ATLANTIS

THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD

by Ignatius Donnelly

[1882]

PART III

THE CIVILIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD AND NEW COMPARED

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 μέροπες ἄνθωποι, 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 atla, 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?

DirCharnay, 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 Archlogy," p. 62.)

The following cut is from the court of the Palace of Palenque, figured by Stephens. The face is strongly Ethiopian.

NEGROID FIGURE, PALENQUE.

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

NEGRO HEAD, VERA CRUZ

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 coining 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?

(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 dolichocephal 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-Atlantid 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 Phnicians in the control of the sea. The AbbBrasseur 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 Phnician 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.

ATLANTIS

THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD

by Ignatius Donnelly

[1882]

PART III

THE CIVILIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD AND NEW COMPARED

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

ANCIENT MEXICAN VASE.

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

BEARDED HEAD, FROM TEOTEHUACAN.

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 AbbBrasseur 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.)

Sam 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 "Samquot; 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

ELEPHANT-TRUNK HEAD-DRESS, PALENQUE.

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 relies. 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 archlogical 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

ATLANTIS

THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD

by Ignatius Donnelly

[1882]

PART III

THE CIVILIZATION OF THE OLD WORLD AND NEW COMPARED

CHAPTER II

THE IDENTITY OF THE CIVILIZATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW

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 Hephtion, at a cost of more than a million dollars; and Semiramis raised a similar mound over her husband.

MOSAICS AT MITLA, MEXICO.

The pyramids of Egypt, Assyria, and Phnicia had their duplicates in Mexico and Central America.

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.

CARVING ON THE BUDDHIST TOWER, SARNATH, INDIA.

(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, Phnicia, 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.

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.

ANCIENT IRISH VASE OF THE BRONZE AGE.

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,

ANCIENT VASE FROM THE MOUNDS OF THE UNITES STATES

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 Phnicians 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, Phnicians, and Hebrews each had a powerful hereditary priesthood.

The Phnicians 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 Phahon, 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, be 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 Abb 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 Zus 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. Car 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. (Bollt, 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 Phnicians,

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, be 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 Mler'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 Brn. 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 whatever 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 Pe-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 Linns 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 Mler: "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 'Mrchen' 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 "Mrchen," 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 Mler, "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:

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.

ATLANTIS

THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD

by Ignatius Donnelly

[1882]

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.

Phnicia, 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 Phnicia 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 Car 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 Car 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, Phnicia, 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.