CHOCTAW.

Neither is the common opinion correct which asserts all the American Indians to be of the same type of features. The portraits on this page and on pages 187 and 191, taken from the "Report of the U. S. Survey for a Route for a Pacific Railroad," present features very much like those of Europeans; in fact, every face here could be precisely matched among the inhabitants of the southern part of the old continent.

SHAWNEES.

On the other hand, look at the portrait of the great Italian orator and reformer, Savonarola, on page 193. It looks more like the hunting Indians of North-western America than any of the preceding faces. In fact, if it was dressed with a scalp-lock it would pass muster anywhere as a portrait of the "Man-afraid-of-his-horses," or "Sitting Bull."

SAVONAROLA.

Adam was, it appears, a red man. Winchell tells us that Adam is derived from the red earth. The radical letters ADaM are found in ADaMaH, "something out of which vegetation was made to germinate," to wit, the earth. ADoM and ADOM signifies red, ruddy, bay-colored, as of a horse, the color of a red heifer. "ADaM, a man, a human being, male or female, red, ruddy." ("Preadamites," p.161.)

"The Arabs distinguished mankind into two races, one red, ruddy, the other black." (Ibid.) They classed themselves among the red men.

Not only was Adam a red man, but there is evidence that, from the highest antiquity, red was a sacred color; the gods of the ancients were always painted red. The Wisdom of Solomon refers to this custom: "The carpenter carved it elegantly, and formed it by the skill of his understanding, and fashioned it to the shape of a man, or made it like some vile beast, laying it over with vermilion, and with paint, coloring it red, and covering every spot therein."

The idols of the Indians were also painted red, and red was the religious color. (Lynd's MS. "Hist. of Dakotas," Library, Hist. Society, Minn.)

The Cushites and Ethiopians, early branches of the Atlantean stock, took their name from their "sunburnt" complexion; they were red men.

The name of the Phoenicians signified red. Himyar, the prefix of the Himyaritic Arabians, also means red, and the Arabs were painted red on the Egyptian monuments.

The ancient Egyptians were red men. They recognized four races of men—the red, yellow, black, and white men. They themselves belonged to the "Rot," or red men; the yellow men they called "Namu"—it included the Asiatic races; the black men were called "Nahsu," and the white men "Tamhu." The following figures are copied from Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind," p. 85, and were taken by them from the great works of Belzoni, Champollion, and Lepsius.

In later ages so desirous were the Egyptians of preserving, the aristocratic distinction of the color of their skin, that they represented themselves on the monuments as of a crimson hue—an exaggeration of their original race complexion.

In the same way we find that the ancient Aryan writings divided mankind into four races—the white, red, yellow, and black: the four castes of India were founded upon these distinctions in color; in fact, the word for color in Sanscrit (varna) means caste. The red men, according to the Mahabharata, were the Kshatriyas—the warrior caste-who were afterward engaged in a fierce contest with the whites—the Brahmans—and were nearly exterminated, although some of them survived, and from their stock Buddha was born. So that not only the Mohammedan and Christian but the Buddhistic religion seem to be derived from branches of the Hamitic or red stock. The great Manu was also of the red race.

THE RACES OF MEN ACCORDING TO THE EGYPTIANS.

The Egyptians, while they painted themselves red-brown, represented the nations of Palestine as yellow-brown, and the Libyans yellow-white. The present inhabitants of Egypt range from a yellow color in the north parts to a deep bronze. Tylor is of opinion ("Anthropology," p. 95) that the ancient Egyptians belonged to a brown race, which embraced the Nubian tribes and, to some extent, the Berbers of Algiers and Tunis. He groups the Assyrians, Phoenicians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Andalusians, Bretons, dark Welshmen, and people of the Caucasus into one body, and designates them as "dark whites." The Himyarite Arabs, as I have shown, derived their name originally from their red color, and they were constantly depicted on the Egyptian monuments as red or light brown. Herodotus tells us that there was a nation of Libyans, called the Maxyans, who claimed descent from the people of Troy (the walls of Troy, we shall see, were built by Poseidon; that is to say, Troy was an Atlantean colony). These Maxyans painted their whole bodies red. The Zavecians, the ancestors of the Zuavas of Algiers (the tribe that gave their name to the French Zouaves), also painted themselves red. Some of the Ethiopians were "copper-colored." ("'Amer. Cyclop.," art. Egypt, p. 464.) Tylor says ("Anthropology," p. 160): "The language of the ancient Egyptians, though it cannot be classed in the Semitic family with Hebrew, has important points of correspondence, whether due to the long intercourse between the two races in Egypt or to some deeper ancestral connection; and such analogies also appear in the Berber languages of North Africa."

These last were called by the ancients the Atlanteans.

"If a congregation of twelve representatives from Malacca, China, Japan, Mongolia, Sandwich Islands, Chili, Peru, Brazil, Chickasaws, Comanches, etc., were dressed alike, or undressed and unshaven, the most skilful anatomist could not, from their appearance, separate them." (Fontaine's "How the World was Peopled," pp. 147, 244.)

Ferdinand Columbus, in his relation of his father's voyages, compares the inhabitants of Guanaani to the Canary Islanders (an Atlantean race), and describes the inhabitants of San Domingo as still more beautiful and fair. In Peru the Charanzanis, studied by M. Angraud, also resemble the Canary Islanders. L'Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg imagined himself surrounded by Arabs when all his Indians of Rabinal were around him; for they had, he said, their complexion, features, and beard. Pierre Martyr speaks of the Indians of the Parian Gulf as having fair hair. ("The Human Species," p. 201.) The same author believes that tribes belonging to the Semitic type are also found in America. He refers to "certain traditions of Guiana, and the use in the country of a weapon entirely characteristic of the ancient Canary Islanders."

When science is able to disabuse itself of the Mortonian theory that the aborigines of America are all red men, and all belong to one race, we may hope that the confluence upon the continent of widely different races from different countries may come to be recognized and intelligently studied. There can be no doubt that red, white, black, and yellow men have united to form the original population of America. And there can be as little doubt that the entire population of Europe and the south shore of the Mediterranean is a mongrel race—a combination, in varying proportions, of a dark-brown or red race with a white race; the characteristics of the different nations depending upon the proportions in which the dark and light races are mingled, for peculiar mental and moral characteristics go with these complexions. The red-haired people are a distinct variety of the white stock; there were once whole tribes and nations with this color of hair; their blood is now intermingled with all the races of men, from Palestine to Iceland. Everything in Europe speaks of vast periods of time and long, continued and constant interfusion of bloods, until there is not a fair-skinned man on the Continent that has not the blood of the dark-haired race in his veins; nor scarcely a dark-skinned man that is not lighter in hue from intermixture with the white stock.

CHAPTER VI.

GENESIS CONTAINS A HISTORY OF ATLANTIS

The Hebrews are a branch of the great family of which that powerful commercial race, the Phoenicians, who were the merchants of the world fifteen hundred years before the time of Christ, were a part. The Hebrews carried out from the common storehouse of their race a mass of traditions, many of which have come down-to us in that oldest and most venerable of human compositions, the Book of Genesis. I have shown that the story of the Deluge plainly refers to the destruction of Atlantis, and that it agrees in many important particulars with the account given by Plato. The people destroyed were, in both instances, the ancient race that had created civilization; they had formerly been in a happy and sinless condition; they had become great and wicked; they were destroyed for their sins—they were destroyed by water.

But we can go farther, and it can be asserted that there is scarcely a prominent fact in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis that cannot be duplicated from the legends of the American nations, and scarcely a custom known to the Jews that does not find its counterpart among the people of the New World.

Even in the history of the Creation we find these similarities:

The Bible tells us (Gen. i., 2) that in the beginning the earth was without form and void, and covered with water. In the Quiche legends we are told, "at first all was sea—no man, animal, bird, or green herb—there was nothing to be seen but the sea and the heavens."

The Bible says (Gen. i., 2), "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The Quiche legend says, "The Creator—the Former, the Dominator—the feathered serpent—those that give life, moved upon the waters like a glowing light."

The Bible says (Gen. i., 9), "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so." The Quiche legend says, "The creative spirits cried out 'Earth!' and in an instant it was formed, and rose like a vapor-cloud; immediately the plains and the mountains arose, and the cypress and pine appeared."

The Bible tells us, "And God saw that it was good." The Quiche legend says, "Then Gucumatz was filled with joy, and cried out, 'Blessed be thy coming, O Heart of Heaven, Hurakan, thunder-bolt.'"

The order in which the vegetables, animals, and man were formed is the same in both records.

In Genesis (chap. ii., 7) we are told, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground." The Quiche legend says. "The first man was made of clay; but he had no intelligence, and was consumed in the water."

In Genesis the first man is represented as naked. The Aztec legend says, "The sun was much nearer the earth then than now, and his grateful warmth rendered clothing unnecessary."

Even the temptation of Eve reappears in the American legends. Lord Kingsborough says: "The Toltecs had paintings of a garden, with a single tree standing in the midst; round the root of the tree is entwined a serpent, whose head appearing above the foliage displays the face of a woman. Torquemada admits the existence of this tradition among them, and agrees with the Indian historians, who affirm that this was the first woman in the world, who bore children, and from whom all mankind are descended." ("Mexican Antiquities," vol. viii., p. 19.) There is also a legend of Suchiquecal, who disobediently gathered roses from a tree, and thereby disgraced and injured herself and all her posterity. ("Mexican Antiquities," vol. vi., p. 401.)

The legends of the Old World which underlie Genesis, and were used by Milton in the "Paradise Lost," appear in the Mexican legends of a war of angels in heaven, and the fall of Zou-tem-que (Soutem, Satan—Arabic, Shatana?) and the other rebellious spirits.

We have seen that the Central Americans possessed striking parallels to the account of the Deluge in Genesis.

There is also a clearly established legend which singularly resembles the Bible record of the Tower of Babel.

Father Duran, in his MS. "Historia Antiqua de la Nueva Espana," A.D. 1585, quotes from the lips of a native of Cholula, over one hundred years old, a version of the legend as to the building of the great pyramid of Cholula. It is as follows:

"In the beginning, before the light of the sun had been created, this land (Cholula) was in obscurity and darkness, and void of any created thing; all was a plain, without hill or elevation, encircled in every part by water, without tree or created thing; and immediately after the light and the sun arose in the east there appeared gigantic men of deformed stature and possessed the land, and desiring to see the nativity of the sun, as well as his occident, proposed to go and seek them. Dividing themselves into two parties, some journeyed to the west and others toward the east; these travelled; until the sea cut off their road, whereupon they determined to return to the place from which they started, and arriving at this place (Cholula), not finding the means of reaching the sun, enamored of his light and beauty, they determined to build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky. Having collected materials for the purpose, they found a very adhesive clay and bitumen, with which they speedily commenced to build the tower; and having reared it to the greatest possible altitude, so that they say it reached to the sky, the Lord of the Heavens, enraged, said to the inhabitants of the sky, 'Have you observed how they of the earth have built a high and haughty tower to mount hither, being enamored of the light of the sun and his beauty? Come and confound them, because it is not right that they of the earth, living in the flesh, should mingle with us.' Immediately the inhabitants of the sky sallied forth like flashes of lightning; they destroyed the edifice, and divided and scattered its builders to all parts of the earth."

RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF CHOLULA.

One can recognize in this legend the recollection, by a ruder race, of a highly civilized people; for only a highly civilized people would have attempted such a vast work. Their mental superiority and command of the arts gave them the character of giants who arrived from the East; who had divided into two great emigrations, one moving eastward (toward Europe), the other westward (toward America). They were sun-worshippers; for we are told "they were enamored of the light and beauty of the sun," and they built a high place for his worship.

The pyramid of Cholula is one of the greatest constructions ever erected by human hands. It is even now, in its ruined condition, 160 feet high, 1400 feet square at the base, and covers forty-five acres; we have only to remember that the greatest pyramid of Egypt, Cheops, covers but twelve or thirteen acres, to form some conception of the magnitude of this American structure.

It must not be forgotten that this legend was taken down by a Catholic priest, shortly after the conquest of Mexico, from the lips of an old Indian who was born before Columbus sailed from Spain.

Observe the resemblances between this legend and the Bible account of the building of the Tower of Babel:

"All was a plain without hill or elevation," says the Indian legend. "They found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there," says the Bible. They built of brick in both cases. "Let us build us a tower whose top may reach unto heaven," says the Bible. "They determined to build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky," says the Indian legend. "And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men had builded. And the Lord said, Behold . . . nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down and confound them," says the Bible record. "The Lord of the Heavens, enraged, said to the inhabitants of the sky, 'Have you observed,' etc. Come and confound them," says the Indian record. "And the Lord scattered them abroad from thence on all the face of the earth," says the Bible. "They scattered its builders to all parts of the earth," says the Mexican legend.

Can any one doubt that these two legends must have sprung in some way from one another, or from some common source? There are enough points of difference to show that the American is not a servile copy of the Hebrew legend. In the former the story comes from a native of Cholula: it is told under the shadow of the mighty pyramid it commemorates; it is a local legend which he repeats. The men who built it, according to his account, were foreigners. They built it to reach the sun—that is to say, as a sun-temple; while in the Bible record Babel was built to perpetuate the glory of its architects. In the Indian legend the gods stop the work by a great storm, in the Bible account by confounding the speech of the people.

Both legends were probably derived from Atlantis, and referred to some gigantic structure of great height built by that people; and when the story emigrated to the east and west, it was in the one case affixed to the tower of the Chaldeans, and in the other to the pyramid of Cholula, precisely as we find the ark of the Deluge resting upon separate mountain-chains all the way from Greece to Armenia. In one form of the Tower of Babel legend, that of the Toltecs, we are told that the pyramid of Cholula was erected "as a means of escape from a second flood, should another occur."

But the resemblances between Genesis and the American legends do not stop here.

We are told (Gen. ii., 21) that "the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam," and while he slept God made Eve out of one of his ribs. According to the Quiche tradition, there were four men from whom the races of the world descended (probably a recollection of the red, black, yellow, and white races); and these men were without wives, and the Creator made wives for them "while they slept."

Some wicked misanthrope referred to these traditions when he said, "And man's first sleep became his last repose."

In Genesis (chap. iii., 22), "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever:" therefore God drove him out of the garden. In the Quiche legends we are told, "The gods feared that they had made men too perfect, and they breathed a cloud of mist over their vision."

When the ancestors of the Quiches migrated to America the Divinity parted the sea for their passage, as the Red Sea was parted for the Israelites.

The story of Samson is paralleled in the history of a hero named Zipanca, told of in the "Popol Vuh," who, being captured by his enemies and placed in a pit, pulled down the building in which his captors had assembled, and killed four hundred of them.

"There were giants in those days," says the Bible. A great deal of the Central American history is taken up with the doings of an ancient race of giants called Quinames.

This parallelism runs through a hundred particulars:

Both the Jews and Mexicans worshipped toward the east.

Both called the south "the right hand of the world."

Both burnt incense toward the four corners of the earth.

Confession of sin and sacrifice of atonement were common to both peoples.

Both were punctilious about washings and ablutions.

Both believed in devils, and both were afflicted with leprosy.

Both considered women who died in childbirth as worthy of honor as soldiers who fell in battle.

Both punished adultery with stoning to death.

As David leaped and danced before the ark of the Lord, so did the Mexican monarchs before their idols.

Both had an ark, the abiding-place of an invisible god.

Both had a species of serpent-worship.

GREAT SERPENT MOUND, OHIO.

Compare our representation of the great serpent-mound in Adams County, Ohio, with the following description of a great serpent-mound in Scotland:

"Serpent-worship in the West.—Some additional light appears to have been thrown upon ancient serpent-worship in the West by the recent archaeological explorations of Mr. John S. Phene, F.G.S., F.R.G.S., in Scotland. Mr. Phene has just investigated a curious earthen mound in Glen Feechan, Argyleshire, referred to by him, at the late meeting of the British Association in Edinburgh, as being in the form of a serpent or saurian. The mound, says the Scotsman, is a most perfect one. The head is a large cairn, and the body of the earthen reptile 300 feet long; and in the centre of the head there were evidences, when Mr. Phene first visited it, of an altar having been placed there. The position with regard to Ben Cruachan is most remarkable. The three peaks are seen over the length of the reptile when a person is standing on the head, or cairn. The shape can only be seen so as to be understood when looked down upon from an elevation, as the outline cannot be understood unless the whole of it can be seen. This is most perfect when the spectator is on the head of the animal form, or on the lofty rock to the west of it. This mound corresponds almost entirely with one 700 feet long in America, an account of which was lately published, after careful survey, by Mr. Squier. The altar toward the head in each case agrees. In the American mound three rivers (also objects of worship with the ancients) were evidently identified. The number three was a sacred number in all ancient mythologies. The sinuous winding and articulations of the vertebral spinal arrangement are anatomically perfect in the Argyleshire mound. The gentlemen present with Mr. Phene during his investigation state that beneath the cairn forming the head of the animal was found a megalithic chamber, in which was a quantity of charcoal and burnt earth and charred nutshells, a flint instrument, beautifully and minutely serrated at the edge, and burnt bones. The back or spine of the serpent, which, as already stated, is 300 feet long, was found, beneath the peat moss, to be formed by a careful adjustment of stones, the formation of which probably prevented the structure from being obliterated by time and weather." (Pall Mall Gazette.)

STONE IMPLEMENTS OF EUROPE AND AMERICA

We find a striking likeness between the works of the Stone Age in America and Europe, as shown in the figures here given.

The same singular custom which is found among the Jews and the Hindoos, for "a man to raise up seed for his deceased brother by marrying his widow," was found among the Central American nations. (Las Casas, MS. "Hist. Apoloq.," cap. ccxiii., ccxv. Torquemada, "Monarq. Ind.," tom. ii., 377-8.)

No one but the Jewish high-priest might enter the Holy of Holies. A similar custom obtained in Peru. Both ate the flesh of the sacrifices of atonement; both poured the blood of the sacrifice on the earth; they sprinkled it, they marked persons with it, they smeared it upon walls and stones. The Mexican temple, like the Jewish, faced the east. "As among the Jews the ark was a sort of portable temple, in which the Deity was supposed to be continually present, so among the Mexicans, the Cherokees, and the Indians of Michoacan and Honduras, an ark was held in the highest veneration, and was considered an object too sacred to be touched by any but the priests." (Kingsborough, "Mex. Antiq., "vol. viii., p.258.)

The Peruvians believed that the rainbow was a sign that the earth would not be again destroyed by a deluge. (Ibid., p. 25.)

The Jewish custom of laying the sins of the people upon the head of an animal, and turning him out into the wilderness, had its counterpart among the Mexicans, who, to cure a fever, formed a dog of maize paste and left it by the roadside, saying the first passer-by would carry away the illness. (Dorman, "Prim. Super.," p. 59.) Jacob's ladder had its duplicate in the vine or tree of the Ojibbeways, which led from the earth to heaven, up and down which the spirits passed. (Ibid., p. 67.)

Both Jews and Mexicans offered water to a stranger that he might wash his feet; both ate dust in token of humility; both anointed with oil; both sacrificed prisoners; both periodically separated the women, and both agreed in the strong and universal idea of uncleanness connected with that period.

Both believed in the occult power of water, and both practised baptism.

"Then the Mexican midwife gave the child to taste of the water, putting her moistened fingers in its mouth, and said, 'Take this; by this thou hast to live on the earth, to grow and to flourish; through this we get all things that support existence on the earth; receive it.' Then with moistened fingers she touched the breast of the child, and said, 'Behold the pure water that washes and cleanses thy heart, that removes all filthiness; receive it: may the goddess see good to purify And cleanse thine heart.' Then the midwife poured water upon the head of the child, saying, 'O my grandson—my son—take this water of the Lord of the world, which is thy life, invigorating and refreshing, washing and cleansing. I pray that this celestial water, blue and light blue, may enter into thy body, and there live; I pray that it may destroy in thee and put away from thee all the things evil and adverse that were given thee before the beginning of the world. . . . Wheresoever thou art in this child, O thou hurtful thing, begone! leave it, put thyself apart; for now does it live anew, and anew is it born; now again is it purified and cleansed; now again is it shaped and engendered by our mother, the goddess of water." (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii., p. 372.)

Here we find many resemblances to the Christian ordinance of baptism: the pouring of the water on the head, the putting of the fingers in the mouth, the touching of the breast, the new birth, and the washing away of the original sin. The Christian rite, we know, was not a Christian invention, but was borrowed from ancient times, from the great storehouse of Asiatic traditions and beliefs.

The Mexicans hung up the heads of their sacrificed enemies; this was also a Jewish custom:

"And the Lord said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel. And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baal-peor." (Numb., xxv., 4, 5.)

The Scythians, Herodotus tells us, scalped their enemies, and carried the scalp at the pommel of their saddles; the Jews probably scalped their enemies:

"But God shall wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his trespasses." (Psa., lxviii., 21.)

The ancient Scandinavians practised scalping. When Harold Harefoot seized his rival, Alfred, with six hundred followers, he "had them maimed, blinded, hamstrung, scalped, or embowelled." (Taine's "Hist. Eng. Lit.," p. 35.)

Herodotus describes the Scythian mode of taking the scalp: "He makes a cut round the head near the ears, and shakes the skull out." This is precisely the Indian custom. "The more scalps a man has," says Herodotus, "the more highly he is esteemed among them."

The Indian scalp-lock is found on the Egyptian monuments as one of the characteristics of the Japhetic Libyans, who shaved all the head except one lock in the middle.

The Mantchoos of Tartary wear a scalp-lock, as do the modern Chinese.

Byron describes the heads of the dead Tartars under the walls of Corinth, devoured by the wild dogs:

"Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear, And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair, All the rest was shaven and bare."

These resemblances are so striking and so numerous that repeated attempts have been made to prove that the inhabitants of America are the descendants of the Jews; some have claimed that they represented "the lost tribes" of that people. But the Jews were never a maritime or emigrating people; they formed no colonies; and it is impossible to believe (as has been asserted) that they left their flocks and herds, marched across the whole face of Asia, took ships and sailed across the greatest of the oceans to a continent of the existence of which they had no knowledge.

If we seek the origin of these extraordinary coincidences in opinions and habits, we must go far back of the time of the lost tribes. We must seek it in the relationship of the Jews to the family of Noah, and in the identity of the Noachic race destroyed in the Deluge with the people of the drowned Atlantis.

Nor need it surprise us to find traditions perpetuated for thousands upon thousands of years, especially among a people having a religious priesthood.

The essence of religion is conservatism; little is invented; nothing perishes; change comes from without; and even when one religion is supplanted by another its gods live on as the demons of the new faith, or they pass into the folk-lore and fairy stories of the people. We see Votan, a hero in America, become the god Odin or Woden in Scandinavia; and when his worship as a god dies out Odin survives (as Dr. Dasent has proved) in the Wild Huntsman of the Hartz, and in the Robin Hood (Oodin) of popular legend. The Hellequin of France becomes the Harlequin of our pantomimes. William Tell never existed; he is a myth; a survival of the sun-god Apollo, Indra, who was worshipped on the altars of Atlantis.

"Nothing here but it doth change into something rich and strange."

The rite of circumcision dates back to the first days of Phoenicia, Egypt, and the Cushites. It, too, was probably an Atlantean custom, invented in the Stone Age. Tens of thousands of years have passed since the Stone Age; the ages of copper, bronze, and iron bare intervened; and yet to this day the Hebrew rabbi performs the ceremony of circumcision with a stone knife.

Frothingham says, speaking of St. Peter's Cathedral, in Rome:

"Into what depths of antiquity the ceremonies carried me back! To the mysteries of Eleusis; to the sacrificial rites of Phoenicia. The boys swung the censors as censors had been swung in the adoration of Bacchus. The girdle and cassock of the priests came from Persia; the veil and tonsure were from Egypt; the alb and chasuble were prescribed by Numa Pompilius; the stole was borrowed from the official who used to throw it on the back of the victim that was to be sacrificed; the white surplice was the same as described by Juvenal and Ovid."

Although it is evident that many thousands of years must have passed since the men who wrote in Sanscrit, in Northwestern India, could have dwelt in Europe, yet to this day they preserve among their ancient books maps and descriptions of the western coast of Europe, and even of England and Ireland; and we find among them a fuller knowledge of the vexed question of the sources of the Nile than was possessed by any nation in the world twenty-five years ago.

This perpetuation of forms and beliefs is illustrated in the fact that the formulas used in the Middle Ages in Europe to exorcise evil spirits were Assyrian words, imported probably thousands of years before from the magicians of Chaldea. When the European conjurer cried out to the demon, "Hilka, hilka, besha, besha," he had no idea that he was repeating the very words of a people who had perished ages before, and that they signified Go away, go away, evil one, evil one. (Lenormant, "Anc. Hist. East," vol. i., p. 448.)

Our circle of 360 degrees; the division of a chord of the circle equal to the radius into 60 equal parts, called degrees: the division of these into 60 minutes, of the minute into 60 seconds, and the second into 60 thirds; the division of the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, each minute into 60 seconds; the division of the week into seven days, and the very order of the days—all have come down to us from the Chaldeo-Assyrians; and these things will probably be perpetuated among our posterity "to the last syllable of recorded time."

We need not be surprised, therefore, to find the same legends and beliefs cropping out among the nations of Central America and the people of Israel. Nay, it should teach us to regard the Book of Genesis with increased veneration, as a relic dating from the most ancient days of man's history on earth; its roots cross the great ocean; every line is valuable; a word, a letter, an accent may throw light upon the gravest problems of the birth of civilization.

The vital conviction which, during thousands of years, at all times pressed home upon the Israelites, was that they were a "chosen people," selected out of all the multitude of the earth, to perpetuate the great truth that there was but one God—an illimitable, omnipotent, paternal spirit, who rewarded the good and punished the wicked—in contradistinction from the multifarious, subordinate, animal and bestial demi-gods of the other nations of the earth. This sublime monotheism could only have been the outgrowth of a high civilization, for man's first religion is necessarily a worship of "stocks and stones," and history teaches us that the gods decrease in number as man increases in intelligence. It was probably in Atlantis that monotheism was first preached. The proverbs of "Ptah-hotep," the oldest book of the Egyptians, show that this most ancient colony from Atlantis received the pure faith from the mother-land at the very dawn of history: this book preached the doctrine of one God, "the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked." (Reginald S. Poole, Contemporary Rev., Aug., 1881, p. 38.) "In the early days the Egyptians worshipped one only God, the maker of all things, without beginning and without end. To the last the priests preserved this doctrine and taught it privately to a select few." ("Amer. Encycl.," vol. vi., p. 463.) The Jews took up this great truth where the Egyptians dropped it, and over the beads and over the ruins of Egypt, Chaldea, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, and India this handful of poor shepherds—ignorant, debased, and despised—have carried down to our own times a conception which could only have originated in the highest possible state of human society.

And even skepticism must pause before the miracle of the continued existence of this strange people, wading through the ages, bearing on their shoulders the burden of their great trust, and pressing forward under the force of a perpetual and irresistible impulse. The speech that may be heard to-day in the synagogues of Chicago and Melbourne resounded two thousand years ago in the streets of Rome; and, at a still earlier period, it could be heard in the palaces of Babylon and the shops of Thebes—in Tyre, in Sidon, in Gades, in Palmyra, in Nineveh. How many nations have perished, how many languages have ceased to exist, how many splendid civilizations have crumbled into ruin, bow many temples and towers and towns have gone down to dust since the sublime frenzy of monotheism first seized this extraordinary people! All their kindred nomadic tribes are gone; their land of promise is in the hands of strangers; but Judaism, with its offspring, Christianity, is taking possession of the habitable world; and the continuous life of one people—one poor, obscure, and wretched people—spans the tremendous gulf between "Ptah-hotep" and this nineteenth century.

If the Spirit of which the universe is but an expression—of whose frame the stars are the infinite molecules—can be supposed ever to interfere with the laws of matter and reach down into the doings of men, would it not be to save from the wreck and waste of time the most sublime fruit of the civilization of the drowned Atlantis—a belief in the one, only, just God, the father of all life, the imposer of all moral obligations?

CHAPTER VII.

THE ORIGIN OF OUR ALPHABET

One of the most marvellous inventions for the advancement of mankind is the phonetic alphabet, or a system of signs representing the sounds of human speech. Without it our present civilization could scarcely have been possible.

No solution of the origin of our European alphabet has yet been obtained: we can trace it back from nation to nation, and form to form, until we reach the Egyptians, and the archaic forms of the Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Cushites, but beyond this the light fails us.

The Egyptians spoke of their hieroglyphic system of writing not as their own invention, but as "the language of the gods." (Lenormant and Cheval, "Anc. Hist. of the East," vol. ii., p. 208.) "The gods" were, doubtless, their highly civilized ancestors—the people of Atlantis—who, as we shall hereafter see, became the gods of many of the Mediterranean races.

"According to the Phoenicians, the art of writing was invented by Taautus, or Taut, 'whom the Egyptians call Thouth,' and the Egyptians said it was invented by Thouth, or Thoth, otherwise called 'the first Hermes,' in which we clearly see that both the Phoenicians and Egyptians referred the invention to a period older than their own separate political existence, and to an older nation, from which both peoples received it." (Baldwin's "Prehistoric Nations," p. 91.)

The "first Hermes," here referred to (afterward called Mercury by the Romans), was a son of Zeus and Maia, a daughter of Atlas. This is the same Maia whom the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg identifies with the Maya of Central America.

Sir William Drummond, in his "Origines," said:

"There seems to be no way of accounting either for the early use of letters among so many different nations, or for the resemblance which existed between some of the graphic systems employed by those nations, than by supposing hieroglyphical writing, if I may be allowed the term, to have been in use among the Tsabaists in the first ages after the Flood, when Tsabaisin (planet-worship) was the religion of almost every country that was yet inhabited."

Sir Henry Rawlinson says:

"So great is the analogy between the first principles of the Science of writing, as it appears to have been pursued in Chaldea, and as we can actually trace its progress in Egypt, that we can hardly hesitate to assign the original invention to a period before the Hamitic race had broken up and divided."

It is not to be believed that such an extraordinary system of sound-signs could have been the invention of any one man or even of any one age. Like all our other acquisitions, it must have been the slow growth and accretion of ages; it must have risen step by step from picture-writing through an intermediate condition like that of the Chinese, where each word or thing was represented by a separate sign. The fact that so old and enlightened a people as the Chinese have never reached a phonetic alphabet, gives us some indication of the greatness of the people among whom it was invented, and the lapse of time before they attained to it.

Humboldt says:

"According to the views which, since Champollion's great discovery, have been gradually adopted regarding the earlier condition of the development of alphabetical writing, the Phoenician as well as the Semitic characters are to be regarded as a phonetic alphabet that has originated from pictorial writing; as one in which the ideal signification of the symbols is wholly disregarded, and the characters are regarded as mere signs for sounds." ("Cosmos," vol. ii., p. 129.)

Baldwin says (" Prehistoric Nations," p. 93):

"The nation that became mistress of the seas, established communication with every shore, and monopolized the commerce of the known world, must have substituted a phonetic alphabet for the hieroglyphics as it gradually grew to this eminence; while isolated Egypt, less affected by the practical wants and tendencies of commercial enterprise, retained the hieroglyphic system, and carried it to a marvellous height of perfection."

It must be remembered that some of the letters of our alphabet are inventions of the later nations. In the oldest alphabets there was no c, the g taking its place. The Romans converted the g into c; and then, finding the necessity for a g Sign, made one by adding a tail-piece to the c (C, G). The Greeks added to the ancient alphabet the upsilon, shaped like our V or Y, the two forms being used at first indifferently: they added the X sign; they converted the t of the Phoenicians into th, or theta; z and s into signs for double consonants; they turned the Phoenician y (yod) into i (iota). The Greeks converted the Phoenician alphabet, which was partly consonantal, into one purely phonetic—"a perfect instrument for the expression of spoken language." The w was also added to the Phoenician alphabet. The Romans added the y. At first i and j were both indicated by the same sound; a sign for j was afterward added. We have also, in common with other European languages, added a double U, that is, VV, or W, to represent the w sound.

The letters, then, which we owe to the Phoenicians, are A, B, C, D, E, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, Z. If we are to trace out resemblances with the alphabet of any other country, it must be with these signs.

Is there any other country to which we can turn which possessed a phonetic alphabet in any respect kindred to this Phoenician alphabet? It cannot be the Chinese alphabet, which has more signs than words; it cannot be the cuneiform alphabet of Assyria, with its seven hundred arrow-shaped characters, none of which bear the slightest affinity to the Phoenician letters.

It is a surprising fact that we find in Central America a phonetic alphabet. This is in the alphabet of the Mayas, the ancient people of the peninsula of Yucatan, who claim that their civilization came to them across the sea in ships from the east, that is, from the direction of Atlantis. The Mayas succeeded to the Colhuas, whose era terminated one thousand years before the time of Christ; from them they received their alphabet. It has come to us through Bishop Landa, one of the early missionary bishops, who confesses to having burnt a great number of Maya books because they contained nothing but the works of the devil. He fortunately, however, preserved for posterity the alphabet of this people. We present it herewith.

#

LANDA'S ALPHABET (From "North Amer. of Antiquity," p. 434.)

Diego de Landa was the first bishop of Yucatan. He wrote a history of the Mayas and their country, which was preserved in manuscript at Madrid in the library of the Royal Academy of History. . . . It contains a description and explanation of the phonetic alphabet of the Mayas. Landa's manuscript seems to have lain neglected in the library, for little or nothing was heard of it until it was discovered by the French priest Brasseur de Bourbourg, who, by means of it, has deciphered some of the old American writings. He says, 'the alphabet and signs explained by Landa have been to me a Rosetta stone.'" (Baldwin's "Ancient America," p. 191.)

When we observe, in the table of alphabets of different European nations which I give herewith, how greatly the forms of the Phoenician letters have been modified, it would surprise us to find any resemblance between the Maya alphabet of two or three centuries since and the ancient European forms. It must, however, be remembered that the Mayas are one of the most conservative peoples in the world. They still adhere with striking pertinacity to the language they spoke when Columbus landed on San Salvador; and it is believed that that language is the same as the one inscribed on the most ancient monuments of their country. Senor Pimental says of them, "The Indians have preserved this idiom with such tenacity that they will speak no other; it is necessary for the whites to address them in their own language to communicate with them." It is therefore probable, as their alphabet did not pass from nation to nation, as did the Phoenician, that it has not departed so widely from the original forms received from the Colhuas.

#

The Alphabet

But when we consider the vast extent of time which has elapsed, and the fact that we are probably without the intermediate stages of the alphabet which preceded the archaic Phoenician, it will be astonishing if we find resemblances between any of the Maya letters and the European forms, even though we concede that they are related. If we find decided affinities between two or three letters, we may reasonably presume that similar coincidences existed as to many others which have disappeared under the attrition of centuries.

The first thought that occurs to us on examining the Landa alphabet is the complex and ornate character of the letters. Instead of the two or three strokes with which we indicate a sign for a sound, we have here rude pictures of objects. And we find that these are themselves simplifications of older forms of a still more complex character. Take, for instance, the letter pp in Landa's alphabet, # : here are evidently the traces of a face. The same appear, but not so plainly, in the sign for x, which is # . Now, if we turn to the ancient hieroglyphics upon the monuments of Central America, we will find the human face appearing in a great many of them, as in the following, which we copy from the Tablet of the Cross at Palenque. We take the hieroglyphs from the left-hand side of the inscription. Here it will be seen that, out of seven hieroglyphical figures, six contain human faces. And we find that in the whole inscription of the Tablet of the Cross there are 33 figures out of 108 that are made up in part of the human countenance.

#

We can see, therefore, in the Landa alphabet a tendency to simplification. And this is what we would naturally expect. When the emblems—which were probably first intended for religious inscriptions, where they could be slowly and carefully elaborated—were placed in the hands of a busy, active, commercial people, such as were the Atlanteans, and afterward the Phoenicians, men with whom time was valuable, the natural tendency would be to simplify and condense them; and when the original meaning of the picture was lost, they would naturally slur it, as we find in the letters pp and x of the Maya alphabet, where the figure of the human face remains only in rude lines.

The same tendency is plainly shown in the two forms of the letter h, as given in Landa's alphabet; the original form is more elaborate than the variation of it. The original form is # The variation is given as # . Now let us suppose this simplification to be carried a step farther: we have seen the upper and lower parts of the first form shrink into a smaller and less elaborate shape; let us imagine that the same tendency does away with them altogether; we would then have the letter H of the Maya alphabet represented by this figure, # ; now, as it takes less time to make a single stroke than a double one, this would become in time # . We turn now to the archaic Greek and the old Hebrew, and we find the letter h indicated by this sign, # , precisely the Maya letter h simplified. We turn to the archaic Hebrew, and we find # . Now it is known that the Phoenicians wrote from right to left, and just as we in writing from left to right slope our letters to the right, so did the Phoenicians slope their letters to the left. Hence the Maya sign becomes in the archaic Phoenician this, # . In some of the Phoenician alphabets we even find the letter h made with the double strokes above and below, as in the Maya h. The Egyptian hieroglyph for h is # while ch is # . In time the Greeks carried the work of simplification still farther, and eliminated the top lines, as we have supposed the Atlanteans to have eliminated the double strokes, and they left the letter as it has come down to us, H.

Now it may be said that all this is coincidence. If it is, it is certainly remarkable. But let us go a step farther:

We have seen in Landa's alphabet that there are two forms of the letter m. The first is # . But we find also an m combined with the letter o, a, or e, says Landa, in this form, # . The m here is certainly indicated by the central part of this combination, the figure # ; where does that come from? It is clearly taken from the heart of the original figure wherein it appears. What does this prove? That the Atlanteans, or Mayas, when they sought to simplify their letters and combine them with others, took from the centre of the ornate hieroglyphical figure some characteristic mark with which they represented the whole figure. Now let us apply this rule:

We have seen in the table of alphabets that in every language, from our own day to the time of the Phoenicians, o has been represented by a circle or a circle within a circle. Now where did the Phoenicians get it? Clearly from the Mayas. There are two figures for o in the Maya alphabet; they are # and # ; now, if we apply the rule which we have seen to exist in the case of the Maya m to these figures, the essential characteristic found in each is the circle, in the first case pendant from the hieroglyph; in the other, in the centre of the lower part of it. And that this circle was withdrawn from the hieroglyph, and used alone, as in the case of the m, is proved by the very sign used at the foot of Landa's alphabet, which is, # Landa calls this ma, me, or mo; it is probably the latter, and in it we have the circle detached from the hieroglyph.

We find the precise Maya o a circle in a circle, or a dot within a circle, repeated in the Phoenician forms for o, thus, # and # , and by exactly the same forms in the Egyptian hieroglyphics; in the Runic we have the circle in the circle; in one form of the Greek o the dot was placed along-side of the circle instead of below it, as in the Maya.

Are these another set of coincidences?

Take another letter:

The letter n of the Maya alphabet is represented by this sign, itself probably a simplification of some more ornate form, # . This is something like our letter S, but quite unlike our N. But let us examine into the pedigree of our n. We find in the archaic Ethiopian, a language as old as the Egyptian, and which represents the Cushite branch of the Atlantean stock, the sign for n (na) is # ; in archaic Phoenician it comes still closer to the S shape, thus, # , or in this form, # ; we have but to curve these angles to approximate it very closely to the Maya n; in Troy this form was found, # . The Samaritan makes it # ; the old Hebrew # ; the Moab stone inscription gives it # ; the later Phoenicians simplified the archaic form still further, until it became # ; then it passed into # : the archaic Greek form is # ; the later Greeks made # , from which it passed into the present form, N. All these forms seem to be representations of a serpent; we turn to the valley of the Nile, and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for n was the serpent, # ; the Pelasgian n was # ; the Arcadian, # ; the Etruscan, # .

Can anything be more significant than to find the serpent the sign for n in Central America, and in all these Old World languages?

Now turn to the letter k. The Maya sign for k is # . This does not look much like our letter K; but let us examine it. Following the precedent established for us by the Mayas in the case of the letter m, let us see what is the distinguishing feature here; it is clearly the figure of a serpent standing erect, with its tail doubled around its middle, forming a circle. It has already been remarked by Savolini that this erect serpent is very much like the Egyptian Uraeus, an erect serpent with an enlarged body—a sacred emblem found in the hair of their deities. We turn again to the valley of the Nile, and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for k was a serpent with a convolution or protuberance in the middle, precisely as in the Maya, thus, # ; this was transformed into the Egyptian letter # ; the serpent and the protuberance reappear in one of the Phoenician forms of k, to wit, # ; while in the Punic we have these forms, # and # . Now suppose a busy people trying to give this sign: instead of drawing the serpent in all its details they would abbreviate it into something like this, # ; now we turn to the ancient Ethiopian sign for k (ka), and we have # , or the Himyaritic Arabian # ; while in the Phoenician it becomes # ; in the archaic Greek, # ; and in the later Greek, when they changed the writing from left to right, # . So that the two lines projecting from the upright stroke of our English K are a reminiscence of the convolution of the serpent in the Maya original and the Egyptian copy.

Turn now to the Maya sign for t: it is # , . What is the distinctive mark about this figure? It is the cross composed of two curved lines, thus, # . It is probable that in the Maya sign the cross is united at the bottom, like a figure 8. Here again we turn to the valley of the Nile, and we find that the Egyptian hieroglyph for t is # and # ; and in the Syriac t it is # . We even find the curved lines of the Maya t which give it something of the appearance of the numeral 8, repeated accurately in the Mediterranean alphabets; thus the Punic t repeats the Maya form almost exactly as # and # . Now suppose a busy people compelled to make this mark every day for a thousand years, and generally in a hurry, and the cross would soon be made without curving the lines; it would become X. But before it reached even that simplified form it had crossed the Atlantic, and appeared in the archaic Ethiopian sign for tsa, thus, # . In the archaic Phoenician the sign for # is # and # ; the oldest Greek form is # or # and the later Greeks gave it to the Romans # , and modified this into # ; the old Hebrew gave it as # and # ; the Moab stone as # ; this became in time # and # .

Take the letter a. In the Maya there are three forms given for this letter. The first is # ; the third is # . The first looks very much like the foot of a lion or tiger; the third is plainly a foot or boot. If one were required to give hurriedly a rude outline of either of these, would he not represent it thus, # ; and can we not conceive that this could have been in time modified into the Phoenician a, which was # ? The hieratic Egyptian a was # ; the ancient Hebrew, which was # or # ; the ancient Greek was the foot reversed, # ; the later Greek became our A.

Turn next to the Maya sign for q (ku): it is # . Now what is the peculiarity of this hieroglyph? The circle below is not significant, for there are many circular figures in the Maya alphabet. Clearly, if one was called upon to simplify this, he would retain the two small circles joined side by side at the top, and would indicate the lower circle with a line or dash. And when we turn to the Egyptian q we find it in this shape, # ; we turn to the Ethiopian q (khua), and we find it # , as qua, # ; while the Phoenician comes still nearer the supposed Maya form in # ; the Moab stone was # ; the Himyaritic Arabian form became # ; the Greek form was # , which graduated into the Roman Q. But a still more striking proof of the descent of the Phoenician alphabet from the Maya is found in the other form of the q, the Maya cu, which is # . Now, if we apply the Maya rule to this, and discard the outside circle, we have this left, # . In time the curved line would be made straight, and the figure would assume this form, # ; the next step would be to make the cross on the straight line, thus, # . One of the ancient Phoenician forms is # . Can all this be accident?

The letter c or g (for the two probably gave the same sound as in the Phoenician) is given in the Maya alphabet as follows, # . This would in time be simplified into a figure representing the two sides of a triangle with the apex upward, thus, # . This is precisely the form found by Dr. Schliemann in the ruins of Troy, # . What is the Phoenician form for g as found on the Moab stone? It is # . The Carthaginian Phoenicians gave it more of a rounded form, thus, # . The hieratic Egyptian figure for g was # ; in the earlier Greek form the left limb of the figure was shortened, thus, # ; the later Greeks reversed it, and wrote it # ; the Romans, changed this into # and it finally became C.

In the Maya we have one sign for p, and another for pp. The first contains a curious figure, precisely like our r laid on its back # . There is, apparently, no r in the Maya alphabet; and the Roman r grew out of the later Phoenician r formed thus, # ; it would appear that the earliest Phoenician alphabet did not contain the letter r. But if we now turn to the Phoenician alphabet, we will find one of the curious forms of the p given thus, # , a very fair representation of an r lying upon its face. Is it not another remarkable coincidence that the p, in both Maya and Phoenician, should contain this singular sign?

The form of pp in the Maya alphabet is this, # . If we are asked, on the principle already indicated, to reduce this to its elements, we would use a figure like this, # ; in time the tendency would be to shorten one of these perpendicular lines, thus, and this we find is very much like the Phoenician p, # . The Greek ph is # .

The letter l in the Maya is in two forms; one of these is # , the other is # . Now, if we again apply the rule which we observed to hold good with the letter m—that is, draw from the inside of the hieroglyph some symbol that will briefly indicate the whole letter—we will have one of two forms, either a right-angled figure formed thus, # , or an acute angle formed by joining the two lines which are unconnected, thus, # ; and either of these forms brings us quite close to the letter l of the Old World. We find l on the Moab stone thus formed, # . The archaic Phoenician form of l was # , or # ; the archaic Hebrew was # and # ; the hieratic Egyptian was # ; the Greek form was # —the Roman L.

The Maya letter b is shaped thus, # . Now, if we turn to the Phoenician, we find that b is represented by the same crescent-like figure which we find in the middle of this hieroglyph, but reversed in the direction of the writing, thus, # ; while in the archaic Hebrew we have the same crescent figure as in the Maya, turned in the same direction, but accompanied by a line drawn downward, and to the left, thus, # ; a similar form is also found in the Phoenician # , and this in the earliest Greek changed into # , and in the later Greek into B. One of the Etruscan signs for b was # , while the Pelasgian b was represented thus, # ; the Chaldaic b was # ; the Syriac sign for b was # ; the Illyrian b was # .

The Maya e is # ; this became in time # ; then # (we see this form on the Maya monuments); the dots in time were indicated by strokes, and we reach the hieratic Egyptian form, # : we even find in some of the ancient Phoenician inscriptions the original Maya circles preserved in making the letter e, thus, # ; then we find the old Greek form, # ; the old Hebrew, # ; and the later Phoenician, # : when the direction of the writing was changed this became # . Dr. Schliemann found a form like this on inscriptions deep in the ruins of Troy, # . This is exactly the form found on the American monuments.

The Maya i is # ; this became in time # ; this developed into a still simpler form, # ; and this passed into the Phoenician form, # . The Samaritan i was formed thus, # ; the Egyptian letter i is # : gradually in all these the left-hand line was dropped, and we come to the figure used on the stone of Moab, # and # ; this in time became the old Hebrew # , or # ; and this developed into the Greek # .

We have seen the complicated symbol for m reduced by the Mayas themselves into this figure, # : if we attempt to write this rapidly, we find it very difficult to always keep the base lines horizontal; naturally we form something like this, # : the distinctive figure within the sign for m in the Maya is # or # . We see this repeated in the Egyptian hieroglyphics for m, # , and # , and # ; and in the Chaldaic m, # ; and in the Ethiopic # . We find one form of the Phoenician where the m is made thus, # ; and in the Punic it appears thus, # ; and this is not unlike the m on the stone of Moab, # , or the ancient Phoenician forms # , # , and the old Greek # , or the ancient Hebrew # , # .

The # , x, of the Maya alphabet is a hand pointing downward # , this, reduced to its elements, would be expressed some thing like this, # or # ; and this is very much like the x of the archaic Phoenician, # ; or the Moab stone, # ; or the later Phoenician # or the Hebrew # , # , or the old Greek, # : the later Greek form was # .

The Maya alphabet contains no sign for the letter s; there is, however, a symbol called ca immediately above the letter k; it is probable that the sign ca stands for the soft sound of c, as, in our words citron, circle, civil, circus, etc. As it is written in the Maya alphabet ca, and not k, it evidently represents a different sound. The sign ca is this, # . A somewhat similar sign is found in the body of the symbol for k, thus, # , this would appear to be a simplification of ca, but turned downward. If now we turn to the Egyptian letters we find the sign k represented by this figure # , simplified again into # ; while the sign for k in the Phoenician inscription on the stone of Moab is # . If now we turn to the s sound, indicated by the Maya sign ca, # , we find the resemblance still more striking to kindred European letters. The Phoenician s is # ; in the Greek this becomes # # ; the Hebrew is # # ; the Samaritan, # . The Egyptian hieroglyph for s is # ; the Egyptian letter s is # ; the Ethiopic, # ; the Chaldaic, # ; and the Illyrian s c is # .

We have thus traced back the forms of eighteen of the ancient letters to the Maya alphabet. In some cases the pedigree, is so plain as to be indisputable.

For instance, take the h:

Maya, # ; old Greek, # ; old Hebrew, # ; Phoenician, # .

Or take the letter o:

Maya, # ; old Greek, # ; old Hebrew, # ; Phoenician, # .

Or take the letter t:

Maya, # ; old Greek, # ; old Phoenician, # and # .

Or take the letter q:

Maya, # ; old Phoenician, # and # ; Greek, # .

Or take the letter k:

Maya, # ; Egyptian, # ; Ethiopian, # ; Phoenician, # .

Or take the letter n:

Maya, # ; Egyptian, # ; Pelasgian # , Arcadian, # ; Phoenician, # .

Surely all this cannot be accident!

But we find another singular proof of the truth of this theory: It will be seen that the Maya alphabet lacks the letter d and the letter r. The Mexican alphabet possessed a d. The sounds d and t were probably indicated in the Maya tongue by the same sign, called t in the Landa alphabet. The Finns and Lapps do not distinguish between these two sounds. In the oldest known form of the Phoenician alphabet, that found on the Moab stone, we find in the same way but one sign to express the d and t. D does not occur on the Etruscan monuments, t being used in its place. It would, therefore, appear that after the Maya alphabet passed to the Phoenicians they added two new signs for the letters d and r; and it is a singular fact that their poverty of invention seems to have been such that they used to express both d and r, the same sign, with very little modification, which they had already obtained from the Maya alphabet as the symbol for b. To illustrate this we place the signs side by side:

#

It thus appears that the very signs d and r, in the Phoenician, early Greek, and ancient Hebrew, which are lacking in the Maya, were supplied by imitating the Maya sign for b; and it is a curious fact that while the Phoenician legends claim that Taaut invented the art of writing, yet they tell us that Taaut made records, and "delivered them to his successors and to foreigners, of whom one was Isiris (Osiris, the Egyptian god), the inventor of the three letters." Did these three letters include the d and r, which they did not receive from the Atlantean alphabet, as represented to us by the Maya alphabet?

In the alphabetical table which we herewith append we have represented the sign V, or vau, or f, by the Maya sign for U. "In the present so-called Hebrew, as in the Syriac, Sabaeic, Palmyrenic, and some other kindred writings, the vau takes the place of F, and indicates the sounds of v and u. F occurs in the same place also on the Idalian tablet of Cyprus, in Lycian, also in Tuarik (Berber), and some other writings." ("American Cyclopaedia," art. F.)

Since writing the above, I find in the "Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society" for December, 1880, p. 154, an interesting article pointing out other resemblances between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian. I quote:

It is astonishing to notice that while Landa's first B is, according to Valentini, represented by a footprint, and that path and footprint are pronounced Be in the Maya dictionary, the Egyptian sign for B was the human leg.

"Still more surprising is it that the H of Landa's alphabet is a tie of cord, while the Egyptian H is a twisted cord. . . . But the most striking coincidence of all occurs in the coiled or curled line representing Landa's U; for it is absolutely identical with the Egyptian curled U. The Mayan word for to wind or bend is Uuc; but why should Egyptians, confined as they were to the valley of the Nile, and abhorring as they did the sea and sailors, write their U precisely like Landa's alphabet U in Central America? There is one other remarkable coincidence between Landa's and the Egyptian alphabets; and, by-the-way, the English and other Teutonic dialects have a curious share in it. Landa's D (T) is a disk with lines inside the four quarters, the allowed Mexican symbol for a day or sun. So far as sound is concerned, the English day represents it; so far as the form is concerned, the Egyptian 'cake,' ideograph for (1) country and (2) the sun's orbit is essentially the same."

It would appear as if both the Phoenicians and Egyptians drew their alphabet from a common source, of which the Maya is a survival, but did not borrow from one another. They followed out different characteristics in the same original hieroglyph, as, for instance, in the letter b. And yet I have shown that the closest resemblances exist between the Maya alphabet and the Egyptian signs—in the c, h, t, i, k, m, n, o, q, and s—eleven letters in all; in some cases, as in the n and k, the signs are identical; the k, in both alphabets, is not only a serpent, but a serpent with a protuberance or convolution in the middle! If we add to the above the b and u, referred to in the "Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society," we have thirteen letters out of sixteen in the Maya and Egyptian related to each other. Can any theory of accidental coincidences account for all this? And it must be remembered that these resemblances are found between the only two phonetic systems of alphabet in the world.

Let us suppose that two men agree that each shall construct apart from the other a phonetic alphabet of sixteen letters; that they shall employ only simple forms—combinations of straight or curved lines—and that their signs shall not in anywise resemble the letters now in use. They go to work apart; they have a multitudinous array of forms to draw from the thousand possible combinations of lines, angles, circles, and curves; when they have finished, they bring their alphabets together for comparison. Under such circumstances it is possible that out of the sixteen signs one sign might appear in both alphabets; there is one chance in one hundred that such might be the case; but there is not one chance in five hundred that this sign should in both cases represent the same sound. It is barely possible that two men working thus apart should bit upon two or three identical forms, but altogether impossible that these forms should have the same significance; and by no stretch of the imagination can it be supposed that in these alphabets so created, without correspondence, thirteen out of sixteen signs should be the same in form and the same in meaning.

It is probable that a full study of the Central American monuments may throw stronger light upon the connection between the Maya and the European alphabets, and that further discoveries of inscriptions in Europe may approximate the alphabets of the New and Old World still more closely by supplying intermediate forms.

We find in the American hieroglyphs peculiar signs which take the place of pictures, and which probably, like the hieratic symbols mingled with the hieroglyphics of Egypt, represent alphabetical sounds. For instance, we find this sign on the walls of the palace of Palenque, # ; this is not unlike the form of the Phoenician t used in writing, # and # ; we find also upon these monuments the letter o represented by a small circle, and entering into many of the hieroglyphs; we also find the tau sign (thus # ) often repeated; also the sign which we have supposed to represent b, # ; also this sign, # , which we think is the simplification of the letter k; also this sign, which we suppose to represent e, # ; also this figure, # ; and this # . There is an evident tendency to reduce the complex figures to simple signs whenever the writers proceed to form words.

Although it has so far been found difficult, if not impossible, to translate the compound words formed from the Maya alphabet, yet we can go far enough to see that they used the system of simpler sounds for the whole hieroglyph to which we have referred.

Bishop Landa gives us, in addition to the alphabet, the signs which represent the days and months, and which are evidently compounds of the Maya letters. For instance, we have this figure as the representative of the month Mol # . Here we see very plainly the letter # for m, the sign # for o; and we will possibly find the sign for l in the right angle to the right of the m sign, and which is derived from the figure in the second sign for l in the Maya alphabet.

One of the most ancient races of Central America is the Chiapenec, a branch of the Mayas. They claim to be the first settlers of the country. They came, their legends tell us, from the East, from beyond the sea.

And even after the lapse of so many thousand years most remarkable resemblances have been found to exist between the Chiapenec language and the Hebrew, the living representative of the Phoenician tongue.

The Mexican scholar, Senor Melgar ("North Americans of Antiquity," p. 475) gives the following list of words taken from the Chiapenec and the Hebrew:

- English. Chiapenec. Hebrew. - Son Been Ben. - Daughter Batz Bath. - Father Abagh Abba. - Star in Zodiac Chimax Chimah. - King Molo Maloc. - Name applied to Adam Abagh Abah. - Afflicted Chanam Chanan. - God Elab Elab. - September Tsiquin Tischiri. - More Chic Chi. - Rich Chabin Chabic. - Son of Seth Enot Enos. - To give Votan Votan. -

Thus, while we find such extraordinary resemblances between the Maya alphabet and the Phoenician alphabet, we find equally surprising coincidences between the Chiapenec tongue, a branch of the Mayas, and the Hebrew, a branch of the Phoenician.

Attempts have been repeatedly made by European scholars to trace the letters of the Phoenician alphabet back to the elaborate hieroglyphics from which all authorities agree they must have been developed, but all such attempts have been failures. But here, in the Maya alphabet, we are not only able to extract from the heart of the hieroglyphic the typical sign for the sound, but we are able to go a step farther, and, by means of the inscriptions upon the monuments of Copan and Palenque, deduce the alphabetical hieroglyph itself from an older and more ornate figure; we thus not Only discover the relationship of the European alphabet to the American, but we trace its descent in the very mode in which reason tells us it must have been developed. All this proves that the similarities in question did not come from Phoenicians having accidentally visited the shores of America, but that we have before us the origin, the source, the very matrix in which the Phoenician alphabet was formed. In the light of such a discovery the inscriptions upon the monuments of Central America assume incalculable importance; they take us back to a civilization far anterior to the oldest known in Europe; they represent the language of antediluvian times.

It may be said that it is improbable that the use of an alphabet could have ascended to antediluvian times, or to that prehistoric age when intercourse existed between ancient Europe and America; but it must be remembered that if the Flood legends of Europe and Asia are worth anything they prove that the art of writing existed at the date of the Deluge, and that records of antediluvian learning were preserved by those who escaped the Flood; while Plato tells us that the people of Atlantis engraved their laws upon columns of bronze and plates of gold.

There was a general belief among the ancient nations that the art of writing was known to the antediluvians. The Druids believed in books more ancient than the Flood. They styled them "the books of Pheryllt," and "the writings of Pridian or Hu." "Ceridwen consults them before she prepares the mysterious caldron which shadows out the awful catastrophe of the Deluge." (Faber's "Pagan Idolatry," vol. ii., pp. 150, 151.) In the first Avatar of Vishnu we are told that "the divine ordinances were stolen by the demon Haya-Griva. Vishnu became a fish; and after the Deluge, when the waters had subsided, he recovered the holy books from the bottom of the ocean." Berosus, speaking of the time before the Deluge, says: "Oannes wrote concerning the generations of mankind and their civil polity." The Hebrew commentators on Genesis say, "Our rabbins assert that Adam, our father of blessed memory, composed a book of precepts, which were delivered to him by God in Paradise." (Smith's "Sacred Annals," p. 49.) That is to say, the Hebrews preserved a tradition that the Ad-ami, the people of Ad, or Adlantis, possessed, while yet dwelling in Paradise, the art of writing. It has been suggested that without the use of letters it would have been impossible to preserve the many details as to dates, ages, and measurements, as of the ark, handed down to us in Genesis. Josephus, quoting Jewish traditions, says, "The births and deaths of illustrious men, between Adam and Noah, were noted down at the time with great accuracy." (Ant., lib. 1, cap. iii., see. 3.) Suidas, a Greek lexicographer of the eleventh century, expresses tradition when he says, "Adam was the author of arts and letters." The Egyptians said that their god Anubis was an antediluvian, and it "wrote annals before the Flood." The Chinese have traditions that the earliest race of their nation, prior to history, "taught all the arts of life and wrote books." "The Goths always had the use of letters;" and Le Grand affirms that before or soon after the Flood "there were found the acts of great men engraved in letters on large stones." (Fosbroke's "Encyclopaedia of Antiquity," vol. i., p. 355.) Pliny says, "Letters were always in use." Strabo says, "The inhabitants of Spain possessed records written before the Deluge." (Jackson's "Chronicles of Antiquity," vol. iii., p. 85.) Mitford ("History of Greece," vol. i, p. 121) says, "Nothing appears to us so probable as that it (the alphabet) was derived from the antediluvian world."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BRONZE AGE IN EUROPE.

There exist in Europe the evidences of three different ages of human development:

1. The Stone Age, which dates back to a vast antiquity. It is subdivided into two periods: an age of rough stone implements; and a later age, when these implements were ground smooth and made in improved forms.

2. The Bronze Age, when the great mass of implements were manufactured of a compound metal, consisting of about nine parts of copper and one part of tin.

3. An age when iron superseded bronze for weapons and cutting tools, although bronze still remained in use for ornaments. This age continued down to what we call the Historical Period, and embraces our present civilization; its more ancient remains are mixed with coins of the Gauls, Greeks, and Romans.

The Bronze Period has been one of the perplexing problems of European scientists. Articles of bronze are found over nearly all that continent, but in especial abundance in Ireland and Scandinavia. They indicate very considerable refinement and civilization upon the part of the people who made them; and a wide diversity of opinion has prevailed as to who that people were and where they dwelt.

In the first place, it was observed that the age of bronze (a compound of copper and tin) must, in the natural order of things, have been preceded by an age when copper and tin were used separately, before the ancient metallurgists had discovered the art of combining them, and yet in Europe the remains of no such age have been found. Sir John Lubbock says ("Prehistoric Times," p. 59), "The absence of implements made either of copper or tin seems to me to indicate that the art of making bronze was introduced into, not invented in, Europe." The absence of articles of copper is especially marked, nearly all the European specimens of copper implements have been found in Ireland; and yet out of twelve hundred and eighty-three articles of the Bronze Age, in the great museum at Dublin, only thirty celts and one sword-blade are said to be made of pure copper; and even as to some of these there seems to be a question.

Where on the face of the earth are we to find a Copper Age? Is it in the barbaric depths of that Asia out of whose uncivilized tribes all civilization is said to have issued? By no means. Again we are compelled to turn to the West. In America, from Bolivia to Lake Superior, we find everywhere the traces of a long-enduring Copper Age; bronze existed, it is true, in Mexico, but it held the same relation to the copper as the copper held to the bronze in Europe—it was the exception as against the rule. And among the Chippeways of the shores of Lake Superior, and among them alone, we find any traditions of the origin of the manufacture of copper implements; and on the shores of that lake we find pure copper, out of which the first metal tools were probably hammered before man had learned to reduce the ore or run the metal into moulds. And on the shores of this same American lake we find the ancient mines from which some people, thousands of years ago, derived their supplies of copper.

IMPLEMENTS AND ORNAMENTS OF THE BRONZE AGE

Sir W. R. Wilde says, "It is remarkable that so few antique copper implements have been found (in Europe), although a knowledge of that metal must have been the preliminary stage in the manufacture of bronze." He thinks that this may be accounted for by supposing that "but a short time elapsed between the knowledge of smelting and casting copper ore and the introduction of tin, and the subsequent manufacture and use of bronze."

But here we have in America the evidence that thousands of years must have elapsed during which copper was used alone, before it was discovered that by adding one-tenth part of tin it gave a harder edge, and produced a superior metal.

The Bronze Age cannot be attributed to the Roman civilization. Sir John Lubbock shows ("Prehistoric Times," p. 21) that bronze weapons have never been found associated with Roman coins or pottery, or other remains of the Roman Period; that bronze articles have been found in the greatest abundance in countries like Ireland and Denmark, which were never invaded by Roman armies; and that the character of the ornamentation of the works of bronze is not Roman in character, and that the Roman bronze contained a large proportion of lead, which is never the case in that of the Bronze Age.

It has been customary to assume that the Bronze Age was due to the Phoenicians, but of late the highest authorities have taken issue with this opinion. Sir John Lubbock (Ibid., p. 73) gives the following reasons why the Phoenicians could not have been the authors of the Bronze Age: First, the ornamentation is different. In the Bronze Age "this always consists of geometrical figures, and we rarely, if ever, find upon them representations of animals and plants, while on the ornamented shields, etc., described by Homer, as well as in the decoration of Solomon's Temple, animals and plants were abundantly represented." The cuts on p. 242 will show the character of the ornamentation of the Bronze Age. In the next place, the form of burial is different in the Bronze Age from that of the Phoenicians. "In the third place, the Phoenicians, so far as we know them, were well acquainted with the use of iron; in Homer we find the warriors already armed with iron weapons, and the tools used in preparing the materials for Solomon's Temple were of this metal."

This view is also held by M. de Fallenberg, in the "Bulletin de la Societe des Sciences" of Berne. (See "Smithsonian Rep.," 1865-66, p. 383.) He says,

ORNAMENTS OF THE BRONZE AGE

"It seems surprising that the nearest neighbors of the Phoenicians—the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Etruscans, and the Romans—should have manufactured plumbiferous bronzes, while the Phoenicians carried to the people of the North only pure bronzes without the alloy of lead. If the civilized people of the Mediterranean added lead to their bronzes, it can scarcely be doubted that the calculating Phoenicians would have done as much, and, at least, with distant and half-civilized tribes, have replaced the more costly tin by the cheaper metal. . . . On the whole, then, I consider that the first knowledge of bronze may have been conveyed to the populations of the period tinder review not only by the Phoenicians, but by other civilized people dwelling more to the south-east."

Professor E. Desor, in his work on the "Lacustrian Constructions of the Lake of Neuchatel," says,

"The Phoenicians certainly knew the use of iron, and it can scarcely be conceived why they should have excluded it from their commerce on the Scandinavian coasts. . . . The Etruscans, moreover, were acquainted with the use of iron as well as the Phoenicians, and it has already been seen that the composition of their bronzes is different, since it contains lead, which is entirely a stranger to our bronze epoch. . . . We must look, then, beyond both the Etruscans and Phoenicians in attempting to identify the commerce of the Bronze Age of our palafittes. It will be the province of the historian to inquire whether, exclusive of Phoenicians and Carthaginians, there may not have been some maritime and commercial people who carried on a traffic through the ports of Liguria with the populations of the age of bronze of the lakes of Italy before the discovery of iron. We may remark, in passing, that there is nothing to prove that the Phoenicians were the first navigators. History, on the Contrary, positively mentions prisoners, under the name of Tokhari, who were vanquished in a naval battle fought by Rhamses III. in the thirteenth century before our era, and whose physiognomy, according to Morton, would indicate the Celtic type. Now there is room to suppose that if these Tokhari were energetic enough to measure their strength on the sea with one of the powerful kings of Egypt, they must, with stronger reason, have been in a condition to carry on a commerce along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and perhaps of the Atlantic. If such a commerce really existed before the time of the Phoenicians, it would not be limited to the southern slope of the Alps; it would have extended also to the people of the age of bronze in Switzerland. The introduction of bronze would thus ascend to a very high antiquity, doubtless beyond the limits of the most ancient European races."

For the merchants of the Bronze Age we must look beyond even the Tokhari, who were contemporaries of the Phoenicians.

The Tokhari, we have seen, are represented as taken prisoners, in a sea-fight with Rhamses III., of the twentieth dynasty, about the thirteenth century B.C. They are probably the Tochari of Strabo. The accompanying figure represents one of these people as they appear upon the Egyptian monuments. (See Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind," p. 108.) Here we have, not an inhabitant of Atlantis, but probably a representative of one of the mixed races that sprung from its colonies.

Dr. Morton thinks these people, as painted on the Egyptian monuments, to have "strong Celtic features. Those familiar with the Scotch Highlanders may recognize a speaking likeness."

It is at least interesting to have a portrait of one of the daring race who more than three thousand years ago left the west of Europe in their ships to attack the mighty power of Egypt.

They were troublesome to the nations of the East for many centuries; for in 700 B.C. we find them depicted on the Assyrian monuments. This figure represents one of the Tokhari of the time of Sennacherib. It will be observed that the headdress (apparently of feathers) is the same in both portraits, al, though separated by a period of six hundred years.

It is more reasonable to suppose that the authors of the bronze Age of Europe were the people described by Plato, who were workers in metal, who were highly civilized, who preceded in time all the nations which we call ancient. It was this people who passed through an age of copper before they reached the age of bronze, and whose colonies in America represented this older form of metallurgy as it existed for many generations.

Professor Desor says:

"We are asked if the preparation of bronze was not an indigenous invention which had originated on the slopes of the Alps? . . . In this idea we acquiesced for a moment. But we are met by the objection that, if this were so, the natives, like the ancient tribes of America, would have commenced by manufacturing utensils of copper; yet thus far no utensils of this metal have been found except a few in the strand of Lake Garda. The great majority of metallic objects is of bronze, which necessitated the employment of tin, and this could not be obtained except by commerce, inasmuch as it is a stranger to the Alps. It would appear, therefore, more natural to admit that the art of combining tin with copper—in other words, that the manufacture of bronze—was of foreign importation." He then shows that, although copper ores are found in the Alps, the probability is that even "the copper also was of foreign importation. Now, in view of the prodigious quantity of bronze manufactured at that epoch, this single branch of commerce must itself have necessitated the most incessant commercial communications."

And as this commerce could not, as we have seen, have been carried on by the Romans, Greeks, Etruscans, or Phoenicians, because their civilizations flourished during the Iron Age, to which this age of bronze was anterior, where then are we to look for a great maritime and commercial people, who carried vast quantities of copper, tin, and bronze (unalloyed by the lead of the south of Europe) to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, England, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy? Where can we find them save in that people of Atlantis, whose ships, docks, canals, and commerce provoked the astonishment of the ancient Egyptians, as recorded by Plato. The Toltec root for water is Atl; the Peruvian word for copper is Anti (from which, probably, the Andes derived their name, as there was a province of Anti on their slopes): may it not be that the name of Atlantis is derived from these originals, and signified the copper island, or the copper mountains in the sea? And from these came the thousands of tons of copper and tin that must, during the Bronze Age, have been introduced into Europe? There are no ancient works to indicate that the tin mines of Cornwall were worked for any length of time in the early days (see "Prehistoric Times," p. 74). Morlot has pointed out that the bronze implements of Hallstadt, in Austria, were of foreign origin, because they contain no lead or silver.

Or, if we are to seek for the source of the vast amount of copper brought into Europe somewhere else than in Atlantis, may it not be that these supplies were drawn in large part from the shores of Lake Superior in America? The mining operations of some ancient people were there carried on upon a gigantic scale, not only along the shores of the lake but even far out upon its islands. At Isle Royale vast works were found, reaching to a depth of sixty feet; great intelligence was shown in following up the richest veins even when interrupted; the excavations were drained by underground drains. On three sections of land on this island the amount of mining exceeded that mined in twenty years in one of our largest mines, with a numerous force constantly employed. In one place the excavations extended in a nearly continuous line for two miles. No remains of the dead and no mounds are found near these mines: it would seem, therefore, that the miners came from a distance, and carried their dead back with them. Henry Gillman ("Smithsonian Rep.," 1873, p. 387) supposes that the curious so-called "Garden Beds" of Michigan were the fields from which they drew their supplies of food. He adds,

"The discoveries in Isle Royale throw a new light on the character of the 'Mound Builders,' giving us a totally distinct conception of them, and dignifying them with something of the prowess and spirit of adventure which we associate with the higher races. The copper, the result of their mining, to be available, must, in all probability, have been conveyed in vessels, great or small, across a treacherous and stormy sea, whose dangers are formidable to us now, being dreaded even by our largest craft, and often proving their destruction. Leaving their homes, those men dared to face the unknown, to brave the hardships and perils of the deep and of the wilderness, actuated by an ambition which we to-day would not be ashamed to acknowledge."

Such vast works in so remote a land must have been inspired by the commercial necessities of some great civilization; and why not by that ancient and mighty people who covered Europe, Asia, and Africa with their manufactures of bronze-and who possessed, as Plato tells us, enormous fleets trading to all parts of the inhabited world-whose cities roared with the continual tumult of traffic, whose dominion extended to Italy and Egypt, and who held parts of "the great opposite continent" of America under their control? A continuous water-way led, from the island of Atlantis to the Gulf of Mexico, and thence up the Mississippi River and its tributaries almost to these very mines of Lake Superior.

Arthur Mitchell says ("The Past in the Present," p. 132),

"The discovery of bronze, and the knowledge of how to make it, may, as a mere intellectual effort, be regarded as rather above than below the effort which is involved in the discovery and use of iron. As regards bronze, there is first the discovery of copper, and the way of getting it from its ore; then the discovery of tin, and the way to get it from its ore; and then the further discovery that, by an admixture of tin with copper in proper proportions, an alloy with the qualities of a hard metal can be produced. It is surely no mistake to say that there goes quite as much thinking to this as to the getting of iron from its ore, and the conversion of that iron into steel. There is a considerable leap from stone to bronze, but the leap from bronze to iron is comparatively small. . . . It seems highly improbable, if not altogether absurd, that the human mind, at some particular stage of its development, should here, there, and everywhere—independently, and as the result of reaching that stage—discover that an alloy of copper and tin yields a hard metal useful in the manufacture of tools and weapons. There is nothing analogous to such an occurrence in the known history of human progress. It is infinitely more probable that bronze was discovered in one or more centres by one or more men, and that its first use was solely in such centre or centres. That the invention should then be perfected, and its various applications found out, and that it should thereafter spread more or less broadly over the face of the earth, is a thing easily understood."

We will find the knowledge of bronze wherever the colonies of Atlantis extended, and nowhere else; and Plato tells us that the people of Atlantis possessed and used that metal.

The indications are that the Bronze Age represents the coming in of a new people—a civilized people. With that era, it is believed, appears in Europe for the first time the domesticated animals-the horse, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and the hog. (Morlot, "Smithsonian Rep.," 1860, p. 311.) It was a small race, with very small hands; this is shown in the size of the sword-hilts: they are not large enough to be used by the present races of Europe. They were a race with long skulls, as contradistinguished from the round heads of the Stone Period. The drawings on the following page represent the types of the two races.

SKULLS OF THE AGE OF STONE, DENMARK

This people must have sent out colonies to the shores of France, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Denmark, and Norway, who bore with them the arts and implements of civilized life. They raised crops of grain, as is proved by the bronze sickles found in different parts of Europe.

It is not even certain that their explorations did not reach to Iceland. Says Humboldt,

"When the Northmen first landed in Iceland (A.D. 875), although the country was uninhabited, they found there Irish books, mass-bells, and other objects which had been left behind by earlier visitors, called Papar; these papae (fathers) were the clerici of Dicuil. If, then, as we may suppose from the testimony here referred to, these objects belonged to Irish monks (papar), who had come from the Faroe Islands, why should they have been termed in the native sagas 'West men' (Vestmen), 'who had come over the sea from the westward' (kommer til vestan um haf)?" (Humboldt's "Cosmos," vol. ii., 238.)