The Antediluvian World
by
Ignatius Donnelly
Part 3 out of 8
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 Phœnicians, 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 Dœsius, 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
Bœotia 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.
Phœnicia, 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 Phœnicia 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, Phœnicia, 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 Phœnicia 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, Phœnicia,
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 Phœnicians
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, Phœnicians, and Hebrews each had a powerful
hereditary priesthood.
The Phœnicians 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, 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
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 bands; 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 Phœnicians, 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 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 be 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 bead, 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
be 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 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 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 bead 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 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?
+------------------+------------------------------+
| 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
Phœnicians 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 Phœnician 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
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