicker basket secretly, |
| of an aerial or aquatic origin, | and, by help of a charm she |
| and living happily with her till | remembered, ascended to her |
| he breaks the condition on which | father. |
| her residence with him depends, | |
| stories exactly parallel to that | |
| of Raymond of Toulouse, who | |
| chances in the hunt upon the | |
| beautiful Melusina at a fountain, | |
| and lives with her happily until | |
| he discovers her fish-nature and | |
| she vanishes. | |
+————————————+———————————-+
If the legend of Cadmus recovering Europa, after she has been carried
away by the white bull, the spotless cloud, means that “the sun must
journey westward until he sees again the beautiful tints which greeted
his eyes in the morning,” it is curious to find a story current in North
America to the effect that a man once had a beautiful daughter, ‘whom he
forbade to leave the lodge lest she should be carried off by the king of
the buffaloes; and that as she sat, notwithstanding, outside the house
combing her hair, “all of a sudden the king of the buffaloes came
dashing on, with his herd of followers, and, taking her between his
horns, away be cantered over plains, plunged into a river which bounded
his land, and carried her safely to his lodge on the other side,” whence
she was finally recovered by her father.
Games.–The same games and sports extended from India to the shores of
Lake Superior. The game of the Hindoos, called pachisi, is played upon a
cross-shaped board or cloth; it is a combination of checkers and
draughts, with the throwing of dice, the dice determining the number of
moves; when the Spaniards entered Mexico they found the Aztecs playing a
game called patolli, identical with the Hindoo pachisi, on a similar
cross-shaped board. The game of ball, which the Indians of America were
in the habit of playing at the time of the discovery of the country,
from California to the Atlantic, was identical with the European chueca,
crosse, or hockey.
One may well pause, after reading this catalogue, and ask himself,
wherein do these peoples differ? It is absurd to pretend that all these
similarities could have been the result of accidental coincidences.
These two peoples, separated by the great ocean, were baptized alike in
infancy with blessed water; they prayed alike to the gods; they
worshipped together the sun, moon, and stars; they confessed their sins
alike; they were instructed alike by an established priesthood; they
were married in the same way and by the joining of hands; they armed
themselves with the same weapons; when children came, the man, on both
continents, went to bed and left his wife to do the honors of the
household; they tattooed and painted themselves in the same fashion;
they became intoxicated on kindred drinks; their dresses were alike;
they cooked in the same manner; they used the same metals; they employed
the same exorcisms and bleedings for disease; they believed alike in
ghosts, demons, and fairies; they listened to the same stories; they
played the same games; they used the same musical instruments; they
danced the same dances, and when they died they were embalmed in the
same way and buried sitting; while over them were erected, on both
continents, the same mounds, pyramids, obelisks, and temples. And yet we
are asked to believe that there was no relationship between them, and
that they had never had any ante-Columbian intercourse with each other.
If our knowledge of Atlantis was more thorough, it would no doubt appear
that, in every instance wherein the people of Europe accord with the
people of America, they were both in accord with the people of Atlantis;
and that Atlantis was the common centre from which both peoples derived
their arts, sciences, customs, and opinions. It will be seen that in
every case where Plato gives us any information in this respect as to
Atlantis, we find this agreement to exist. It existed in architecture,
sculpture, navigation, engraving, writing, an established priesthood,
the mode of worship, agriculture, the construction of roads and canals;
and it is reasonable to suppose that the, same correspondence extended
down to all the minor details treated of in this chapter.
CHAPTER III.
AMERICAN EVIDENCES OF INTERCOURSE WITH EUROPE OR ATLANTIS.
1. ON the monuments of Central America there are representations of
bearded men. How could the beardless American Indians have imagined a
bearded race?
2. All the traditions of the civilized races of Central America point to
an Eastern origin.
The leader and civilizer of the Nahua family was Quetzalcoatl. This is
the legend respecting him:
“From the distant East, from the fabulous Hue Hue Tlapalan, this
mysterious person came to Tula, and became the patron god and
high-priest of the ancestors of the Toltecs. He is described as having
been a white man, with strong formation of body, broad forehead, large
eyes, and flowing beard. He wore a mitre on his head, and was dressed in
a long white robe reaching to his feet, and covered with red crosses. In
his hand he held a sickle. His habits were ascetic, he never married,
was most chaste and pure in life, and is said to have endured penance in
a neighboring mountain, not for its effects upon himself, but as a
warning to others. He condemned sacrifices, except of fruits and
flowers, and was known as the god of peace; for, when addressed on the
subject of war, he is reported to have stopped his ears with his
fingers.” (“North Amer. of Antiq.,” p. 268.)
“He was skilled in many arts: he invented” (that is, imported)
“gem-cutting and metal-casting; he originated letters, and invented the
Mexican calendar. He finally returned to the land in the East from which
he came: leaving the American coast at Vera Cruz, he embarked in a canoe
made of serpent-skins, and ‘sailed away into the east.’” (Ibid., p. 271.)
Dr. Le Plongeon says of the columns at Chichen:
“The base is formed by the head of Cukulcan, the shaft of the body of
the serpent, with its feathers beautifully carved to the very chapiter.
On the chapiters of the columns that support the portico, at the
entrance of the castle in Chichen Itza, may be seen the carved figures
of long-bearded men, with upraised hands, in the act of worshipping
sacred trees. They forcibly recall to mind the same worship in Assyria.”
In the accompanying cut of an ancient vase from Tula, we see a bearded
figure grasping a beardless man.
In the cut given below we see a face that might be duplicated among the
old men of any part of Europe.
The Cakchiquel MS. says: “Four persons came from Tulan, from the
direction of the rising sun–that is one Tulan. There is another Tulan
in Xibalbay, and another where the sun sets, and it is there that we
came; and in the direction of the setting sun there is another, where is
the god; so that there are four Tulans; and it is where the sun sets
that we came to Tulan, from the other side of the sea, where this Tulan
is; and it is there that we were conceived and begotten by our mothers
and fathers.”
That is to say, the birthplace of the race was in the East, across the
sea, at a place called Tulan and when they emigrated they called their
first stopping-place on the American continent Tulan also; and besides
this there were two other Tulans.
“Of the Nahua predecessors of the Toltecs in Mexico the Olmecs and
Xicalaucans were the most important. They were the forerunners of the
great races that followed. According to Ixtlilxochitl, these
people-which are conceded to be one occupied the world in the third age;
they came from the East in ships or barks to the land of Potonchan,
which they commenced to populate.”
3. The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, in one of the notes of the
Introduction of the “Popol Vuh,” presents a very remarkable analogy
between the kingdom of Xibalba, described in that work, and Atlantis. He
says:
“Both countries are magnificent, exceedingly fertile, and abound in the
precious metals. The empire of Atlantis was divided into ten kingdoms,
governed by five couples of twin sons of Poseidon, the eldest being
supreme over the others; and the ten constituted a tribunal that managed
the affairs of the empire. Their descendants governed after them. The
ten kings of Xibalba, who reigned (in couples) under Hun-Came and
Vukub-Came (and who together constituted a grand council of the
kingdom), certainly furnish curious points of comparison. And there is
wanting neither a catastrophe–for Xibalba had a terrific
inundation–nor the name of Atlas, of which the etymology is found only
in the Nahuatl tongue: it comes from atl, water; and we know that a city
of Atlan (near the water) still existed on the Atlantic side of the
Isthmus of Panama at the time of the Conquest.”
“In Yucatan the traditions all point to an Eastern and foreign origin
for the race. The early writers report that the natives believe their
ancestors to have crossed the sea by a passage which was opened for
them.” (Landa’s “Relacion,” p. 28.)
“It was also believed that part of the population came into the country
from the West. Lizana says that the smaller portion, ‘the little
descent,’ came from the East, while the greater portion, ‘the great
descent,’ came from the West. Cogolluda considers the Eastern colony to
have been the larger. . . . The culture-hero Zamna, the author of all
civilization in Yucatan, is described as the teacher of letters, and the
leader of the people from their ancient home. . . . He was the leader of
a colony from the East.” (“North Amer. of Antiq.,” p. 229.)
The ancient Mexican legends say that, after the Flood, Coxcox and his
wife, after wandering one hundred and four years, landed at Antlan, and
passed thence to Capultepec, and thence to Culhuacan, and lastly to
Mexico.
Coming from Atlantis, they named their first landing-place Antlan.
All the races that settled Mexico, we are told, traced their origin back
to an Aztlan (Atlan-tis). Duran describes Aztlan as “a most attractive
land.” (“North Amer. of Antiq.,” p. 257.)
Samé, the great name of Brazilian legend, came across the ocean from the
rising sun. He had power over the elements and tempests; the trees of
the forests would recede to make room for him (cutting down the trees);
the animals used to crouch before him (domesticated animals); lakes and
rivers became solid for him (boats and bridges); and he taught the use
of agriculture and magic. Like him, Bochica, the great law-giver of the
Muyscas, and son of the sun–he who invented for them the calendar and
regulated their festivals–had a white beard, a detail in which all the
American culture-heroes agree. The “Samé” of Brazil was probably the
“Zamna” of Yucatan.
ELEPHANT MOUND, WISCONSIN.
4. We find in America numerous representations of the elephant. We are
forced to one of two conclusions: either the monuments date back to the
time of the mammoth in North America, or these people held intercourse
at some time in the past with races who possessed the elephant, and from
whom they obtained pictures of that singular animal. Plato tells us that
the Atlanteans possessed great numbers of elephants.
There are in Wisconsin a number of mounds of earth representing different animals-men, birds, and quadrupeds.
ELEPHANT PIPE, LOISA COUNTY, IOWA.
Among the latter is a mound representing an elephant, “so perfect in its proportions, and complete in its representation of an elephant, that its builders must have been well acquainted with all the physical characteristics of the animal which they delineated.” We copy the representation of this mound on page 168.
On a farm in Louisa County, Iowa, a pipe was ploughed up which also
represents an elephant. We are indebted to the valuable work of John T.
Short (“The North Americans of Antiquity,” p. 530) for a picture of this
singular object. It was found in a section where the ancient mounds were
very abundant and rich in relics. The pipe is of sandstone, of the
ordinary Mound-Builder’s type, and has every appearance of age and
usage. There can be no doubt of its genuineness. The finder had no
conception of its archæological value.
In the ruined city of Palenque we find, in one of the palaces, a stucco
bass-relief of a priest. His elaborate head-dress or helmet represents
very faithfully the head of an elephant. The cut on page 169 is from a
drawing made by Waldeck.
The decoration known as “elephant-trunks” is found in many parts of the
ancient ruins of Central America, projecting from above the door-ways of
the buildings.
In Tylor’s “Researches into the Early History of Mankind,” p. 313, I find a remarkable representation of an elephant, taken from an ancient Mexican manuscript. It is as follows:
MEXICAN REPRESENTATION OF ELEPHANT.
CHAPTER IV.
CORROBORATING CIRCUMSTANCES.
1. Lenormant insists that the human race issued from Ups Merou, and adds
that some Greek traditions point to “this locality–particularly the
expression me’ropes a?’nðwpoi, which can only mean ‘the men sprung from
Merou.’” (“Manual,” p.21.)
Theopompus tells us that the people who inhabited Atlantis were the
Meropes, the people of Merou.
2. Whence comes the word Atlantic? The dictionaries tell us that the
ocean is named after the mountains of Atlas; but whence did the Atlas
mountains get their name?
“The words Atlas and Atlantic have no satisfactory etymology in any
language known to Europe. They are not Greek, and cannot be referred to
any known language of the Old World. But in the Nahuatl language we find
immediately the radical a, atl, which signifies water, war, and the top
of the head. (Molina, “Vocab. en lengua Mexicana y Castellana.”) From
this comes a series of words, such as atlan–on the border of or amid
the water–from which we ‘have the adjective Atlantic. We have also
atlaça, to combat, or be in agony; it means likewise to hurl or dart
from the water, and in the preterit makes Atlaz. A city named Atlan
existed when the continent was discovered by Columbus, at the entrance
of the Gulf of Uraba, in Darien. With a good harbor, it is now reduced
to an unimportant pueblo named Acla.” (Baldwin’s “Ancient America,” p.
179.)
Plato tells us that Atlantis and the Atlantic Ocean were named after
Atlas, the eldest son of Poseidon, the founder of the kingdom.
3. Upon that part of the African continent nearest to the site of
Atlantis we find a chain of mountains, known from the most ancient times
as the Atlas Mountains. Whence this name Atlas, if it be not from the
name of the great king of Atlantis? And if this be not its origin, how
comes it that we find it in the most north-western corner of Africa? And
how does it happen that in the time of Herodotus there dwelt near this
mountain-chain a people called the Atlantes, probably a remnant of a
colony from Solon’s island? How comes it that the people of the Barbary
States were known to the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians as the
“Atlantes,” this name being especially applied to the inhabitants of
Fezzan and Bilma? Where did they get the name from? There is no
etymology for it east of the Atlantic Ocean. (Lenormants “Anc. Hist. of
the East,” p. 253.)
Look at it! An “Atlas” mountain on the shore of Africa; an “Atlan” town
on the shore of America; the “Atlantes” living along the north and west
coast of Africa; an Aztec people from Aztlan, in Central America; an
ocean rolling between the two worlds called the “Atlantic;” a
mythological deity called “Atlas” holding the world on his shoulders;
and an immemorial tradition of an island of Atlantis. Can all these
things be the result of accident?
4. Plato says that there was a “passage west from Atlantis to the rest
of the islands, as well as from these islands to the whole opposite
continent that surrounds that real sea.” He calls it a real sea, as
contradistinguished from the Mediterranean, which, as he says, is not a
real sea (or ocean) but a landlocked body of water, like a harbor.
Now, Plato might have created Atlantis out of his imagination; but how
could he have invented the islands beyond (the West India Islands), and
the whole continent (America) enclosing that real sea? If we look at the
map, we see that the continent of America does “surround” the ocean in a
great half-circle. Could Plato have guessed all this? If there had been
no Atlantis, and no series of voyages from it that revealed the
half-circle of the continent from Newfoundland to Cape St. Roche, how
could Plato have guessed it? And how could he have known that the
Mediterranean was only a harbor compared with the magnitude of the great
ocean surrounding Atlantis? Long sea-voyages were necessary to establish
that fact, and the Greeks, who kept close to the shores in their short
journeys, did not make such voyages.
5. How can we, without Atlantis, explain the presence of the Basques in Europe, who have no lingual affinities with any other race on the continent of Europe, but whose language is similar to the languages of America?
Plato tells us that the dominion of Gadeirus, one of the kings of
Atlantis, extended “toward the pillars of Heracles (Hercules) as far as
the country which is still called the region of Gades in that part of
the world.” Gades is the Cadiz of today, and the dominion of Gadeirus
embraced the land of the Iberians or Basques, their chief city taking
its name from a king of Atlantis, and they themselves being Atlanteans.
Dr. Farrar, referring to the Basque language, says:
“What is certain about it is, that its structure is polysynthetic, like
the languages of America. Like them, it forms its compounds by the
elimination of certain radicals in the simple words; so that ilhun, the
twilight, is contracted from hill, dead, and egun, day; and belhaur, the
knee, from belhar, front, and oin, leg. . . . The fact is indisputable,
and is eminently noteworthy, that while the affinities of the Basque
roots have never been conclusively elucidated, there has never been any
doubt that this isolated language, preserving its identity in a western
corner of Europe, between two mighty kingdoms, resembles, in its
grammatical structure, the aboriginal languages of the vast opposite
continent (America), and those alone.” (“Families of Speech,” p. 132.)
If there was an Atlantis, forming, with its connecting ridges, a
continuous bridge of land from America to Africa, we can understand how
the Basques could have passed from one continent to another; but if the
wide Atlantic rolled at all times unbroken between the two continents,
it is difficult to conceive of such an emigration by an uncivilized
people.
6. Without Atlantis, how can we explain the fact that the early
Egyptians were depicted by themselves as red men on their own monuments?
And, on the other hand, how can we account for the representations of
negroes on the monuments of Central America?
Dêsirè Charnay, now engaged in exploring those monuments, has published in the North American Review for December, 1880, photographs of a number of idols exhumed at San Juan de Teotihuacan, from which I select the following strikingly negroid faces:
NEGRO IDOLS FOUND IN MEXICO.
Dr. Le Plongeon says:
“Besides the sculptures of long-bearded men seen by the explorer at
Chichen Itza, there were tall figures of people with small heads, thick
lips, and curly short hair or wool, regarded as negroes. ‘We always see
them as standard or parasol bearers, but never engaged in actual
warfare.’” (“Maya Archæology,” p. 62.)
The following cut is from the court of the Palace of Palenque, figured by Stephens. The face is strongly Ethiopian.
The figure below represents a gigantic granite head, found near the
volcano of Tuxtla, in the Mexican State of Vera Cruz, at Caxapa. The
features are unmistakably negroid.
As the negroes have never been a sea-going race, the presence of these
faces among the antiquities of Central America proves one of two things,
either the existence of a land connection between America and Africa via
Atlantis, as revealed by the deep-sea soundings of the Challenger, or
commercial relations between America and Africa through the ships of the
Atlanteans or some other civilized race, whereby the negroes were
brought to America as slaves at a very remote epoch.
And we find some corroboration of the latter theory in that singular
book of the Quiches, the “Popol Vuh,” in which, after describing the
creation of the first men “in the region of the rising sun” (Bancroft’s
“Native Races,” vol. v., p. 548), and enumerating their first
generations, we are told, “All seem to have spoken one language, and to
have lived in great peace, black men and white together. Here they
awaited the rising of the sun, and prayed to the Heart of Heaven.”
(Bancroft’s “Native Races,” p. 547.) How did the red men of Central
America know anything about “black men and white men?” The conclusion
seems inevitable that these legends of a primitive, peaceful, and happy
land, an Aztlan in the East, inhabited by black and white men, to which
all the civilized nations of America traced their origin, could only
refer to Atlantis–that bridge of land where the white, dark, and red
races met. The “Popol Vuh” proceeds to tell how this first home of the
race became over-populous, and how the people under Balam-Quitze
migrated; how their language became “confounded,” in other words, broken
up into dialects, in consequence of separation; and how some of the
people “went to the East, and many came hither to Guatemala.” (Ibid., p.
547.)
M. A. de Quatrefages (“Human Species,” p. 200) says, “Black populations
have been found in America in very small numbers only, as isolated
tribes in the midst of very different populations. Such are the
Charruas, of Brazil, the Black Carribees of Saint Vincent, in the Gulf
of Mexico; the Jamassi of Florida, and the dark-complexioned
Californians. . . . Such, again, is the tribe that Balboa saw some
representatives of in his passage of the Isthmus of Darien in 1513; . .
. they were true negroes.”
7. How comes it that all the civilizations of the Old World radiate from
the shores of the Mediterranean? The Mediterranean is a cul de sac, with
Atlantis opposite its mouth. Every civilization on its shores possesses
traditions that point to Atlantis. We hear of no civilization coming to
the Mediterranean from Asia, Africa, or Europe–from north, south, or
west; but north, south, east, and west we find civilization radiating
from the Mediterranean to other lands. We see the Aryans descending upon
Hindostan from the direction of the Mediterranean; and we find the
Chinese borrowing inventions from Hindostan, and claiming descent from a
region not far from the Mediterranean.
The Mediterranean has been the centre of the modern world, because it
lay in the path of the extension of an older civilization, whose ships
colonized its shores, as they did also the shores .of America. Plato
says, “the nations are gathered around the shores of the Mediterranean
like frogs around a marsh.”
Dr. McCausland says:
“The obvious conclusion from these facts is, that at some time previous
to these migrations a people speaking a language of a superior and
complicated structure broke up their society, and, under some strong
impulse, poured out in different directions, and gradually established
themselves in all the lands now inhabited by the Caucasian race. Their
territories extend from the Atlantic to the Ganges, and from Iceland to
Ceylon, and are bordered on the north and east by the Asiatic Mongols,
and on the south by the negro tribes of Central Africa. They present all
the appearances of a later race, expanding itself between and into the
territories of two pre-existing neighboring races, and forcibly
appropriating the room required for its increasing population.”
(McCausland’s “Adam and the Adamites,” p. 280.)
Modern civilization is Atlantean. Without the thousands of years of
development which were had in Atlantis modern civilization could not
have existed. The inventive faculty of the present age is taking up the
great delegated work of creation where Atlantis left it thousands of
years ago.
8. How are we to explain the existence of the Semitic race in Europe
without Atlantis? It is an intrusive race; a race colonized on
sea-coasts. Where are its Old World affinities?
9. Why is it that the origin of wheat, barley, oats, maize, and rye–the
essential plants of civilization–is totally lost in the mists of a vast
antiquity? We have in the Greek mythology legends of the introduction of
most of these by Atlantean kings or gods into Europe; but no European
nation claims to have discovered or developed them, and it has been
impossible to trace them to their wild originals. Out of the whole flora
of the world mankind in the last seven thousand years has not developed
a single food-plant to compare in importance to the human family with
these. If a wise and scientific nation should propose nowadays to add to
this list, it would have to form great botanical gardens, and, by
systematic and long-continued experiments, develop useful plants from
the humble productions of the field and forest. Was this done in the
past on the island of Atlantis?
10. Why is it that we find in Ptolemy’s “Geography of Asia Minor,” in a
list of cities in Armenia Major in A.D. 140, the names of five cities
which have their counterparts in the names of localities in Central
America?
+——————+——————————+
| Armenian Cities. | Central American Localities. |
+——————+——————————+
| Chol. | Chol-ula |
+——————+——————————+
| Colua. | Colua-can. |
+——————+——————————+
| Zuivana. | Zuivan. |
+——————+——————————+
| Cholima. | Colima. |
+——————+——————————+
| Zalissa. | Xalisco. |
+——————+——————————+
(Short’s “North Americans of Antiquity,” p. 497.)
11. How comes it that the sandals upon the feet of the statue of
Chacmol, discovered at Chichen Itza, are “exact representations of those
found on the feet of the Guanches, the early inhabitants of the Canary
Islands, whose mummies are occasionally discovered in the eaves of
Teneriffe?” Dr. Merritt deems the axe or chisel heads dug up at
Chiriqui, Central America, “almost identical in form as well as material
with specimens found in Suffolk County, England.” (Bancroft’s Native
Races,” vol. iv., p. 20.) The rock-carvings of Chiriqui are pronounced
by Mr. Seemann to have a striking resemblance to the ancient incised
characters found on the rocks of Northumberland, England. (Ibid.)
“Some stones have recently been discovered in Hierro and Las Palmas
(Canary Islands), bearing sculptured symbols similar to those found on
the shores of Lake Superior; and this has led M. Bertholet, the
historiographer of the Canary Islands, to conclude that the first
inhabitants of the Canaries and those of the great West were one in
race.” (Benjamin, “The Atlantic Islands,” p. 130.)
12. How comes it that that very high authority, Professor Retzius
(“Smithsonian Report,” 1859, p. 266), declares, “With regard to the
primitive dolichocephalæ of America I entertain a hypothesis still more
bold, namely, that they are nearly related to the Guanches in the Canary
Islands, and to the Atlantic populations of Africa, the Moors, Tuaricks,
Copts, etc., which Latham comprises under the name of
Egyptian-Atlantidæ. We find one and the same form of skull in the Canary
Islands, in front of the African coast, and in the Carib Islands, on the
opposite coast, which faces Africa. The color of the skin on both sides
of the Atlantic is represented in these populations as being of a
reddish-brown.”
13. The Barbarians who are alluded to by Homer and Thucydides were a
race of ancient navigators and pirates called Cares, or Carians, who
occupied the isles of Greece before the Pelasgi, and antedated the
Ph?nicians in the control of the sea. The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg
claims that these Carians were identical with the Caribs of the West
Indies, the Caras of Honduras, and the Gurani of South America. (Landa’s
“Relacion,” pp. 52-65.)
14. When we consider it closely, one of the most extraordinary customs
ever known to mankind is that to which I have already alluded in a
preceding chapter, to wit, the embalming of the body of the dead man,
with a purpose that the body itself may live again in a future state. To
arrive at this practice several things must coexist:
a. The people must be highly religious, and possessed of an organized and influential priesthood, to perpetuate so troublesome a custom from age to age.
b. They must believe implicitly in the immortality of the soul; and this implies a belief in rewards and punishments after death; in a heaven and a hell.
c. They must believe in the immortality of the body, and its resurrection from the grave on some day of judgment in the distant future.
d. But a belief in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of
the body is not enough, for all Christian nations hold to these beliefs;
they must supplement these with a determination that the body shall not
perish; that the very flesh and blood in which the man died shall rise
with him on the last day, and not a merely spiritual body.
Now all these four things must coexist before a people proceed to embalm
their dead for religious purposes. The probability that all these four
things should coexist by accident in several widely separated races is
slight indeed. The doctrine of chances is all against it. There is here
no common necessity driving men to the same expedient, with which so
many resemblances have been explained; the practice is a religious
ceremony, growing out of religious beliefs by no means common or
universal, to wit, that the man who is dead shall live again, and live
again in the very body in which he died. Not even all the Jews believed
in these things.
If, then, it should appear that among the races which we claim were
descended from Atlantis this practice of embalming the dead is found,
and nowhere else, we have certainly furnished evidence which can only be
explained by admitting the existence of Atlantis, and of some great
religious race dwelling on Atlantis, who believed in the immortality of
soul and body, and who embalmed their dead. We find, as I have shown:
First. That the Guanches of the Canary Islands, supposed to be a remnant
of the Atlantean population, preserved their dead as mummies.
Second. That the Egyptians, the oldest colony of Atlantis, embalmed
their dead in such vast multitudes that they are now exported by the ton
to England, and ground up into manures to grow English turnips.
Third. That the Assyrians, the Ethiopians, the Persians, the Greeks, and
even the Romans embalmed their dead.
Fourth. On the American continents we find that the Peruvians, the
Central Americans, the Mexicans, and some of the Indian tribes, followed
the same practice.
Is it possible to account for this singular custom, reaching through a
belt of nations, and completely around the habitable world, without
Atlantis?
15. All the traditions of the Mediterranean races look to the ocean as
the source of men and gods. Homer sings of
“Ocean, the origin of gods and Mother Tethys.”
Orpheus says, “The fair river of Ocean was the first to marry, and he
espoused his sister Tethys, who was his mothers daughter.” (Plato’s
“Dialogues,” Cratylus, p. 402.) The ancients always alluded to the ocean
as a river encircling the earth, as in the map of Cosmos (see page 95
ante); probably a reminiscence of the great canal described by Plato
which surrounded the plain of Atlantis. Homer (Iliad, book xviii.)
describes Tethys, “the mother goddess,” coming to Achilles “from the
deep abysses of the main:”
“The circling Nereids with their mistress weep,
And all the sea-green sisters of the deep.”
Plato surrounds the great statue of Poseidon in Atlantis with the images
of one hundred Nereids.
16. in the Deluge legends of the Hindoos (as given on page 87 ante), we
have seen Manu saving a small fish, which subsequently grew to a great
size, and warned him of the coming of the Flood. In this legend all the
indications point to an ocean as the scene of the catastrophe. It says:
“At the close of the last calpa there was a general destruction, caused
by the sleep of Brahma, whence his creatures, in different worlds, were
drowned in a vast ocean. . . . A holy king, named Satyavrata, then
reigned, a servant of the spirit which moved on the waves” (Poseidon?),
“and so devout that water was his only sustenance. . . . In seven days
the three worlds” (remember Poseidon’s trident) “shall be plunged in an
ocean of death.” . . . “‘Thou shalt enter the spacious ark, and continue
in it secure from the Flood on one immense ocean.’ . . . The sea
overwhelmed its shores, deluged the whole earth, augmented by showers
from immense clouds.” (“Asiatic Researches,” vol. i., p. 230.)
All this reminds us of “the fountains of the great deep and the
flood-gates of heaven,” and seems to repeat precisely the story of Plato
as to the sinking of Atlantis in the ocean.
17. While I do not attach much weight to verbal similarities in the
languages of the two continents, nevertheless there are some that are
very remarkable. We have seen the Pan and Maia of the Greeks reappearing
in the Pan and Maya of the Mayas of Central America. The god of the
Welsh triads, “Hu the mighty,” is found in the Hu-nap-bu, the hero-god
of the Quiches; in Hu-napu, a hero-god; and in Hu-hu-nap-hu, in Hu-ncam,
in Hu-nbatz, semi-divine heroes of the Quiches. The Ph?nician deity El
“was subdivided into a number of hypostases called the Baalim, secondary
divinities, emanating from the substance of the deity” (“Anc. Hist.
East,” vol. ii., p. 219); and this word Baalim we find appearing in the
mythology of the Central Americans, applied to the semi-divine
progenitors of the human race, Balam-Quitze, Balam-Agab, and Iqui-Balam.
CHAPTER V.
THE QUESTION OF COMPLEXION.
The tendency of scientific thought in ethnology is in the direction of
giving more and more importance to the race characteristics, such as
height, color of the hair, eyes and skin, and the formation of the skull
and body generally, than to language. The language possessed by a people
may be merely the result of conquest or migration. For instance, in the
United States to-day, white, black, and red men, the descendants of
French, Spanish, Italians, Mexicans, Irish, Germans, Scandinavians,
Africans, all speak the English language, and by the test of language
they are all Englishmen; and yet none of them are connected by birth or
descent with the country where that language was developed.
There is a general misconception as to the color of the European and
American races. Europe is supposed to be peopled exclusively by white
men; but in reality every shade of color is represented on that
continent, from the fair complexion of the fairest of the Swedes to the
dark-skinned inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast, only a shade
lighter than the Berbers, or Moors, on the opposite side of that sea.
Tacitus spoke of the “Black Celts,” and the term, so far as complexion
goes, might not inappropriately be applied to some of the Italians,
Spaniards, and Portuguese, while the Basques are represented as of a
still darker hue. Tylor says (“Anthropology,” p. 67), “On the whole, it
seems that the distinction of color, from the fairest Englishman to the
darkest African, has no hard and fast lines, but varies gradually from
one tint to another.”
And when we turn to America we find that the popular opinion that all Indians are “red men,” and of the same hue from Patagonia to Hudson’s Bay, is a gross error.
Prichard says (“Researches into the Physical History of Mankind,” vol. i., p. 269, 4th ed., 1841):
“It will be easy to show that the American races show nearly as great a
variety in this respect as the nations of the old continent; there are
among them white races with a florid complexion, and tribes black or of
a very dark hue; that their stature, figure, and countenance are almost
equally diversified.”
John T. Short says (“North Americans of Antiquity,” p. 189):
“The Menominees, sometimes called the ‘White Indians,’ formerly occupied
the region bordering on Lake Michigan, around Green Bay. The whiteness
of these Indians, which is compared to that of white mulattoes, early
attracted the attention of the Jesuit missionaries, and has often been
commented on by travellers. While it is true that hybridy has done much
to lighten the color of many of the tribes, still the peculiarity of the
complexion of this people has been marked since the first time a
European encountered them. Almost every shade, from the ash-color of the
Menominees through the cinnamon-red, copper, and bronze tints, may be
found among the tribes formerly occupying the territory cast of the
Mississippi, until we reach the dark-skinned Kaws of Kansas, who are
nearly as black as the negro. The variety of complexion is as great in
South America as among the tribes of the northern part of the continent.”
In foot-note of p. 107 of vol. iii. of “U. S. Explorations for a
Railroad Route to the Pacific Ocean,” we are told,
“Many of the Indians of Zuni (New Mexico) are white. They have a fair
skin, blue eyes, chestnut or auburn hair, and are quite good-looking.
They claim to be full-blooded Zunians, and have no tradition of
intermarriage with any foreign race. The circumstance creates no
surprise among this people, for from time immemorial a similar class of
people has existed among the tribe.”
Winchell says:
“The ancient Indians of California, in the latitude of forty-two
degrees, were as black as the negroes of Guinea, while in Mexico were
tribes of an olive or reddish complexion, relatively light. Among the
black races of tropical regions we find, generally, some light-colored
tribes interspersed. These sometimes have light hair and blue eyes. This
is the case with the Tuareg of the Sahara, the Afghans of India, and the
aborigines of the banks of the Oronoco and the Amazon.” (Winchell’s
“Preadamites,” p. 185.)
William Penn said of the Indians of Pennsylvania, in his letter of
August, 1683:
“The natives . . . are generally tall, straight, well-built, and of
singular proportion; they tread strong and clever, and mostly walk with
a lofty chin. . . . Their eye is little and black, not unlike a
straight-looked Jew. . . . I have seen among them as comely
European-like faces of both sexes as on your side of the sea; and truly
an Italian complexion hath not much more of the white, and the noses of
several of them have as much of the Roman. . . . For their original, I
am ready to believe them to be of the Jewish race–I mean of the stock
of the ten tribes–and that for the following reasons: first, in the
next place, I find them to be of the like countenance, and their
children of so lively a resemblance that a man would think himself in
Duke’s Place or Berry Street in London when he seeth them. But this is
not all: they agree in rites, they reckon by moons, they offer their
first-fruits, they have a kind of feast of tabernacles, they are said to
lay their altars upon twelve stones, their mourning a year, customs of
women, with many other things that do not now occur.”
Upon this question of complexion Catlin, in his “Indians of North
America,” vol. i., p. 95, etc., gives us some curious information. We
have already seen that the Mandans preserved an image of the ark, and
possessed legends of a clearly Atlantean character. Catlin says:
“A stranger in the Mandan village is first struck with the different
shades of complexion and various colors of hair which he sees in a crowd
about him, and is at once disposed to exclaim, ‘These are not Indians.’
There are a great many of these people whose complexions appear as light
as half-breeds; and among the women particularly there are many whose
skins are almost white, with the most pleasing symmetry and proportion
of feature; with hazel, with gray, and with blue eyes; with mildness and
sweetness of expression and excessive modesty of demeanor, which render
them exceedingly pleasing and beautiful. Why this diversity of
complexion I cannot tell, nor can they themselves account for it. Their
traditions, so far as I can learn them, afford us no information of
their having had any knowledge of white men before the visit of Lewis
and Clarke, made to their village thirty-three years ago. Since that
time until now (1835) there have been very few visits of white men to
this place, and surely not enough to have changed the complexions and
customs of a nation. And I recollect perfectly well that Governor Clarke
told me, before I started for this place, that I would find the Mandans
a strange people and half white.
“Among the females may be seen every shade and color of hair that can be
seen in our own country except red or auburn, which is not to be found.
. . . There are very many of both sexes, and of every age, from infancy
to manhood and old age, with hair of a bright silvery-gray, and in some
instances almost perfectly white. This unaccountable phenomenon is not
the result of disease or habit, but it is unquestionably an hereditary
characteristic which runs in families, and indicates no inequality in
disposition or intellect. And by passing this hair through my hands I
have found it uniformly to be as coarse and harsh as a horse’s mane,
differing materially from the hair of other colors, which, among the
Mandans, is generally as fine and soft as silk.
“The stature of the Mandans is rather below the ordinary size of man,
with beautiful symmetry of form and proportion, and wonderful suppleness
and elasticity.”
Catlin gives a group (54) showing this great diversity in complexion: one of the figures is painted almost pure white, and with light hair. The faces are European.
GOVERNOR AND OTHER INDIANS OF THE PUEBLO OF SAN DOMINGO, NEW MEXICO.
Major James W. Lynd, who lived among the Dakota Indians for nine years,
and was killed by them in the great outbreak of 1862, says (MS. “Hist.
of Dakotas,” Library, Historical Society, Minnesota, p. 47), after
calling attention to the fact that the different tribes of the Sioux
nation represent several different degrees of darkness of color:
“The Dakota child is of lighter complexion than the young brave; this
one lighter than the middle-aged man, and the middle-aged man lighter
than the superannuated homo, who, by smoke, paint, dirt, and a drying up
of the vital juices, appears to be the true copper-colored Dakota. The
color of the Dakotas varies with the nation, and also with the age and
condition of the individual. It may be set down, however, as a shade
lighter than olive; yet it becomes still lighter by change of condition
or mode of life, and nearly vanishes, even in the child, under constant
ablutions and avoiding of exposure. Those children in the Mission at
Hazlewood, who are taken very young, and not allowed to expose
themselves, lose almost entirely the olive shade, and become quite as
white as the American child. The Mandans are as light as the peasants of
Spain, while their brothers, the Crows, are as dark as the Arabs. Dr.
Goodrich, in the ‘Universal Traveller,’ p. 154, says that the modern
Peruvians, in the warmer regions of Peru, are as fair as the people of
the south of Europe.”
The Aymaras, the ancient inhabitants of the mountains of Peru and
Bolivia, are described as having an olive-brown complexion, with regular
features, large heads, and a thoughtful and melancholy cast of
countenance. They practised in early times the deformation of the skull.
Professor Wilson describes the hair of the ancient Peruvians, as found
upon their mummies, as “a lightish brown, and of a fineness of texture
which equals that of the Anglo-Saxon race.” “The ancient Peruvians,”
says Short (“North Americans of Antiquity,” p. 187), “appear, from
numerous examples of hair found in their tombs, to have been an
auburn-haired race.” Garcilasso, who had an opportunity of seeing the
body of the king, Viracocha, describes the hair of that monarch as
snow-white. Haywood tells us of the discovery, at the beginning of this
century, of three mummies in a cave on the south side of the Cumberland
River (Tennessee), who were buried in baskets, as the Peruvians were
occasionally buried, and whose skin was fair and white, and their hair
auburn, and of a fine texture. (“Natural and Aboriginal History of
Tennessee,” p. 191.)
CHOCTAW.
Neither is the common opinion correct which asserts all the American
Indians to be of the same type of features. The portraits on this page
and on pages 187 and 191, taken from the “Report of the U. S. Survey for
a Route for a Pacific Railroad,” present features very much like those
of Europeans; in fact, every face here could be precisely matched among
the inhabitants of the southern part of the old continent.
SHAWNEES.
On the other hand, look at the portrait of the great Italian orator and
reformer, Savonarola, on page 193. It looks more like the hunting
Indians of North-western America than any of the preceding faces. In
fact, if it was dressed with a scalp-lock it would pass muster anywhere
as a portrait of the “Man-afraid-of-his-horses,” or “Sitting Bull.”
SAVONAROLA.
Adam was, it appears, a red man. Winchell tells us that Adam is derived
from the red earth. The radical letters ÂDâM are found in ADaMaH,
“something out of which vegetation was made to germinate,” to wit, the
earth. ÂDôM and ÂDOM signifies red, ruddy, bay-colored, as of a horse,
the color of a red heifer. “ÂDâM, a man, a human being, male or female,
red, ruddy.” (“Preadamites,” p.161.)
“The Arabs distinguished mankind into two races, one red, ruddy, the other black.” (Ibid.) They classed themselves among the red men.
Not only was Adam a red man, but there is evidence that, from the
highest antiquity, red was a sacred color; the gods of the ancients were
always painted red. The Wisdom of Solomon refers to this custom: “The
carpenter carved it elegantly, and formed it by the skill of his
understanding, and fashioned it to the shape of a man, or made it like
some vile beast, laying it over with vermilion, and with paint, coloring
it red, and covering every spot therein.”
The idols of the Indians were also painted red, and red was the religious color. (Lynd’s MS. “Hist. of Dakotas,” Library, Hist. Society, Minn.)
The Cushites and Ethiopians, early branches of the Atlantean stock, took their name from their “sunburnt” complexion; they were red men.
The name of the Ph?nicians signified red. Himyar, the prefix of the Himyaritic Arabians, also means red, and the Arabs were painted red on the Egyptian monuments.
The ancient Egyptians were red men. They recognized four races of
men–the red, yellow, black, and white men. They themselves belonged to
the “Rot,” or red men; the yellow men they called “Namu”–it included
the Asiatic races; the black men were called “Nahsu,” and the white men
“Tamhu.” The following figures are copied from Nott and Gliddon’s “Types
of Mankind,” p. 85, and were taken by them from the great works of
Belzoni, Champollion, and Lepsius.
In later ages so desirous were the Egyptians of preserving, the
aristocratic distinction of the color of their skin, that they
represented themselves on the monuments as of a crimson hue–an
exaggeration of their original race complexion.
In the same way we find that the ancient Aryan writings divided mankind
into four races–the white, red, yellow, and black: the four castes of
India were founded upon these distinctions in color; in fact, the word
for color in Sanscrit (varna) means caste. The red men, according to the
Mahâbhârata, were the Kshatriyas–the warrior caste-who were afterward
engaged in a fierce contest with the whites–the Brahmans–and were
nearly exterminated, although some of them survived, and from their
stock Buddha was born. So that not only the Mohammedan and Christian but
the Buddhistic religion seem to be derived from branches of the Hamitic
or red stock. The great Manu was also of the red race.
THE RACES OF MEN ACCORDING TO THE EGYPTIANS.
The Egyptians, while they painted themselves red-brown, represented the
nations of Palestine as yellow-brown, and the Libyans yellow-white. The
present inhabitants of Egypt range from a yellow color in the north
parts to a deep bronze. Tylor is of opinion (“Anthropology,” p. 95) that
the ancient Egyptians belonged to a brown race, which embraced the
Nubian tribes and, to some extent, the Berbers of Algiers and Tunis. He
groups the Assyrians, Ph?nicians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Andalusians,
Bretons, dark Welshmen, and people of the Caucasus into one body, and
designates them as “dark whites.” The Himyarite Arabs, as I have shown,
derived their name originally from their red color, and they were
constantly depicted on the Egyptian monuments as red or light brown.
Herodotus tells us that there was a nation of Libyans, called the
Maxyans, who claimed descent from the people of Troy (the walls of Troy,
we shall see, were built by Poseidon; that is to say, Troy was an
Atlantean colony). These Maxyans painted their whole bodies red. The
Zavecians, the ancestors of the Zuavas of Algiers (the tribe that gave
their name to the French Zouaves), also painted themselves red. Some of
the Ethiopians were “copper-colored.” (“‘Amer. Cyclop.,” art. Egypt, p.
464.) Tylor says (“Anthropology,” p. 160): “The language of the ancient
Egyptians, though it cannot be classed in the Semitic family with
Hebrew, has important points of correspondence, whether due to the long
intercourse between the two races in Egypt or to some deeper ancestral
connection; and such analogies also appear in the Berber languages of
North Africa.”
These last were called by the ancients the Atlanteans.
“If a congregation of twelve representatives from Malacca, China, Japan,
Mongolia, Sandwich Islands, Chili, Peru, Brazil, Chickasaws, Comanches,
etc., were dressed alike, or undressed and unshaven, the most skilful
anatomist could not, from their appearance, separate them.” (Fontaine’s
“How the World was Peopled,” pp. 147, 244.)
Ferdinand Columbus, in his relation of his father’s voyages, compares
the inhabitants of Guanaani to the Canary Islanders (an Atlantean race),
and describes the inhabitants of San Domingo as still more beautiful and
fair. In Peru the Charanzanis, studied by M. Angraud, also resemble the
Canary Islanders. L’Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg imagined himself
surrounded by Arabs when all his Indians of Rabinal were around him; for
they had, he said, their complexion, features, and beard. Pierre Martyr
speaks of the Indians of the Parian Gulf as having fair hair. (“The
Human Species,” p. 201.) The same author believes that tribes belonging
to the Semitic type are also found in America. He refers to “certain
traditions of Guiana, and the use in the country of a weapon entirely
characteristic of the ancient Canary Islanders.”
When science is able to disabuse itself of the Mortonian theory that the
aborigines of America are all red men, and all belong to one race, we
may hope that the confluence upon the continent of widely different
races from different countries may come to be recognized and
intelligently studied. There can be no doubt that red, white, black, and
yellow men have united to form the original population of America. And
there can be as little doubt that the entire population of Europe and
the south shore of the Mediterranean is a mongrel race–a combination,
in varying proportions, of a dark-brown or red race with a white race;
the characteristics of the different nations depending upon the
proportions in which the dark and light races are mingled, for peculiar
mental and moral characteristics go with these complexions. The
red-haired people are a distinct variety of the white stock; there were
once whole tribes and nations with this color of hair; their blood is
now intermingled with all the races of men, from Palestine to Iceland.
Everything in Europe speaks of vast periods of time and long, continued
and constant interfusion of bloods, until there is not a fair-skinned
man on the Continent that has not the blood of the dark-haired race in
his veins; nor scarcely a dark-skinned man that is not lighter in hue
from intermixture with the white stock.
CHAPTER VI.
GENESIS CONTAINS A HISTORY OF ATLANTIS
The Hebrews are a branch of the great family of which that powerful
commercial race, the Ph?nicians, who were the merchants of the world
fifteen hundred years before the time of Christ, were a part. The
Hebrews carried out from the common storehouse of their race a mass of
traditions, many of which have come down-to us in that oldest and most
venerable of human compositions, the Book of Genesis. I have shown that
the story of the Deluge plainly refers to the destruction of Atlantis,
and that it agrees in many important particulars with the account given
by Plato. The people destroyed were, in both instances, the ancient race
that had created civilization; they had formerly been in a happy and
sinless condition; they had become great and wicked; they were destroyed
for their sins–they were destroyed by water.
But we can go farther, and it can be asserted that there is scarcely a
prominent fact in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis that
cannot be duplicated from the legends of the American nations, and
scarcely a custom known to the Jews that does not find its counterpart
among the people of the New World.
Even in the history of the Creation we find these similarities:
The Bible tells us (Gen. i., 2) that in the beginning the earth was
without form and void, and covered with water. In the Quiche legends we
are told, “at first all was sea–no man, animal, bird, or green
herb–there was nothing to be seen but the sea and the heavens.”
The Bible says (Gen. i., 2), “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face
of the waters.” The Quiche legend says, “The Creator–the Former, the
Dominator–the feathered serpent–those that give life, moved upon the
waters like a glowing light.”
The Bible says (Gen. i., 9), “And God said, Let the waters under the
heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear:
and it was so.” The Quiche legend says, “The creative spirits cried out
‘Earth!’ and in an instant it was formed, and rose like a vapor-cloud;
immediately the plains and the mountains arose, and the cypress and pine
appeared.”
The Bible tells us, “And God saw that it was good.” The Quiche legend
says, “Then Gucumatz was filled with joy, and cried out, ‘Blessed be thy
coming, O Heart of Heaven, Hurakan, thunder-bolt.’”
The order in which the vegetables, animals, and man were formed is the
same in both records.
In Genesis (chap. ii., 7) we are told, “And the Lord God formed man of
the dust of the ground.” The Quiche legend says. “The first man was made
of clay; but he had no intelligence, and was consumed in the water.”
In Genesis the first man is represented as naked. The Aztec legend says,
“The sun was much nearer the earth then than now, and his grateful
warmth rendered clothing unnecessary.”
Even the temptation of Eve reappears in the American legends. Lord
Kingsborough says: “The Toltecs had paintings of a garden, with a single
tree standing in the midst; round the root of the tree is entwined a
serpent, whose head appearing above the foliage displays the face of a
woman. Torquemada admits the existence of this tradition among them, and
agrees with the Indian historians, who affirm that this was the first
woman in the world, who bore children, and from whom all mankind are
descended.” (“Mexican Antiquities,” vol. viii., p. 19.) There is also a
legend of Suchiquecal, who disobediently gathered roses from a tree, and
thereby disgraced and injured herself and all her posterity. (“Mexican
Antiquities,” vol. vi., p. 401.)
The legends of the Old World which underlie Genesis, and were used by
Milton in the “Paradise Lost,” appear in the Mexican legends of a war of
angels in heaven, and the fall of Zou-tem-que (Soutem, Satan–Arabic,
Shatana?) and the other rebellious spirits.
We have seen that the Central Americans possessed striking parallels to
the account of the Deluge in Genesis.
There is also a clearly established legend which singularly resembles
the Bible record of the Tower of Babel.
Father Duran, in his MS. “Historia Antiqua de la Nueva Espana,” A.D.
1585, quotes from the lips of a native of Cholula, over one hundred
years old, a version of the legend as to the building of the great
pyramid of Cholula. It is as follows:
“In the beginning, before the light of the sun had been created, this
land (Cholula) was in obscurity and darkness, and void of any created
thing; all was a plain, without hill or elevation, encircled in every
part by water, without tree or created thing; and immediately after the
light and the sun arose in the east there appeared gigantic men of
deformed stature and possessed the land, and desiring to see the
nativity of the sun, as well as his occident, proposed to go and seek
them. Dividing themselves into two parties, some journeyed to the west
and others toward the east; these travelled; until the sea cut off their
road, whereupon they determined to return to the place from which they
started, and arriving at this place (Cholula), not finding the means of
reaching the sun, enamored of his light and beauty, they determined to
build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky. Having
collected materials for the purpose, they found a very adhesive clay and
bitumen, with which they speedily commenced to build the tower; and
having reared it to the greatest possible altitude, so that they say it
reached to the sky, the Lord of the Heavens, enraged, said to the
inhabitants of the sky, ‘Have you observed how they of the earth have
built a high and haughty tower to mount hither, being enamored of the
light of the sun and his beauty? Come and confound them, because it is
not right that they of the earth, living in the flesh, should mingle
with us.’ Immediately the inhabitants of the sky sallied forth like
flashes of lightning; they destroyed the edifice, and divided and
scattered its builders to all parts of the earth.”
RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF CHOLULA.
One can recognize in this legend the recollection, by a ruder race, of a
highly civilized people; for only a highly civilized people would have
attempted such a vast work. Their mental superiority and command of the
arts gave them the character of giants who arrived from the East; who
had divided into two great emigrations, one moving eastward (toward
Europe), the other westward (toward America). They were sun-worshippers;
for we are told “they were enamored of the light and beauty of the sun,”
and they built a high place for his worship.
The pyramid of Cholula is one of the greatest constructions ever erected
by human hands. It is even now, in its ruined condition, 160 feet high,
1400 feet square at the base, and covers forty-five acres; we have only
to remember that the greatest pyramid of Egypt, Cheops, covers but
twelve or thirteen acres, to form some conception of the magnitude of
this American structure.
It must not be forgotten that this legend was taken down by a Catholic
priest, shortly after the conquest of Mexico, from the lips of an old
Indian who was born before Columbus sailed from Spain.
Observe the resemblances between this legend and the Bible account of
the building of the Tower of Babel:
“All was a plain without hill or elevation,” says the Indian legend.
“They found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there,” says
the Bible. They built of brick in both cases. “Let us build us a tower
whose top may reach unto heaven,” says the Bible. “They determined to
build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky,” says the
Indian legend. “And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower
which the children of men had builded. And the Lord said, Behold . . .
nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Go
to, let us go down and confound them,” says the Bible record. “The Lord
of the Heavens, enraged, said to the inhabitants of the sky, ‘Have you
observed,’ etc. Come and confound them,” says the Indian record. “And
the Lord scattered them abroad from thence on all the face of the
earth,” says the Bible. “They scattered its builders to all parts of the
earth,” says the Mexican legend.
Can any one doubt that these two legends must have sprung in some way
from one another, or from some common source? There are enough points of
difference to show that the American is not a servile copy of the Hebrew
legend. In the former the story comes from a native of Cholula: it is
told under the shadow of the mighty pyramid it commemorates; it is a
local legend which he repeats. The men who built it, according to his
account, were foreigners. They built it to reach the sun–that is to
say, as a sun-temple; while in the Bible record Babel was built to
perpetuate the glory of its architects. In the Indian legend the gods
stop the work by a great storm, in the Bible account by confounding the
speech of the people.
Both legends were probably derived from Atlantis, and referred to some
gigantic structure of great height built by that people; and when the
story emigrated to the east and west, it was in the one case affixed to
the tower of the Chaldeans, and in the other to the pyramid of Cholula,
precisely as we find the ark of the Deluge resting upon separate
mountain-chains all the way from Greece to Armenia. In one form of the
Tower of Babel legend, that of the Toltecs, we are told that the pyramid
of Cholula was erected “as a means of escape from a second flood, should
another occur.”
But the resemblances between Genesis and the American legends do not
stop here.
We are told (Gen. ii., 21) that “the Lord God caused a deep sleep to
fall upon Adam,” and while he slept God made Eve out of one of his ribs.
According to the Quiche tradition, there were four men from whom the
races of the world descended (probably a recollection of the red, black,
yellow, and white races); and these men were without wives, and the
Creator made wives for them “while they slept.”
Some wicked misanthrope referred to these traditions when he said, “And
man’s first sleep became his last repose.”
In Genesis (chap. iii., 22), “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is
become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth
his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever:”
therefore God drove him out of the garden. In the Quiche legends we are
told, “The gods feared that they had made men too perfect, and they
breathed a cloud of mist over their vision.”
When the ancestors of the Quiches migrated to America the Divinity
parted the sea for their passage, as the Red Sea was parted for the
Israelites.
The story of Samson is paralleled in the history of a hero named
Zipanca, told of in the “Popol Vuh,” who, being captured by his enemies
and placed in a pit, pulled down the building in which his captors had
assembled, and killed four hundred of them.
“There were giants in those days,” says the Bible. A great deal of the Central American history is taken up with the doings of an ancient race of giants called Quinames.
This parallelism runs through a hundred particulars:
Both the Jews and Mexicans worshipped toward the east.
Both called the south “the right hand of the world.”
Both burnt incense toward the four corners of the earth.
Confession of sin and sacrifice of atonement were common to both peoples.
Both were punctilious about washings and ablutions.
Both believed in devils, and both were afflicted with leprosy.
Both considered women who died in childbirth as worthy of honor as soldiers who fell in battle.
Both punished adultery with stoning to death.
As David leaped and danced before the ark of the Lord, so did the Mexican monarchs before their idols.
Both had an ark, the abiding-place of an invisible god.
Both had a species of serpent-worship.
GREAT SERPENT MOUND, OHIO.
Compare our representation of the great serpent-mound in Adams County, Ohio, with the following description of a great serpent-mound in Scotland:
“Serpent-worship in the West.–Some additional light appears to have
been thrown upon ancient serpent-worship in the West by the recent
archaeological explorations of Mr. John S. Phené, F.G.S., F.R.G.S., in
Scotland. Mr. Phené has just investigated a curious earthen mound in
Glen Feechan, Argyleshire, referred to by him, at the late meeting of
the British Association in Edinburgh, as being in the form of a serpent
or saurian. The mound, says the Scotsman, is a most perfect one. The
head is a large cairn, and the body of the earthen reptile 300 feet
long; and in the centre of the head there were evidences, when Mr. Phené
first visited it, of an altar having been placed there. The position
with regard to Ben Cruachan is most remarkable. The three peaks are seen
over the length of the reptile when a person is standing on the head, or
cairn. The shape can only be seen so as to be understood when looked
down upon from an elevation, as the outline cannot be understood unless
the whole of it can be seen. This is most perfect when the spectator is
on the head of the animal form, or on the lofty rock to the west of it.
This mound corresponds almost entirely with one 700 feet long in
America, an account of which was lately published, after careful survey,
by Mr. Squier. The altar toward the head in each case agrees. In the
American mound three rivers (also objects of worship with the ancients)
were evidently identified. The number three was a sacred number in all
ancient mythologies. The sinuous winding and articulations of the
vertebral spinal arrangement are anatomically perfect in the Argyleshire
mound. The gentlemen present with Mr. Phené during his investigation
state that beneath the cairn forming the head of the animal was found a
megalithic chamber, in which was a quantity of charcoal and burnt earth
and charred nutshells, a flint instrument, beautifully and minutely
serrated at the edge, and burnt bones. The back or spine of the serpent,
which, as already stated, is 300 feet long, was found, beneath the peat
moss, to be formed by a careful adjustment of stones, the formation of
which probably prevented the structure from being obliterated by time
and weather.” (Pall Mall Gazette.)
STONE IMPLEMENTS OF EUROPE AND AMERICA
We find a striking likeness between the works of the Stone Age in
America and Europe, as shown in the figures here given.
The same singular custom which is found among the Jews and the Hindoos,
for “a man to raise up seed for his deceased brother by marrying his
widow,” was found among the Central American nations. (Las Casas, MS.
“Hist. Apoloq.,” cap. ccxiii., ccxv. Torquemada, “Monarq. Ind.,” tom.
ii., 377-8.)
No one but the Jewish high-priest might enter the Holy of Holies. A
similar custom obtained in Peru. Both ate the flesh of the sacrifices of
atonement; both poured the blood of the sacrifice on the earth; they
sprinkled it, they marked persons with it, they smeared it upon walls
and stones. The Mexican temple, like the Jewish, faced the east. “As
among the Jews the ark was a sort of portable temple, in which the Deity
was supposed to be continually present, so among the Mexicans, the
Cherokees, and the Indians of Michoacan and Honduras, an ark was held in
the highest veneration, and was considered an object too sacred to be
touched by any but the priests.” (Kingsborough, “Mex. Antiq., “vol.
viii., p.258.)
The Peruvians believed that the rainbow was a sign that the earth would
not be again destroyed by a deluge. (Ibid., p. 25.)
The Jewish custom of laying the sins of the people upon the head of an
animal, and turning him out into the wilderness, had its counterpart
among the Mexicans, who, to cure a fever, formed a dog of maize paste
and left it by the roadside, saying the first passer-by would carry away
the illness. (Dorman, “Prim. Super.,” p. 59.) Jacob’s ladder had its
duplicate in the vine or tree of the Ojibbeways, which led from the
earth to heaven, up and down which the spirits passed. (Ibid., p. 67.)
Both Jews and Mexicans offered water to a stranger that he might wash
his feet; both ate dust in token of humility; both anointed with oil;
both sacrificed prisoners; both periodically separated the women, and
both agreed in the strong and universal idea of uncleanness connected
with that period.
Both believed in the occult power of water, and both practised baptism.
“Then the Mexican midwife gave the child to taste of the water, putting
her moistened fingers in its mouth, and said, ‘Take this; by this thou
hast to live on the earth, to grow and to flourish; through this we get
all things that support existence on the earth; receive it.’ Then with
moistened fingers she touched the breast of the child, and said, ‘Behold
the pure water that washes and cleanses thy heart, that removes all
filthiness; receive it: may the goddess see good to purify And cleanse
thine heart.’ Then the midwife poured water upon the head of the child,
saying, ‘O my grandson–my son–take this water of the Lord of the
world, which is thy life, invigorating and refreshing, washing and
cleansing. I pray that this celestial water, blue and light blue, may
enter into thy body, and there live; I pray that it may destroy in thee
and put away from thee all the things evil and adverse that were given
thee before the beginning of the world. . . . Wheresoever thou art in
this child, O thou hurtful thing, begone! leave it, put thyself apart;
for now does it live anew, and anew is it born; now again is it purified
and cleansed; now again is it shaped and engendered by our mother, the
goddess of water.” (Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii., p. 372.)
Here we find many resemblances to the Christian ordinance of baptism:
the pouring of the water on the head, the putting of the fingers in the
mouth, the touching of the breast, the new birth, and the washing away
of the original sin. The Christian rite, we know, was not a Christian
invention, but was borrowed from ancient times, from the great
storehouse of Asiatic traditions and beliefs.
The Mexicans hung up the heads of their sacrificed enemies; this was
also a Jewish custom:
“And the Lord said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people, and
hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of
the Lord may be turned away from Israel. And Moses said unto the judges
of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baal-peor.”
(Numb., xxv., 4, 5.)
The Scythians, Herodotus tells us, scalped their enemies, and carried
the scalp at the pommel of their saddles; the Jews probably scalped
their enemies:
“But God shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of
such a one as goeth on still in his trespasses.” (Psa., lxviii., 21.)
The ancient Scandinavians practised scalping. When Harold Harefoot
seized his rival, Alfred, with six hundred followers, he “had them
maimed, blinded, hamstrung, scalped, or embowelled.” (Taine’s “Hist.
Eng. Lit.,” p. 35.)
Herodotus describes the Scythian mode of taking the scalp: “He makes a
cut round the head near the ears, and shakes the skull out.” This is
precisely the Indian custom. “The more scalps a man has,” says
Herodotus, “the more highly he is esteemed among them.”
The Indian scalp-lock is found on the Egyptian monuments as one of the
characteristics of the Japhetic Libyans, who shaved all the head except
one lock in the middle.
The Mantchoos of Tartary wear a scalp-lock, as do the modern Chinese.
Byron describes the heads of the dead Tartars under the walls of Corinth, devoured by the wild dogs:
“Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear, And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair, All the rest was shaven and bare.”
These resemblances are so striking and so numerous that repeated
attempts have been made to prove that the inhabitants of America are the
descendants of the Jews; some have claimed that they represented “the
lost tribes” of that people. But the Jews were never a maritime or
emigrating people; they formed no colonies; and it is impossible to
believe (as has been asserted) that they left their flocks and herds,
marched across the whole face of Asia, took ships and sailed across the
greatest of the oceans to a continent of the existence of which they had
no knowledge.
If we seek the origin of these extraordinary coincidences in opinions
and habits, we must go far back of the time of the lost tribes. We must
seek it in the relationship of the Jews to the family of Noah, and in
the identity of the Noachic race destroyed in the Deluge with the people
of the drowned Atlantis.
Nor need it surprise us to find traditions perpetuated for thousands upon thousands of years, especially among a people having a religious priesthood.
The essence of religion is conservatism; little is invented; nothing
perishes; change comes from without; and even when one religion is
supplanted by another its gods live on as the demons of the new faith,
or they pass into the folk-lore and fairy stories of the people. We see
Votan, a hero in America, become the god Odin or Woden in Scandinavia;
and when his worship as a god dies out Odin survives (as Dr. Dasent has
proved) in the Wild Huntsman of the Hartz, and in the Robin Hood (Oodin)
of popular legend. The Hellequin of France becomes the Harlequin of our
pantomimes. William Tell never existed; he is a myth; a survival of the
sun-god Apollo, Indra, who was worshipped on the altars of Atlantis.
“Nothing here but it doth change into something rich and strange.”
The rite of circumcision dates back to the first days of Ph?nicia,
Egypt, and the Cushites. It, too, was probably an Atlantean custom,
invented in the Stone Age. Tens of thousands of years have passed since
the Stone Age; the ages of copper, bronze, and iron bare intervened; and
yet to this day the Hebrew rabbi performs the ceremony of circumcision
with a stone knife.