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There is a plate showing an Aztec priestess in Delafield's "Antiquities of America," p. 61, which presents a head-dress strikingly Egyptian. In the celebrated "tablet of the cross," at Palenque, we see a cross with a bird perched upon it, to which (or to the cross) two priests are offering sacrifice. In Mr. Stephens's representation from the Vocal Memnon we find almost the same thing, the difference being that, instead of an ornamented Latin cross, we have a crux commissa, and instead of one bird there are two, not on the cross, but immediately above it. In both cases the hieroglyphics, though the characters are of course different, are disposed upon the stone in much the same manner. (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 61.)
Even the obelisks of Egypt have their counterpart in America.
Quoting from Molina ("History of Chili," tom. i., p. 169), McCullough writes, "Between the hills of Mendoza and La Punta is a pillar of stone one hundred and fifty feet high, and twelve feet in diameter." ("Researches," pp. 171, 172.) The columns of Copan stand detached and solitary, so do the obelisks of Egypt; both are square or four-sided, and covered with sculpture. (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 60.)
In a letter by Jomard, quoted by Delafield, we read,
"I have recognized in your memoir on the division of time among the Mexican nations, compared with those of Asia, some very striking analogies between the Toltec characters and institutions observed on the banks of the Nile. Among these analogies there is one which is worthy of attention—it is the use of the vague year of three hundred and sixty-five days, composed of equal months, and of five complementary days, equally employed at Thebes and Mexico—a distance of three thousand leagues. . . . In reality, the intercalation of the Mexicans being thirteen days on each cycle of fifty-two years, comes to the same thing as that of the Julian calendar, which is one day in four years; and consequently supposes the duration of the year to be three hundred and sixty-five days six hours. Now such was the length of the year among the Egyptians—they intercalated an entire year of three hundred and seventy-five days every one thousand four hundred and sixty years. ... The fact of the intercalation (by the Mexicans) of thirteen days every cycle that is, the use of a year of three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter—is a proof that it was borrowed from the Egyptians, or that they had a common origin." ("Antiquities of America," pp. 52, 53.)
The Mexican century began on the 26th of February, and the 26th of February was celebrated from the time of Nabonassor, 747 B.C., because the Egyptian priests, conformably to their astronomical observations, had fixed the beginning of the month Toth, and the commencement of their year, at noon on that day. The five intercalated days to make up the three hundred and sixty-five days were called by the Mexicans Nemontemi, or useless, and on them they transacted no business; while the Egyptians, during that epoch, celebrated the festival of the birth of their gods, as attested by Plutarch and others.
It will be conceded that a considerable degree of astronomical knowledge must have been necessary to reach the conclusion that the true year consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours (modern science has demonstrated that it consists of three hundred and sixty-five days and five hours, less ten seconds); and a high degree of civilization was requisite to insist that the year must be brought around, by the intercalation of a certain number of days in a certain period of time, to its true relation to the seasons. Both were the outgrowth of a vast, ancient civilization of the highest order, which transmitted some part of its astronomical knowledge to its colonies through their respective priesthoods.
Can we, in the presence of such facts, doubt the statements of the Egyptian priests to Solon, as to the glory and greatness of Atlantis, its monuments, its sculpture, its laws, its religion, its civilization?
In Egypt we have the oldest of the Old World children of Atlantis; in her magnificence we have a testimony to the development attained by the parent country; by that country whose kings were the gods of succeeding nations, and whose kingdom extended to the uttermost ends of the earth.
The Egyptian historian, Manetho, referred to a period of thirteen thousand nine hundred years as "the reign of the gods," and placed this period at the very beginning of Egyptian history. These thirteen thousand nine hundred years were probably a recollection of Atlantis. Such a lapse of time, vast as it may appear, is but as a day compared with some of our recognized geological epochs.
CHAPTER III.
THE COLONIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
If we will suppose a civilized, maritime people to have planted colonies, in the remote past, along the headlands and shores of the Gulf of Mexico, spreading thence, in time, to the tablelands of Mexico and to the plains and mountains of New Mexico and Colorado, what would be more natural than that these adventurous navigators, passing around the shores of the Gulf, should, sooner or later, discover the mouth of the Mississippi River; and what more certain than that they would enter it, explore it, and plant colonies along its shores, wherever they found a fertile soil and a salubrious climate. Their outlying provinces would penetrate even into regions where the severity of the climate would prevent great density of population or development of civilization.
The results we have presupposed are precisely those which we find to have existed at one time in the Mississippi Valley.
The Mound Builders of the United States were pre-eminently a river people. Their densest settlements and greatest works were near the Mississippi and its tributaries. Says Foster ("Prehistoric Races," p. 110), "The navigable streams were the great highways of the Mound Builders."
Mr. Fontaine claims ("How the World was Peopled") that this ancient people constructed "levees" to control and utilize the bayous of the Mississippi for the purpose of agriculture and commerce. The Yazoo River is called Yazoo-okhinnah—the River of Ancient Ruins. "There is no evidence that they had reached the Atlantic coast; no authentic remains of the Mound Builders are found in the New England States, nor even in the State of New York." ("North Americans of Antiquity," p. 28.) This would indicate that the civilization of this people advanced up the Mississippi River and spread out over its tributaries, but did not cross the Alleghany {sic} Mountains. They reached, however, far up the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, and thence into Oregon. The head-waters of the Missouri became one of their great centres of population; but their chief sites were upon the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. In Wisconsin we find the northern central limit of their work; they seem to have occupied the southern counties of the State, and the western shores of Lake Michigan. Their circular mounds are found in Minnesota and Iowa, and some very large ones in Dakota. Illinois and Indiana were densely populated by them: it is believed that the vital centre of their colonies was near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
The chief characteristic of the Mound Builders was that from which they derived their name-the creation of great structures of earth or stone, not unlike the pyramids of Mexico and Egypt. Between Alton and East St. Louis is the great mound of Cahokia, which may be selected as a type of their works: it rises ninety-seven feet high, while its square sides are 700 and 500 feet respectively. There was a terrace on the south side 160 by 300 feet, reached by a graded way; the summit of the pyramid is flattened, affording a platform 200 by 450 feet. It will thus be seen that the area covered by the mound of Cahokia is about as large as that of the greatest pyramid of Egypt, Cheops, although its height is much less.
The number of monuments left by the Mound Builders is extraordinarily great. In Ohio alone there are more than ten thousand tumuli, and from one thousand to fifteen hundred enclosures. Their mounds were not cones but four-sided pyramids-their sides, like those of the Egyptian pyramids, corresponding with the cardinal points. (Foster's "Prehistoric Races," p. 112.)
The Mound Builders had attained a considerable degree of civilization; they were able to form, in the construction of their works, perfect circles and perfect squares of great accuracy, carried over the varying surface of the country. One large enclosure comprises exactly forty acres. At Hopetown, Ohio, are two walled figures—one a square, the other a circle—each containing precisely twenty acres. They must have possessed regular scales of measurement, and the means of determining angles and of computing the area to be enclosed by the square and the circle, so that the space enclosed by each might exactly correspond.
"The most skilful engineer of this day would find it difficult," says Mr. Squier, "without the aid of instruments, to lay down an accurate square of the great dimensions above represented, measuring, as they do, more than four-fifths of a mile in circumference. . . . But we not only find accurate squares and perfect circles, but also, as we have seen, octagons of great dimensions."
They also possessed an accurate system of weights; bracelets of copper on the arms of a skeleton have been found to be of uniform size, measuring each two and nine-tenth inches, and each weighing precisely four ounces.
They built great military works surrounded by walls and ditches, with artificial lakes in the centre to supply water. One work, Fort Ancient, on the Little Miami River, Ohio, has a circuit of between four and five miles; the embankment was twenty feet high; the fort could have held a garrison of sixty thousand men with their families and provisions.
Not only do we find pyramidal structures of earth in the Mississippi Valley very much like the pyramids of Egypt, Mexico, and Peru, but a very singular structure is repeated in Ohio and Peru: I refer to the double walls or prolonged pyramids, if I may coin an expression, shown in the cut page 375.
GRAND WAY NEAR PIKETON, OHIO.
The Mound Builders possessed chains of fortifications reaching from the southern line of New York diagonally across the country, through Central and Northern Ohio to the Wabash. It would appear probable, therefore, that while they
WALLS AT GRAN-CHIMU, PERU.
advanced from the south it was from the north-east the savage races came who drove them south or exterminated them.
At Marietta, Ohio, we find a combination of the cross and pyramid., (See p. 334, ante.) At Newark, Ohio, are extensive
CROSS AND PYRAMID MOUND, OHIO.
and intricate works: they occupy an area two miles square, embraced within embankments twelve miles long. One of the mounds is a threefold symbol, like a bird's foot; the central mound is 155 feet long, and the other two each 110 feet it length. Is this curious design a reminiscence of Atlantis and the three-pronged trident of Poseidon? (See 4th fig., p, 242, ante.)
The Mound Builders made sun-dried brick mixed with rushes, as the Egyptians made sun-dried bricks mixed with straw; they worked in copper, silver, lead, and there are evidences, as we shall see, that they wrought even in iron.
Copper implements are very numerous in the mounds. Copper axes, spear-heads, hollow buttons, bosses for ornaments, bracelets, rings, etc., are found in very many of them strikingly similar to those of the Bronze Age in Europe. In one in Butler County, Ohio, was found a copper fillet around the head of a skeleton, with strange devices marked upon it.
Silver ornaments have also been found, but not in such great numbers. They seem to have attached a high value to silver, and it is often found in thin sheets, no thicker than paper, wrapped over copper or stone ornaments so neatly as almost to escape detection. The great esteem in which they held a metal so intrinsically valueless as silver, is another evidence that they must have drawn their superstitions from the same source as the European nations.
Copper is also often found in this manner plated over stone pipes, presenting an unbroken metallic lustre, the overlapping edges so well polished as to be scarcely discoverable. Beads and stars made of shells have sometimes been found doubly plated, first with copper then with silver.
The Mound Builders also understood the art of casting metals, or they held intercourse with some race who did; a copper axe it "cast" has been found in the State of New York. (See Lubbock's "Prehistoric Times," p. 254, note.) Professor Foster ("Prehistoric Races," p. 259) also proves that the ancient people of the Mississippi Valley possessed this art, and he gives us representations of various articles plainly showing the marks of the mould upon them.
A rude article in the shape of an axe, composed of pure lead, weighing about half a pound, was found in sinking a well within the trench of the ancient works at Circleville. There can be no doubt it was the production of the Mound Builders, as galena has often been found on the altars in the mounds.
It has been generally thought, by Mr. Squier and others, that there were no evidences that the Mound Builders were acquainted with the use of iron, or that their plating was more than a simple overlaying of one metal on another, or on some foreign substance.
Some years since, however, a mound was opened at Marietta, Ohio, which seems to have refuted these opinions. Dr. S. P. Hildreth, in a letter to the American Antiquarian Society, thus speaks of it:
"Lying immediately over or on the forehead of the body were found three large circular bosses, or ornaments for a sword-belt or buckler; they are composed of copper overlaid with a thick plate of silver. The fronts are slightly convex, with a depression like a cup in the centre, and they measure two inches and a quarter across the face of each. On the back side, opposite the depressed portion, is a copper rivet or nail, around which are two separate plates by which they were fastened to the leather. Two small pieces of leather were found lying between the plates of one of the bosses; they resemble the skin of a mummy, and seem to have been preserved by the salts of copper. Near the side of the body was found a plate of silver, which appears to have been the upper part of a sword scabbard; it is six inches in length, two in breadth, and weighs one ounce. It seems to have been fastened to the scabbard by three or four rivets, the holes of which remain in the silver.
"Two or three pieces of copper tube were also found, filled with iron rust. These pieces, from their appearance, composed the lower end of the scabbard, near the point of the sword. No signs of the sword itself were discovered, except the rust above mentioned.
"The mound had every appearance of being as old as any in the neighborhood, and was at the first settlement of Marietta covered with large trees. It seems to have been made for this single personage, as this skeleton alone was discovered. The bones were very much decayed, and many of them crumbled to dust upon exposure to the air."
Mr. Squier says, "These articles have been critically examined, and it is beyond doubt that the copper bosses were absolutely plated, not simply overlaid, with silver. Between the copper and the silver exists a connection such as, it seems to me, could only be produced by heat; and if it is admitted that these are genuine relics of the Mound Builders, it must, at the same time, be admitted that they possessed the difficult art of plating one metal upon another. There is but one alternative, viz., that they had occasional or constant intercourse with a people advanced in the arts, from whom these articles were obtained. Again, if Dr. Hildreth is not mistaken, oxydized iron or steel was also discovered in connection with the above remains, from which also follows the extraordinary conclusion that the Mound Builders were acquainted with the use of iron, the conclusion being, of course, subject to the improbable alternative already mentioned."
In connection with this subject, we would refer to the interesting evidences that the copper mines of the shore of Lake Superior had been at some very remote period worked by the Mound Builders. There were found deep excavations, with rude ladders, huge masses of rock broken off, also numerous stone tools, and all the evidences of extensive and long-continued labor. It is even said that the great Ontonagon mass of pure copper which is now in Washington was excavated by these ancient miners, and that when first found its surface showed numerous marks of their tools.
There seems to be no doubt, then, that the Mound Builders were familiar with the use of copper, silver, and lead, and in all probability of iron. They possessed various mechanical contrivances. They were very probably acquainted with the lathe. Beads of shell have been found looking very much like ivory, and showing the circular striae, identical with those produced by turning in a lathe.
In a mound on the Scioto River was found around the neck of a skeleton triple rows of beads, made of marine shells and the tusks of some animal. "Several of these," says Squier, "still retain their polish, and bear marks which seem to indicate that they were turned in some machine, instead of being carved or rubbed into shape by hand."
"Not among the least interesting and remarkable relics," continues the same author, "obtained from the mounds are the stone tubes. They are all carved from fine-grained materials, capable of receiving a polish, and being made ornamental as well as useful. The finest specimen yet discovered, and which can scarcely be surpassed in the delicacy of its workmanship, was found in a mound in the immediate vicinity of Chillicothe. It is composed of a compact variety of slate. This stone cuts with great clearness, and receives a fine though not glaring polish. The tube under notice is thirteen inches long by one and one-tenth in diameter; one end swells slightly, and the other terminates in a broad, flattened, triangular mouth-piece of fine proportions, which is carved with mathematical precision. It is drilled throughout; the bore is seven-tenths of an inch in diameter at the cylindrical end of the tube, and retains that calibre until it reaches the point where the cylinder subsides into the mouth-piece, when it contracts gradually to one-tenth of an inch. The inner surface of the tube is perfectly smooth till within a short distance of the point of contraction. For the remaining distance the circular striae, formed by the drill in boring, are distinctly marked. The carving upon it is very fine."
That they possessed saws is proved by the fact that on some fossil teeth found in one of the mounds the striae of the teeth of the saw could be distinctly perceived.
When we consider that some of their porphyry carvings will turn the edge of the best-tempered knife, we are forced to conclude that they possessed that singular process, known to the Mexicans and Peruvians of tempering copper to the hardness of steel.
We find in the mounds adzes similar in shape to our own, with the edges bevelled from the inside.
Drills and gravers of copper have also been found, with chisel-shaped edges or sharp points.
"It is not impossible," says Squier, "but, on the contrary, very probable, from a close inspection of the mound pottery, that the ancient people possessed the simple approximation toward the potter's wheel; and the polish which some of the finer vessels possess is due to other causes than vitrification."
Their sculptures show a considerable degree of progress. They consist of figures of birds, animals, reptiles, and the faces of men, carved from various kinds of stones, upon the bowls of pipes, upon toys, upon rings, and in distinct and separate figures. We give the opinions of those who have examined them.
Mr. Squier observes: "Various though not abundant specimens of their skill have been recovered, which in elegance of model, delicacy, and finish, as also in fineness of material, come fully up to the best Peruvian specimens, to which they bear, in many respects, a close resemblance. The bowls of most of the stone pipes are carved in miniature figures of animals, birds, reptiles, etc. All of them are executed with strict fidelity to nature, and with exquisite skill. Not only are the features of the objects faithfully represented, but their peculiarities and habits are in some degree exhibited. . . . The two heads here presented, intended to represent the eagle, are far superior in point of finish, spirit, and truthfulness, to any miniature carvings, ancient or modern, which have fallen under the notice of the authors. The peculiar defiant expression of the king of birds is admirably preserved in the carving, which in this respect, more than any other, displays the skill of the artist."
FROM THE MOUNDS OF THE OHIO VALLEY
Traces of cloth with "doubled and twisted fibre" have been found in the mounds; also matting; also shuttle-like tablets, used in weaving. There have also been found numerous musical pipes, with mouth-pieces and stops; lovers' pipes, curiously and delicately carved, reminding us of Bryant's lines—
"Till twilight came, and lovers walked and wooed In a forgotten language; and old tunes, From instruments of unremembered forms, Gave the soft winds a voice."
There is evidence which goes to prove that the Mound Builders had relations with the people of a semi-tropical region in the direction of Atlantis. Among their sculptures, in Ohio, we find accurate representations of the lamantine, manatee, or sea-cow—found to-day on the shores of Florida, Brazil, and Central America—and of the toucan, a tropical and almost exclusively South American bird. Sea-shells from the Gulf, pearls from the Atlantic, and obsidian from Mexico, have also been found side by side in their mounds.
The antiquity of their works is now generally conceded. "From the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon," says Mr. Gliddon, "we have bones of at least two thousand five hundred years old; from the pyramids and the catacombs of Egypt both mummied and unmummied crania have been taken, of still higher antiquity, in perfect preservation; nevertheless, the skeletons deposited in our Indian mounds, from the Lakes to the Gulf, are crumbling into dust through age alone."
All the evidence points to the conclusion that civilized or semi-civilized man has dwelt on the western continent from a vast antiquity. Maize, tobacco, quinoa, and the mandico plants have been cultivated so long that their wild originals have quite disappeared.
"The only species of palm cultivated by the South American Indians, that known as the Gulielma speciosa, has lost through that culture its original nut-like seed, and is dependent on the hands of its cultivators for its life. Alluding to the above-named plants Dr. Brinton ("Myths of the New World," p. 37) remarks, 'Several are sure to perish unless fostered by human care. What numberless ages does this suggest? How many centuries elapsed ere man thought of cultivating Indian corn? How many more ere it had spread over nearly a hundred degrees of latitude and lost all resemblance to its original form?' In the animal kingdom certain animals were domesticated by the aborigines from so remote a period that scarcely any of their species, as in the case of the lama of Peru, were to be found in a state of unrestrained freedom at the advent of the Spaniards." (Short's "North Americans of Antiquity," p. 11.)
The most ancient remains of man found in Europe are distinguished by a flattening of the tibia; and this peculiarity is found to be present in an exaggerated form in some of the American mounds. This also points to a high antiquity.
"None of the works, mounds, or enclosures are found on the lowest formed of the river terraces which mark the subsidence of the streams, and as there is no good reason why their builders should have avoided erecting them on that terrace while they raised them promiscuously on all the others, it follows, not unreasonably, that this terrace has been formed since the works were erected." (Baldwin's "Ancient America," p. 47.)
We have given some illustrations showing the similarity between the works of the Mound Builders and those of the Stone and Bronze Age in Europe. (See pp. 251, 260, 261, 262, 265, 266, ante.)
The Mound Builders retreated southward toward Mexico, and probably arrived there some time between A.D. 29 and A.D. 231, under the name of Nahuas. They called the region they left in the Mississippi Valley "Hue Hue Tlapalan"—the old, old red land—in allusion, probably, to the red-clay soil of part of the country.
In the mounds we find many works of copper but none of bronze. This may indicate one of two things: either the colonies which settled the Mississippi Valley may have left Atlantis prior to the discovery of the art of manufacturing bronze, by mixing one part of tin with nine parts of copper, or, which is more probable, the manufactures of the Mound Builders may have been made on the spot; and as they had no tin within their territory they used copper alone, except, it may be, for such tools as were needed to carve stone, and these, perhaps, were hardened with tin. It is known that the Mexicans possessed the art of manufacturing true bronze; and the intercourse which evidently existed between Mexico and the Mississippi Valley, as proved by the presence of implements of obsidian in the mounds of Ohio, renders it probable that the same commerce which brought them obsidian brought them also small quantities of tin, or tin-hardened copper implements necessary for their sculptures.
The proofs, then, of the connection of the Mound Builders with Atlantis are:
1. Their race identity with the nations of Central America who possessed Flood legends, and whose traditions all point to an eastern, over-sea origin; while the many evidences of their race identity with the ancient Peruvians indicate that they were part of one great movement of the human race, extending from the Andes to Lake Superior, and, as I believe, from Atlantis to India.
2. The similarity of their civilization, and their works of stone and bronze, with the civilization of the Bronze Age in Europe.
3. The presence of great truncated mounds, kindred to the pyramids of Central America, Mexico, Egypt, and India.
4. The representation of tropical animals, which point to an intercourse with the regions around the Gulf of Mexico, where the Atlanteans were colonized.
5. The fact that the settlements of the Mound Builders were confined to the valley of the Mississippi, and were apparently densest at those points where a population advancing up that, stream would first reach high, healthy, and fertile lands.
6. The hostile nations which attacked them came from the north; and when the Mound Builders could no longer hold the country, or when Atlantis stink in the sea, they retreated in the direction whence they came, and fell back upon their kindred races in Central America, as the Roman troops in Gaul and Britain drew southward upon the destruction of Rome.
7. The Natchez Indians, who are supposed to have descended from the Mound Builders, kept a perpetual fire burning before an altar, watched by old men who were a sort of priesthood, as in Europe.
8. If the tablet said to have been found in a mound near Davenport, Iowa, is genuine, which appears probable, the Mound Builders must either have possessed an alphabet, or have held intercourse with some people who did. (See "North Americans of Antiquity," p. 38.) This singular relic exhibits what appears to be a sacrificial mound with a fire upon it; over it are the sun, moon, and stars, and above these a mass of hieroglyphics which bear some resemblance to the letters of European alphabets, and especially to that unknown alphabet which appears upon the inscribed bronze celt found near Rome. (See p. 258 of this work.) For instance, one of the letters on the celt is this, #; on the Davenport tablet we find this sign, #; on the celt we have #; on the tablet, #; on the celt we have #; on the tablet, #.
CHAPTER IV.
THE IBERIAN COLONIES OF ATLANTIS
At the farthest point in the past to which human knowledge extends a race called Iberian inhabited the entire peninsula of Spain, from the Mediterranean to the Pyrenees. They also extended over the southern part of Gaul as far as the Rhone.
"It is thought that the Iberians from Atlantis and the north-west part of Africa," says Winchell, "settled in the Southwest of Europe at a period earlier than the settlement of the Egyptians in the north-east of Africa. The Iberians spread themselves over Spain, Gaul, and the British Islands as early as 4000 or 5000 B.C. . . . The fourth dynasty (of the Egyptians), according to Brugsch, dates from about 3500 B.C. At this time the Iberians had become sufficiently powerful to attempt the conquest of the known world." ("Preadamites," p. 443.)
"The Libyan-Amazons of Diodorus—that is to say, the Libyans of the Iberian race—must be identified with the Libyans with brown and grizzly skin, of whom Brugsch has already pointed out the representations figured on the Egyptian monuments of the fourth dynasty." (Ibid.)
The Iberians, known as Sicanes, colonized Sicily in the ancient days. They were the original settlers in Italy and Sardinia. They are probably the source of the dark-haired stock in Norway and Sweden. Bodichon claims that the Iberians embraced the Ligurians, Cantabrians, Asturians, and Aquitanians. Strabo says, speaking of the Turduli and Turdetani, "they are the most cultivated of all the Iberians; they employ the art of writing, and have written books containing memorials of ancient times, and also poems and laws set in verse, for which they claim an antiquity of six thousand years." (Strabo, lib. iii., p. 139.)
The Iberians are represented to-day by the Basques.
The Basque are "of middle size, compactly built, robust and agile, of a darker complexion than the Spaniards, with gray eyes and black hair. They are simple but proud, impetuous, merry, and hospitable. The women are beautiful, skilful in performing men's work, and remarkable for their vivacity and grace. The Basques are much attached to dancing, and are very fond of the music of the bagpipe." ("New American Cyclopaedia," art. Basques.)
"According to Paul Broca their language stands quite alone, or has mere analogies with the American type. Of all Europeans, we must provisionally hold the Basques to be the oldest inhabitants of our quarter of the world." (Peschel, "Races of Men," p. 501.)
The Basque language—the Euscara—"has some common traits with the Magyar, Osmanli, and other dialects of the Altai family, as, for instance, with the Finnic on the old continent, as well as the Algonquin-Lenape language and some others in America." ("New American Cyclopaedia," art. Basques.)
Duponceau says of the Basque tongue:
"This language, preserved in a corner of Europe by a few thousand mountaineers, is the sole remaining fragment of, perhaps, a hundred dialects constructed on the same plan, which probably existed and were universally spoken at a remote period in that quarter of the world. Like the bones of the mammoth, it remains a monument of the destruction produced by a succession of ages. It stands single and alone of its kind, surrounded by idioms that have no affinity with it."
We have seen them settling, in the earliest ages, in Ireland. They also formed the base of the dark-haired population of England and Scotland. They seem to have race affinities with the Berbers, on the Mediterranean coast of Africa.
Dr. Bodichon, for fifteen years a surgeon in Algiers, says:
"Persons who have inhabited Brittany, and then go to Algeria, are struck with the resemblance between the ancient Armoricans (the Bretons) and the Cabyles (of Algiers). In fact, the moral and physical character is identical. The Breton of pure blood has a long head, light yellow complexion of bistre tinge, eyes black or brown, stature short, and the black hair of the Cabyle. Like him, he instinctively hates strangers; in both are the same perverseness and obstinacy, same endurance of fatigue, same love of independence, same inflexion of the voice, same expression of feelings. Listen to a Cabyle speaking his native tongue, and you will think you bear a Breton talking Celtic."
The Bretons, he tells us, form a strong contrast to the people around them, who are "Celts of tall stature, with blue eyes, white skins, and blond hair: they are communicative, impetuous, versatile; they pass rapidly from courage to despair. The Bretons are entirely different: they are taciturn, hold strongly to their ideas and usages, are persevering and melancholic; in a word, both in morale and physique they present the type of a southern race—of the Atlanteans."
By Atlanteans Dr. Bodichon refers to the inhabitants of the Barbary States—that being one of the names by which they were known to the Greeks and Romans. He adds:
"The Atlanteans, among the ancients, passed for the favorite children of Neptune; they made known the worship of this god to other nations-to the Egyptians, for example. In other words, the Atlanteans were the first known navigators. Like all navigators, they must have planted colonies at a distance. The Bretons, in our opinion, sprung from one of them."
Neptune was Poseidon, according to Plato, founder of Atlantis.
I could multiply proofs of the close relationship between the people of the Bronze Age of Europe and the ancient inhabitants of Northern Africa, which should be read remembering that "connecting ridge" which, according to the deep-sea soundings, united Africa and Atlantis.
CHAPTER V.
THE PERUVIAN COLONY.
If we look at the map of Atlantis, as revealed by the deep sea soundings, we will find that it approaches at one point, by its connecting ridge, quite closely to the shore of South. America, above the mouth of the Amazon, and that probably it was originally connected with it.
If the population of Atlantis expanded westwardly, it naturally found its way in its ships up the magnificent valley of the Amazon and its tributaries; and, passing by the low and fever-stricken lands of Brazil, it rested not until it had reached the high, fertile, beautiful, and healthful regions of Bolivia, from which it would eventually cross the mountains into Peru.
Here it would establish its outlying colonies at the terminus of its western line of advance, arrested only by the Pacific Ocean, precisely as we have seen it advancing up the valley of the Mississippi, and carrying on its mining operations on the shores of Lake Superior; precisely as we have seen it going eastward up the Mediterranean, past the Dardanelles, and founding Aryan, Hamitic, and probably Turanian colonies on the farther shores of the Black Sea and on the Caspian. This is the universal empire over which, the Hindoo books tell us, Deva Nahusha was ruler; this was "the great and aggressive empire" to which Plato alludes; this was the mighty kingdom, embracing the whole of the then known world, from which the Greeks obtained their conception of the universal father of all men in King Zeus. And in this universal empire Senor Lopez must find an explanation of the similarity which, as we shall show, exists between the speech of the South American Pacific coast on the one hand, and the speech of Gaul, Ireland, England, Italy, Greece, Bactria, and Hindostan on the other.
Montesino tells us that at some time near the date of the Deluge, in other words, in the highest antiquity, America was invaded by a people with four leaders, named Ayar-manco-topa, Ayar-chaki, Ayar-aucca, and Ayar-uyssu. "Ayar," says Senor Lopez, "is the Sanscrit Ajar, or aje, and means primitive chief; and manco, chaki, aucca, and uyssu, mean believers, wanderers, soldiers, husbandmen. We have here a tradition of castes like that preserved in the four tribal names of Athens." The laboring class (naturally enough in a new colony) obtained the supremacy, and its leader was named Pirhua-manco, revealer of Pir, light (pu~r, Umbrian pir). Do the laws which control the changes of language, by which a labial succeeds a labial, indicate that the Mero or Merou of Theopompus, the name of Atlantis, was carried by the colonists of Atlantis to South America (as the name of old York was transplanted in a later age to New York), and became in time Perou or Peru? Was not the Nubian "Island of Merou," with its pyramids built by "red men," a similar transplantation? And when the Hindoo priest points to his sacred emblem with five projecting points upon it, and tells us that they typify "Mero and the four quarters of the world," does he not refer to Atlantis and its ancient universal empire?
Manco, in the names of the Peruvian colonists, it has been urged, was the same as Mannus, Manu, and the Santhal Maniko. It reminds us of Menes, Minos, etc., who are found at the beginning of so many of the Old World traditions.
The Quichuas—this invading people—were originally a fair skinned race, with blue eyes and light and even auburn hair; they had regular features, large heads, and large bodies. Their descendants are to this day an olive-skinned people, much lighter in color than the Indian tribes subjugated by them.
They were a great race. Peru, as it was known to the Spaniards, held very much the same relation to the ancient Quichua civilization as England in the sixteenth century held to the civilization of the empire of the Caesars. The Incas were simply an offshoot, who, descending from the mountains, subdued the rude races of the sea-coast, and imposed their ancient civilization upon them.
The Quichua nation extended at one time over a region of country more than two thousand miles long. This whole region, when the Spaniards arrived, "was a populous and prosperous empire, complete in its civil organization, supported by an efficient system of industry, and presenting a notable development of some of the more important arts of civilized life." (Baldwin's "Ancient America," p. 222.)
The companions of Pizarro found everywhere the evidences of a civilization of vast antiquity. Cieca de Leon mentions "great edifices" that were in ruins at Tiahuanaca, "an artificial hill raised on a groundwork of stone," and "two stone idols, apparently made by skilful artificers," ten or twelve feet high, clothed in long robes. "In this place, also," says De Leon, "there are stones so large and so overgrown that our wonder is excited, it being incomprehensible how the power of man could have placed them where we see them. They are variously wrought, and some of them, having the form of men, must have been idols. Near the walls are many caves and excavations under the earth; but in another place, farther west, are other and greater monuments, such as large gate-ways with hinges, platforms, and porches, each made of a single stone. It surprised me to see these enormous gate-ways, made of great masses of stone, some of which were thirty feet long, fifteen high, and six thick."
The capital of the Chimus of Northern Peru at Gran-Chimu was conquered by the Incas after a long and bloody struggle, and the capital was given up to barbaric ravage and spoliation. But its remains exist to-day, the marvel of the Southern Continent, covering not less than twenty square miles. Tombs, temples, and palaces arise on every hand, ruined but still traceable. Immense pyramidal structures, some of them half a mile in circuit; vast areas shut in by massive walls, each containing its water-tank, its shops, municipal edifices, and the dwellings of its inhabitants, and each a branch of a larger organization; prisons, furnaces for smelting metals, and almost every concomitant of civilization, existed in the ancient Chimu capital. One of the great pyramids, called the "Temple of the Sun," is 812 feet long by 470 wide, and 150 high. These vast structures have been ruined for centuries, but still the work of excavation is going on.
One of the centres of the ancient Quichua civilization was around Lake Titicaca. The buildings here, as throughout Peru, were all constructed of hewn stone, and had doors and windows with posts, sills, and thresholds of stone.
At Cuelap, in Northern Peru, remarkable ruins were found. "They consist of a wall of wrought stones 3600 feet long, 560 broad, and 150 high, constituting a solid mass with a level summit. On this mass was another 600 feet long, 500 broad, and 150 high," making an aggregate height of three hundred feet! In it were rooms and cells which were used as tombs.
Very ancient ruins, showing remains of large and remarkable edifices, were found near Huamanga, and described by Cieca de Leon. The native traditions said this city was built "by bearded white men, who came there long before the time of the Incas, and established a settlement."
"The Peruvians made large use of aqueducts, which they built with notable skill, using hewn stones and cement, and making them very substantial." One extended four hundred and fifty miles across sierras and over rivers. Think of a stone aqueduct reaching from the city of New York to the State of North Carolina!
The public roads of the Peruvians were most remarkable; they were built on masonry. One of the-se roads ran along the mountains through the whole length of the empire, from Quito to Chili; another, starting from this at Cuzco, went down to the coast, and extended northward to the equator. These roads were from twenty to twenty-five feet wide, were macadamized with pulverized stone mixed with lime and bituminous cement, and were walled in by strong walls "more than a fathom in thickness." In many places these roads were cut for leagues through the rock; great ravines were filled up with solid masonry; rivers were crossed by suspension bridges, used here ages before their introduction into Europe. Says Baldwin, "The builders of our Pacific Railroad, with their superior engineering skill and mechanical appliances, might reasonably shrink from the cost and the difficulties of such a work as this. Extending from one degree north of Quito to Cuzco, and from Cuzco to Chili, it was quite as long as the two Pacific railroads, and its wild route among the mountains was far more difficult." Sarmiento, describing it, said, "It seems to me that if the emperor (Charles V.) should see fit to order the construction of another road like that which leads from Quito to Cuzco, or that which from Cuzco goes toward Chili, I certainly think he would not be able to make it, with all his power." Humboldt said, "This road was marvellous; none of the Roman roads I had seen in Italy, in the south of France, or in Spain, appeared to me more imposing than this work of the ancient Peruvians."
Along these great roads caravansaries were established for the accommodation of travellers.
These roads were ancient in the time of the Incas. They were the work of the white, auburn-haired, bearded men from Atlantis, thousands of years before the time of the Incas. When Huayna Capac marched his army over the main road to invade Quito, it was so old and decayed "that he found great difficulties in the passage," and he immediately ordered the necessary reconstructions.
It is not necessary, in a work of this kind, to give a detailed description of the arts and civilization of the Peruvians.. They were simply marvellous. Their works in cotton and wool exceeded in fineness anything known in Europe at that time. They had carried irrigation, agriculture, and the cutting of gems to a point equal to that of the Old World. Their accumulations of the precious metals exceeded anything previously known in the history of the world. In the course of twenty-five years after the Conquest the Spaniards sent from Peru to Spain more than eight hundred millions of dollars of gold, nearly all of it taken from the Peruvians as "booty." In one of their palaces "they had an artificial garden, the soil of which was made of small pieces of fine gold, and this was artificially planted with different kinds of maize, which were of gold, their stems, leaves, and ears. Besides this, they had more than twenty sheep (llamas) with their lambs, attended by shepherds, all made of gold." In a description of one lot of golden articles, sent to Spain in 1534 by Pizarro, there is mention of "four llamas, ten statues of women of full size, and a cistern of gold, so curious that it excited the wonder of all."
Can any one read these details and declare Plato's description of Atlantis to be fabulous, simply because he tells us of the enormous quantities of gold and silver possessed by the people? Atlantis was the older country, the parent country, the more civilized country; and, doubtless, like the Peruvians, its people regarded the precious metals as sacred to their gods; and they had been accumulating them from all parts of the world for countless ages. If the story of Plato is true, there now lies beneath the waters of the Atlantic, covered, doubtless, by hundreds of feet of volcanic debris, an amount of gold and silver exceeding many times that brought to Europe from Peru, Mexico, and Central America since the time of Columbus; a treasure which, if brought to light, would revolutionize the financial values of the world.
I have already shown, in the chapter upon the similarities between the civilizations of the Old and New Worlds, some of the remarkable coincidences which existed between the Peruvians and the ancient European races; I will again briefly, refer to a few of them:
1. They worshipped the sun, moon, and planets.
2. They believed in the immortality of the soul.
3. They believed in the resurrection of the body, and accordingly embalmed their dead.
4. The priest examined the entrails of the animals offered in sacrifice, and, like the Roman augurs, divined the future from their appearance.
5. They had an order of women vowed to celibacy-vestal virgins-nuns; and a violation of their vow was punished, in both continents, by their being buried alive.
6. They divided the year into twelve months.
7. Their enumeration was by tens; the people were divided into decades and hundreds, like the Anglo-Saxons; and the whole nation into bodies of 500, 1000, and 10,000, with a governor over each.
8. They possessed castes; and the trade of the father descended to the son, as in India.
9. They had bards and minstrels, who sung at the great festivals.
10. Their weapons were the same as those of the Old World, and made after the same pattern.
11. They drank toasts and invoked blessings.
12. They built triumphal arches for their returning heroes, and strewed the road before them with leaves and flowers.
13. They used sedan-chairs.
14. They regarded agriculture as the principal interest of the nation, and held great agricultural fairs and festivals for the interchange of the productions of the farmers.
15. The king opened the agricultural season by a great celebration, and, like the kings of Egypt, he put his hand to the plough, and ploughed the first furrow.
16. They had an order of knighthood, in which the candidate knelt before the king; his sandals were put on by a nobleman, very much as the spurs were buckled on the European knight; he was then allowed to use the girdle or sash around the loins, corresponding to the toga virilis of the Romans; he was then crowned with flowers. According to Fernandez, the candidates wore white shirts, like the knights of the Middle Ages, with a cross embroidered in front.
17. There was a striking resemblance between the architecture of the Peruvians and that of some of the nations of the Old World. It is enough for me to quote Mr. Ferguson's words, that the coincidence between the buildings of the Incas and the Cyclopean remains attributed to the Pelasgians in Italy and Greece, "is the most remarkable in the history of architecture."
OWL-HEADED VASES, TROY AND PERU
The illustrations on page 397 strikingly confirm Mr. Ferguson's views.
"The sloping jambs, the window cornice, the polygonal masonry, and other forms so closely resemble what is found in the old Pelasgic cities of Greece and Italy, that it is difficult to resist the conclusion that there may be some relation between them."
Even the mode of decorating their palaces and temples finds a parallel in the Old World. A recent writer says:
"We may end by observing, what seems to have escaped Senor Lopez, that the interior of an Inca palace, with its walls covered with gold, as described by Spaniards, with its artificial golden flowers and golden beasts, must have been exactly like the interior of the house of Alkinous or Menelaus—
"'The doors were framed of gold, Where underneath the brazen floor doth glass Silver pilasters, which with grace uphold Lintel of silver framed; the ring was burnished gold, And dogs on each side of the door there stand, Silver and golden.'"
"I can personally testify" (says Winchell, "Preadamites," p. 387) "that a study of ancient Peruvian pottery has constantly reminded me of forms with which we are familiar in Egyptian archaeology."
Dr. Schliemann, in his excavations of the ruins of Troy, found a number of what he calls "owl-headed idols" and vases. I give specimens on page 398 and page 400.
In Peru we find vases with very much the same style of face.
I might pursue those parallels much farther; but it seems to me that these extraordinary coincidences must have arisen either from identity of origin or long-continued ancient intercourse. There can be little doubt that a fair-skinned, light-haired, bearded race, holding the religion which Plato says prevailed in Atlantis, carried an Atlantean civilization at an early day up the valley of the Amazon to the heights of Bolivia and Peru, precisely as a similar emigration of Aryans went westward to the shores of the Mediterranean and Caspian, and it is very likely that these diverse migrations habitually spoke the same language.
Senor Vincente Lopez, a Spanish gentleman of Montevideo, in 1872 published a work entitled "Les Races Aryennes in Perou," in which he attempts to prove that the great Quichua language, which the Incas imposed on their subjects over a vast extent of territory, and which is still a living tongue in Peru and Bolivia, is really a branch of the great Aryan or Indo-European speech. I quote Andrew Lang's summary of the proofs on this point:
OWL-HEADED VASE, TROY
"Senor Lopez's view, that the Peruvians were Aryans who left the parent stock long before the Teutonic or Hellenic races entered Europe, is supported by arguments drawn from language, from the traces of institutions, from religious beliefs, from legendary records, and artistic remains. The evidence from language is treated scientifically, and not as a kind of ingenious guessing. Senor Lopez first combats the idea that the living dialect of Peru is barbarous and fluctuating. It is not one of the casual and shifting forms of speech produced by nomad races. To which of the stages of language does this belong—the agglutinative, in which one root is fastened on to another, and a word is formed in which the constitutive elements are obviously distinct, or the inflexional, where the auxiliary roots get worn down and are only distinguishable by the philologist? As all known Aryan tongues are inflexional, Senor Lopez may appear to contradict himself when he says that Quichua is an agglutinative Aryan language. But he quotes Mr. Max Mueller's opinion that there must have been a time when the germs of Aryan tongues had not yet reached the inflexional stage, and shows that while the form of Quichua is agglutinative, as in Turanian, the roots of words are Aryan. If this be so, Quichua may be a linguistic missing link.
"When we first look at Quichua, with its multitude of words, beginning with hu, and its great preponderance of q's, it seems almost as odd as Mexican. But many of these forms are due to a scanty alphabet, and really express familiar sounds; and many, again, result from the casual spelling of the Spaniards. We must now examine some of the-forms which Aryan roots are supposed to take in Quichua. In the first place, Quichua abhors the shock of two consonants. Thus, a word like ple'w in Greek would be unpleasant to the Peruvian's ear, and he says pillui, 'I sail.' The plu, again, in pluma, a feather, is said to be found in pillu, 'to fly.' Quichua has no v, any more than Greek has, and just as the Greeks had to spell Roman words beginning with V with Ou, like Valerius—Ou?ale'rios—so, where Sanscrit has v, Quichua has sometimes hu. Here is a list of words in hu:
+ QUICHUA. SANSCRIT. + Huakia, to call. Vacc, to speak. + Huasi, a house. Vas, to inhabit. + Huayra, air, au?'ra. Va, to breathe. + Huasa, the back. Vas, to be able (pouvoir). +
"There is a Sanscrit root, kr, to act, to do: this root is found In more than three hundred names of peoples and places in Southern America. Thus there are the Caribs, whose name may have the same origin as that of our old friends the Carians, and mean the Braves, and their land the home of the Braves, like Kaleva-la, in Finnish. The same root gives kara, the hand, the Greek xei'r, and kkalli, brave, which a person of fancy may connect with kalo's. Again, Quichua has an 'alpha privative'—thus A-stani means 'I change a thing's place;' for ni or mi is the first person singular, and, added to the root of a verb, is the sign of the first person of the present indicative. For instance, can means being, and Can-mi, or Cani, is, 'I am.' In the same way Munanmi, or Munani, is 'I love,' and Apanmi, or Apani, 'I carry.' So Lord Strangford was wrong when he supposed that the last verb in mi lived with the last patriot in Lithuania. Peru has stores of a grammatical form which has happily perished in Europe. It is impossible to do more than refer to the supposed Aryan roots contained in the glossary, but it may be noticed that the future of the Quichuan verb is formed in s-I love, Munani; I shall love, Munasa—and that the affixes denoting cases in the noun are curiously like the Greek prepositions."
The resemblance between the Quichua and Mandan words for I or me—mi—will here be observed.
Very recently Dr. Rudolf Falb has announced (Neue Freie Presse, of Vienna) that he has discovered that the relation of the Quichua and Aimara languages to the Aryan and Semitic tongues is very close; that, in fact, they "exhibit the most astounding affinities with the Semitic tongue, and particularly the Arabic", in which tongue Dr. Falb has been skilled from his boyhood. Following, up the lines of this discovery, Dr. Falb has found (1) a connecting link with the Aryan roots, and (2) has ultimately arrived face to face with the surprising revelation that "the Semitic roots are universally Aryan." The common stems of all the variants are found in their purest condition in Quichua and Aimara, from which fact Dr. Falb derives the conclusion that the high plains of Peru and Bolivia must be regarded as the point of exit of the present human race.
[Since the above was written I have received a letter from Dr. Falb, dated Leipsic, April 5th, 1881. Scholars will be glad to learn that Dr. Falb's great work on the relationship of the Aryan and Semitic languages to the Quichua and Aimara tongues will be published in a year or two; the manuscript contains over two thousand pages, and Dr. Falb has devoted to it ten years of study. A work from such a source, upon so curious and important a subject, will be looked for with great interest.]
But it is impossible that the Quichuas and Aimaras could have passed across the wide Atlantic to Europe if there had been no stepping-stone in the shape of Atlantis with its bridge-like ridges connecting the two continents.
It is, however, more reasonable to suppose that the Quichuas and Aimaras were a race of emigrants from Plato's island than to think that Atlantis was populated from South America. The very traditions to which we have referred as existing among the Peruvians, that the civilized race were white and bearded, and that they entered or invaded the country, would show that civilization did not originate in Peru, but was a transplantation from abroad, and only in the direction of Atlantis can we look for a white and bearded race.
In fact, kindred races, with the same arts, and speaking the same tongue in an early age of the world, separated in Atlantis and went east and west—the one to repeat the civilization of the mother-country along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, which, like a great river, may be said to flow out from the Black Sea, with the Nile as one of its tributaries, and along the shores of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf; while the other emigration advanced up the Amazon, and created mighty nations upon its head-waters in the valleys of the Andes and on the shores of the Pacific.
CHAPTER VI.
THE AFRICAN COLONIES.
Africa, like Europe and America, evidences a commingling of different stocks: the blacks are not all black, nor all woolly-haired; the Africans pass through all shades, from that of a light Berber, no darker than the Spaniard, to the deep black of the Iolofs, between Senegal and Gambia.
The traces of red men or copper-colored races are found in many parts of the continent. Prichard divides the true negroes into four classes; his second class is thus described:
"2. Other tribes have forms and features like the European; their complexion is black, or a deep olive, or a copper color approaching to black, while their hair, though often crisp and frizzled, is not in the least woolly. Such are the Bishari and Danekil and Hazorta, and the darkest of the Abyssinians.
"The complexion and hair of the Abyssinians vary very much, their complexion ranging from almost white to dark brown or black, and their hair from straight to crisp, frizzled, and almost woolly." (Nott and Gliddon, "Types of Mankind," p. 194.)
"Some of the Nubians are copper-colored or black, with a tinge of red." (Ibid., p. 198.)
Speaking of the Barbary States, these authors further say (Ibid., p. 204):
"On the northern coast of Africa, between the Mediterranean and the Great Desert, including Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Benzazi, there is a continuous system of highlands, which have been included under the general term Atlas—anciently Atlantis, now the Barbary States. . . . Throughout Barbary we encounter a peculiar group of races, subdivided into many tribes of various shades, now spread over a vast area, but which formerly had its principal and perhaps aboriginal abode along the mountain slopes of Atlas. . . . The real name of the Berbers is Mazirgh, with the article prefixed or suffixed—T-amazirgh or Amazirgh-T—meaning free, dominant, or 'noble race.' . . . We have every reason to believe the Berbers existed in the remotest times, with all their essential moral and physical peculiarities. . . . They existed in the time of Menes in the same condition in which they were discovered by Phoenician navigators previously to the foundation of Carthage. They are an indomitable, nomadic people, who, since the introduction of camels, have penetrated in considerable numbers into the Desert, and even as far as Nigritia. . . . Some of these clans are white, others black, with woolly hair."
Speaking of the Barbary Moors, Prichard says:
"Their figure and stature are nearly the same as those of the southern Europeans, and their complexion, if darker, is only so in proportion to the higher temperature of the country. It displays great varieties."
Jackson says:
"The men of Temsena and Showiah are of a strong, robust make, and of a copper color; the women are beautiful. The women of Fez are fair as the Europeans, but hair and eyes always dark. The women of Mequinas are very beautiful, and have the red-and-white complexion of English women."
Spix and Martins, the German travellers, depict the Moors as follows:
"A high forehead, an oval countenance, large, speaking, black eyes, shaded by arched and strong eyebrows, a thin, rather long, but not too pointed nose, rather broad lips, meeting in an acute angle, brownish-yellow complexion, thick, smooth, and black hair, and a stature greater than the middle height."
Hodgson states:
"The Tuarycks are a white people, of the Berber race; the Mozabiaks are a remarkably white people, and mixed with the Bedouin Arabs. The Wadreagans and Wurgelans are of a dark bronze, with woolly hair."
The Foolahs, Fulbe (sing. Pullo), Fellani, or Fellatah, are a people of West and Central Africa. It is the opinion of modern travellers that the Foolahs are destined to become the dominant people of Negro-land. In language, appearance, and history they present striking differences from the neighboring tribes, to whom they are superior in intelligence, but inferior, according to Garth, in physical development. Golbery describes them as "robust and courageous, of a reddish-black color, with regular features, hair longer and less woolly than that of the common negroes, and high mental capacity." Dr. Barth found great local differences in their physical characteristics, as Bowen describes the Foolahs of Bomba as being some black, some almost white, and many of a mulatto color, varying from dark to very bright. Their features and skulls were cast in the European mould. They have a tradition that their ancestors were whites, and certain tribes call themselves white men. They came from Timbuctoo, which lies to the north of their present location.
The Nubians and Foolahs are classed as Mediterraneans. They are not black, but yellowish-brown, or red-brown. The hair is not woolly but curly, and sometimes quite straight; it is either dark-brown or black, with a fuller growth of beard than the negroes. The oval face gives them a Mediterranean type. Their noses are prominent, their lips not puffy, and their languages have no connection with the tongues of the negroes proper. ("American Cyclopaedia," art. Ethnology, p. 759.)
"The Cromlechs (dolmens) of Algeria" was the subject of an address made by General Faidherbe at the Brussels International Congress. He considers these structures to be simply sepulchral monuments, and, after examining five or six thousand of them, maintains that the dolmens of Africa and of Europe were all constructed by the same race, during their emigration from the shores of the Baltic to the southern coast of the Mediterranean. The author does not, however, attempt to explain the existence of these monuments in other countries—Hindostan, for instance, and America. "In Africa," he says, "cromlechs are called tombs of the idolaters"—the idolaters being neither Romans, nor Christians, nor Phoenicians, but some antique race. He regards the Berbers as the descendants of the primitive dolmen-builders. Certain Egyptian monuments tell of invasions of Lower Egypt one thousand five hundred years before our era by blond tribes from the West. The bones found in the cromlechs are those of a large and dolichocephalous race. General Faidherbe gives the average stature (including the women) at 1.65 or 1.74 metre, while the average stature of French carabineers is only 1.65 metre. He did not find a single brachycephalous skull. The profiles indicated great intelligence. The Egyptian documents already referred to call the invaders Tamahu, which must have come from the invaders' own language, as it is not Egyptian. The Tuaregs of the present day may be regarded as the best representatives of the Tamahus. They are of lofty stature, have blue eyes, and cling to the custom of bearing long swords, to be wielded by both hands. In Soudan, on the banks of the Niger, dwells a negro tribe ruled by a royal family (Masas), who are of rather fair complexion, and claim descent from white men. Masas is perhaps the same as Mashash, which occurs in the Egyptian documents applied to the Tamahus. The Masas wear the hair in the same fashion as the Tamahus, and General Faidherbe is inclined to think that they too are the descendants of the dolmen-builders.
These people, according to my theory, were colonists from Atlantis—colonists of three different races—white, yellow, and sunburnt or red.
CHAPTER VII.
THE IRISH COLONIES FROM ATLANTIS.
We have seen that beyond question Spain and France owed a great part of their population to Atlantis. Let us turn now to Ireland.
We would naturally expect, in view of the geographical position of the country, to find Ireland colonized at an early day by the overflowing population of Atlantis. And, in fact, the Irish annals tell us that their island was settled prior to the Flood. In their oldest legends an account is given of three Spanish fishermen who were driven by contrary winds on the coast of Ireland before the Deluge. After these came the Formorians, who were led into the country prior to the Deluge by the Lady Banbha, or Kesair; her maiden name was h'Erni, or Berba; she was accompanied by fifty maidens and three men—Bith, Ladhra, and Fintain. Ladhra was their conductor, who was the first buried in Hibernia. That ancient book, the "Cin of Drom-Snechta," is quoted in the "Book of Ballymote" as authority for this legend.
The Irish annals speak of the Formorians as a warlike race, who, according to the "Annals of Clonmacnois," "were a sept descended from Cham, the son of Noeh, and lived by pyracie and spoile of other nations, and were in those days very troublesome to the whole world."
Were not these the inhabitants of Atlantis, who, according to Plato, carried their arms to Egypt and Athens, and whose subsequent destruction has been attributed to divine vengeance invoked by their arrogance and oppressions?
The Formorians were from Atlantis. They were called Fomhoraicc, F'omoraig Afraic, and Formoragh, which has been rendered into English as Formorians. They possessed ships, and the uniform representation is that they came, as the name F'omoraig Afraic indicated, from Africa. But in that day Africa did not mean the continent of Africa, as we now understand it. Major Wilford, in the eighth volume of the "Asiatic Researches," has pointed out that Africa comes from Apar, Aphar, Apara, or Aparica, terms used to signify "the West," just as we now speak of the Asiatic world as "the East." When, therefore, the Formorians claimed to come from Africa, they simply meant that they came from the West—in other words, from Atlantis—for there was no other country except America west of them.
They possessed Ireland from so early a period that by some of the historians they are spoken of as the aborigines of the country.
The first invasion of Ireland, subsequent to the coming of the Formorians, was led by a chief called Partholan: his people are known in the Irish annals as "Partholan's people." They were also probably Atlanteans. They were from Spain. A British prince, Gulguntius, or Gurmund, encountered off the Hebrides a fleet of thirty ships, filled with men and women, led by one Partholyan, who told him they were from Spain, and seeking some place to colonize. The British prince directed him to Ireland. ("De Antiq. et Orig. Cantab.")
Spain in that day was the land of the Iberians, the Basques; that is to say, the Atlanteans.
The Formorians defeated Partholan's people, killed Partholan, and drove the invaders out of the country.
The Formorians were a civilized race; they had "a fleet of sixty ships and a strong army."
The next invader of their dominions was Neimhidh; he captured one of their fortifications, but it was retaken by the Formorians under "Morc." Neimhidh was driven out of the country, and the Atlanteans continued in undisturbed possession of the island for four hundred years more. Then came the Fir-Bolgs. They conquered the whole island, and divided it into five provinces. They held possession of the country for only thirty-seven years, when they were overthrown by the Tuatha-de-Dananns, a people more advanced in civilization; so much so that when their king, Nuadha, lost his hand in battle, "Creidne, the artificer," we are told, "put a silver hand upon him, the fingers of which were capable of motion." This great race ruled the country for one hundred and ninety-seven years: they were overthrown by an immigration from Spain, probably of Basques, or Iberians, or Atlanteans, "the sons of Milidh," or Milesius, who "possessed a large fleet and a strong army." This last invasion took place about the year 1700 B.C.; so that the invasion of Neimhidh must have occurred about the year 2334 B.C.; while we will have to assign a still earlier date for the coming of Partholan's people, and an earlier still for the occupation of the country by the Formorians from the West.
In the Irish historic tales called "Catha; or Battles," as given by the learned O'Curry, a record is preserved of a real battle which was fought between the Tuatha-de-Dananns and the Fir Bolgs, from which it appears that these two races spoke the same language, and that they were intimately connected with the Formorians. As the armies drew near together the Fir-Bolgs sent out Breas, one of their great chiefs, to reconnoitre the camp of the strangers; the Tuatha-de-Dananns appointed one of their champions, named Sreng, to meet the emissary of the enemy; the two warriors met and talked to one another over the tops of their shields, and each was delighted to find that the other spoke the same language. A battle followed, in which Nunda, king of the Fir-Bolgs, was slain; Breas succeeded him; he encountered the hostility of the bards, and was compelled to resign the crown. He went to the court of his father-in-law, Elathe, a Formorian sea-king or pirate; not being well received, he repaired to the camp of Balor of the Evil Eye, a Formorian chief. The Formorian head-quarters seem to have been in the Hebrides. Breas and Balor collected a vast army and navy and invaded Ireland, but were defeated in a great battle by the Tuatha-de-Dananns.
These particulars would show the race-identity of the Fir-Bolg and Tuatha-de-Dananns; and also their intimate connection, if not identity with, the Formorians.
The Tuatha-de-Dananns seem to have been a civilized people; besides possessing ships and armies and working in the metals, they had an organized body of surgeons, whose duty it was to attend upon the wounded in battle; and they had also a bardic or Druid class, to preserve the history of the country and the deeds of kings and heroes.
According to the ancient books of Ireland the race known as "Partholan's people," the Nemedians, the Fir-Bolgs, the Tuatha-de-Dananns, and the Milesians were all descended from two brothers, sons of Magog, son of Japheth, son of Noah, who escaped from the catastrophe which destroyed his country. Thus all these races were Atlantean. They were connected with the African colonies of Atlantis, the Berbers, and with the Egyptians. The Milesians lived in Egypt: they were expelled thence; they stopped a while in Crete, then in Scythia, then they settled in Africa (See MacGeoghegan's "History of Ireland," p. 57), at a place called Gaethulighe or Getulia, and lived there during eight generations, say two hundred and fifty years; "then they entered Spain, where they built Brigantia, or Briganza, named after their king Breogan: they dwelt in Spain a considerable time. Milesius, a descendant of Breogan, went on an expedition to Egypt, took part in a war against the Ethiopians, married the king's daughter, Scota: he died in Spain, but his people soon after conquered Ireland. On landing on the coast they offered sacrifices to Neptune or Poseidon"—the god of Atlantis. (Ibid., p. 58.)
The Book of Genesis (chap. x.) gives us the descendants of Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. We are told that the sons of Japheth were Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. We are then given the names of the descendants of Gomer and Javan, but not of Magog. Josephus says the sons of Magog were the Scythians. The Irish annals take up the genealogy of Magog's family where the Bible leaves it. The Book of Invasions, the "Cin of Drom-Snechta," claims that these Scythians were the Phoenicians; and we are told that a branch of this family were driven out of Egypt in the time of Moses: "He wandered through Africa for forty-two years, and passed by the lake of Salivae to the altars of the Philistines, and between Rusicada and the mountains Azure, and he came by the river Monlon, and by the sea to the Pillars of Hercules, and through the Tuscan sea, and he made for Spain, and dwelt there many years, and he increased and multiplied, and his people were multiplied."
From all these facts it appears that the population of Ireland came from the West, and not from Asia—that it was one of the many waves of population flowing out from the Island of Atlantis-and herein we find the explanation of that problem which has puzzled the Aryan scholars. As Ireland is farther from the Punjab than Persia, Greece, Rome, or Scandinavia, it would follow that the Celtic wave of migration must have been the earliest sent out from the Sanscrit centre; but it is now asserted by Professor Schleicher and others that the Celtic tongue shows that it separated from the Sanscrit original tongue later than the others, and that it is more closely allied to the Latin than any other Aryan tongue. This is entirely inexplicable upon any theory of an Eastern origin of the Indo-European races, but very easily understood if we recognize the Aryan and Celtic migrations as going out about the same time from the Atlantean fountain-head.
There are many points confirmatory of this belief. In the first place, the civilization of the Irish dates back to a vast antiquity. We have seen their annals laying claim to an immigration from the direction of Atlantis prior to the Deluge, with no record that the people of Ireland were subsequently destroyed by the Deluge. From the Formorians, who came before the Deluge, to the Milesians, who came from Spain in the Historic Period, the island was continuously inhabited. This demonstrates (1) that these legends did not come from Christian sources, as the Bible record was understood in the old time to imply a destruction of all who lived before the Flood except Noah and his family; (2) it confirms our view that the Deluge was a local catastrophe, and did not drown the whole human family; (3) that the coming of the Formorians having been before the Deluge, that great cataclysm was of comparatively recent date, to wit, since the settlement of Ireland; and (4) that as the Deluge was a local catastrophe, it must have occurred somewhere not far from Ireland to have come to their knowledge. A rude people could scarcely have heard in that day of a local catastrophe occurring in the heart of Asia.
There are many evidences that the Old World recognized Ireland as possessing a very ancient civilization. In the Sanscrit books it is referred to as Hiranya, the "Island of the Sun," to wit, of sun-worship; in other words, as pre-eminently the centre of that religion which was shared by all the ancient races of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. It is believed that Ireland was the "Garden of Phoebus" of the Western mythologists.
The Greeks called Ireland the "Sacred Isle" and "Ogygia."
"Nor can any one," says Camden, "conceive why they should call it Ogygia, unless, perhaps, from its antiquity; for the Greeks called nothing Ogygia unless what was extremely ancient." We have seen that Ogyges was connected by the Greek legends with a first deluge, and that Ogyges was "a quite mythical personage, lost in the night of ages."
It appears, as another confirmation of the theory of the Atlantis origin of these colonies, that their original religion was sun-worship; this, as was the case in other countries, became subsequently overlaid with idol-worship. In the reign of King Tighernmas the worship of idols was introduced. The priests constituted the Order of Druids. Naturally many analogies have been found to exist between the beliefs and customs of the Druids and the other religions which were drawn from Atlantis. We have seen in the chapter on sun-worship how extensive this form of religion was in the Atlantean days, both in Europe and America.
It would appear probable that the religion of the Druids passed from Ireland to England and France. The metempsychosis or transmigration of souls was one of the articles of their belief long before the time of Pythagoras; it had probably been drawn from the storehouse of Atlantis, whence it passed to the Druids, the Greeks, and the Hindoos. The Druids had a pontifex maximus to whom they yielded entire obedience. Here again we see a practice which extended to the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Hindoos, Peruvians, and Mexicans.
The Druids of Gaul and Britain offered human sacrifices, while it is claimed that the Irish Druids did not. This would appear to have been a corrupt after-growth imposed upon the earlier and purer sacrifice of fruits and flowers known in Atlantis, and due in part to greater cruelty and barbarism in their descendants. Hence we find it practised in degenerate ages on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Irish Druidical rites manifested themselves principally in sun worship. Their chief god was Bel or Baal—the same worshipped by the Phoenicians—the god of the sun. The Irish name for the sun, Grian, is, according to Virgil, one of the names of Apollo—another sun-god, Gryneus. Sun-worship continued in Ireland down to the time of St. Patrick, and some of its customs exist among the peasantry of that country to this day. We have seen that among the Peruvians, Romans, and other nations, on a certain day all fires were extinguished throughout the kingdom, and a new fire kindled at the chief temple by the sun's rays, from which the people obtained their fire for the coming year. In Ireland the same practice was found to exist. A piece of land was set apart, where the four provinces met, in the present county of Meath; here, at a palace called Tlachta, the divine fire was kindled. Upon the night of what is now All-Saints-day the Druids assembled at this place to offer sacrifice, and it was established, under heavy penalties, that no fire should be kindled except from this source. On the first of May a convocation of Druids was held in the royal palace of the King of Connaught, and two fires were lit, between which cattle were driven, as a preventive of murrain and other pestilential disorders. This was called Beltinne, or the day of Bel's fire. And unto this day the Irish call the first day of May "Lha-Beul-tinne," which signifies "the day of Bel's fire." The celebration in Ireland of St. John's-eve by watch-fires is a relic of the ancient sun-worship of Atlantis. The practice of driving cattle through the fire continued for a longtime, and Kelly mentions in his "Folk-lore" that in Northamptonshire, in England, a calf was sacrificed in one of these fires to "stop the murrain" during the present century. Fires are still lighted in England and Scotland as well as Ireland for superstitious purposes; so that the people of Great Britain, it may be said, are still in some sense in the midst of the ancient sun-worship of Atlantis.
We find among the Irish of to-day many Oriental customs. The game of "jacks," or throwing up five pebbles and catching them on the back of the hand, was known in Rome. "The Irish keen (caoine), or the lament over the dead, may still be heard in Algeria and Upper Egypt, even as Herodotus heard it chanted by the Libyan women." The same practice existed among the Egyptians, Etruscans, and Romans. The Irish wakes are identical with the funeral feasts of the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans. (Cusack's "History of Ireland," p. 141.) The Irish custom of saying "God bless you!" when one sneezes, is a very ancient practice; it was known to the Romans, and referred, it is said, to a plague in the remote past, whose first symptom was sneezing.
We find many points of resemblance between the customs of the Irish and those of the Hindoo. The practice of the creditor fasting at the door-step of his debtor until he is paid, is known to both countries; the kindly "God save you!" is the same as the Eastern "God be gracious to you, my son!" The reverence for the wren in Ireland and Scotland reminds us of the Oriental and Greek respect for that bird. The practice of pilgrimages, fasting, bodily macerations, and devotion to holy wells and particular places, extends from Ireland to India.
All these things speak of a common origin; this fact has been generally recognized, but it has always been interpreted that the Irish camp, from the East, and were in fact a migration of Hindoos. There is not the slightest evidence to sustain this theory. The Hindoos have never within the knowledge of man sent out colonies or fleets for exploration; but there is abundant evidence, on the other hand, of migrations from Atlantis eastward. And how could the Sanscrit writings have preserved maps of Ireland, England, and Spain, giving the shape and outline of their coasts, and their very names, and yet have preserved no memory of the expeditions or colonizations by which they acquired that knowledge?
Another proof of our theory is found in "the round-towers" of Ireland. Attempts have been made to show, by Dr. Petrie and others, that these extraordinary structures are of modern origin, and were built by the Christian priests, in which to keep their church-plate. But it is shown that the "Annals of Ulster" mention the destruction of fifty-seven of them by an earthquake in A.D. 448; and Giraldus Cambrensis shows that Lough Neagh was created by an inundation, or sinking of the laud, in A.D. 65, and that in his day the fishermen could
"See the round-towers of other days In the waves beneath them shining."
Moreover, we find Diodorus Siculus, in a well-known passage, referring to Ireland, and describing it as "an island in the ocean over against Gaul, to the north, and not inferior in size to Sicily, the soil of which is so fruitful that they mow there twice in the year." He mentions the skill of their harpers, their sacred groves, and their singular temples of round form.
THE BURGH OF MOUSSA, IN THE SHETLANDS
We find similar structures in America, Sardinia, and India. The remains of similar round-towers are very abundant in the Orkneys and Shetlands. "They have been supposed by some," says Sir John Lubbock, "to be Scandinavian, but no similar buildings exist in Norway, Sweden, or Denmark, so that this style of architecture is no doubt anterior to the arrival of the Northmen." I give above a picture of the Burgh or Broch of the little island of Moussa, in the Shetlands. It is circular in form, forty-one feet in height. Open at the top; the central space is twenty feet in diameter, the walls about fourteen feet thick at the base, and eight feet at the top. They contain a staircase, which leads to the top of the building. Similar structures are found in the Island of Sardinia.
ROUND-TOWER OF THE CANYON OF THE MANCOS, COLORADO, U.S.
In New Mexico and Colorado the remains of round-towers are very abundant. The illustration below represents our of these in the valley of the Mancos, in the south-western corner of Colorado. A model of it is to be found in the Smithsonian collection at Washington. The tower stands at present, in its ruined condition, twenty feet high. It will be seen that it resembles the towers of Ireland, not only in its circular form but also in the fact that its door-way is situated at some distance from the ground.
It will not do to say that the resemblance between these prehistoric and singular towers, in countries so far apart as Sardinia, Ireland, Colorado, and India, is due to an accidental coincidence. It might as well be argued that the resemblance between the roots of the various Indo-European languages was also due to accidental coincidence, and did not establish any similarity of origin. In fact, we might just as well go back to the theory of the philosophers of one hundred and fifty years ago, and say that the resemblance between the fossil forms in the rocks and the living forms upon them did not indicate relationship, or prove that the fossils were the remains of creatures that had once lived, but that it was simply a way nature had of working out extraordinary coincidences in a kind of joke; a sort of "plastic power in nature," as it was called.
We find another proof that Ireland was settled by the people of Atlantis in the fact that traditions long existed among the Irish peasantry of a land in the "Far West," and that this belief was especially found among the posterity of the Tuatha-de-Dananns, whose connection with the Formorians we have shown.
The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, in a note to his translation of the "Popol Vuh," says:
"There is an abundance of legends and traditions concerning the passage of the Irish into America, and their habitual communication with that continent many centuries before the time of Columbus. We should bear in mind that Ireland was colonized by the Phoenicians (or by people of that race). An Irish Saint named Vigile, who lived in the eighth century, was accused to Pope Zachary of having taught heresies on the subject of the antipodes. At first he wrote to the pope in reply to the charge, but afterward he went to Rome in person to justify himself, and there he proved to the pope that the Irish had been accustomed to communicate with a transatlantic world."
"This fact," says Baldwin, "seems to have been preserved in the records of the Vatican."
The Irish annals preserve the memory of St. Brendan of Clonfert, and his remarkable voyage to a land in the West, made A.D. 545. His early youth was passed under the care of St. Ita, a lady of the princely family of the Desii. When he was five years old he was placed under the care of Bishop Ercus. Kerry was his native home; the blue waves of the Atlantic washed its shores; the coast was full of traditions of a wonderful land in the West. He went to see the venerable St. Enda, the first abbot of Arran, for counsel. He was probably encouraged in the plan he had formed of carrying the Gospel to this distant land. "He proceeded along the coast of Mayo, inquiring as he went for traditions of the Western continent. On his return to Kerry he decided to set out on the important expedition. St. Brendan's Hill still bears his name; and from the bay at the foot of this lofty eminence be sailed for the 'Far West.' Directing his course toward the southwest, with a few faithful companions, in a well-provisioned bark, he came, after some rough and dangerous navigation, to calm seas, where, without aid of oar or sail, he was borne along for many weeks." He had probably entered upon the same great current which Columbus travelled nearly one thousand years later, and which extends from the shores of Africa and Europe to America. He finally reached land; he proceeded inland until he came to a large river flowing from east to west, supposed by some to be the Ohio. "After an absence of seven years he returned to Ireland, and lived not only to tell of the marvels he had seen, but to found a college of three thousand monks at Clonfert." There are eleven Latin MSS. in the Bibliotheque Imperiale at Paris of this legend, the dates of which vary from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, but all of them anterior to the time of Columbus.
The fact that St. Brendan sailed in search of a country in the west cannot be doubted; and the legends which guided him were probably the traditions of Atlantis among a people whose ancestors had been derived directly or at second-hand from that country.
This land was associated in the minds of the peasantry with traditions of Edenic happiness and beauty. Miss Eleanor C. Donnelly, of Philadelphia, has referred to it in her poem, "The Sleeper's Sail," where the starving boy dreams of the pleasant and plentiful land:
"'Mother, I've been on the cliffs out yonder, Straining my eyes o'er the breakers free To the lovely spot where the sun was setting, Setting and sinking into the sea.
"'The sky was full of the fairest colors Pink and purple and paly green, With great soft masses of gray and amber, And great bright rifts of gold between.
"'And all the birds that way were flying, Heron and curlew overhead, With a mighty eagle westward floating, Every plume in their pinions red.
"'And then I saw it, the fairy city, Far away o'er the waters deep; Towers and castles and chapels glowing Like blessed dreams that we see in sleep.
"'What is its name?' 'Be still, acushla (Thy hair is wet with the mists, my boy); Thou hast looked perchance on the Tir-na-n'oge, Land of eternal youth and joy!
"'Out of the sea, when the sun is setting, It rises, golden and fair to view; No trace of ruin, or change of sorrow, No sign of age where all is new.
"'Forever sunny, forever blooming, Nor cloud nor frost can touch that spot, Where the happy people are ever roaming, The bitter pangs of the past forgot.'
This is the Greek story of Elysion; these are the Elysian Fields of the Egyptians; these are the Gardens of the Hesperides; this is the region in the West to which the peasant of Brittany looks from the shores of Cape Raz; this is Atlantis.
The starving child seeks to reach this blessed land in a boat and is drowned.
"High on the cliffs the light-house keeper Caught the sound of a piercing scream; Low in her hut the lonely widow Moaned in the maze of a troubled dream;
"And saw in her sleep a seaman ghostly, With sea-weeds clinging in his hair, Into her room, all wet and dripping, A drowned boy on his bosom bear.
"Over Death Sea on a bridge of silver The child to his Father's arms had passed! Heaven was nearer than Tir-na-n'oge, And the golden city was reached at last."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE OLDEST SON OF NOAH.
That eminent authority, Dr. Max Mueller, says, in his "Lectures on the Science of Religion,"
"If we confine ourselves to the Asiatic continent, with its important peninsula of Europe, we find that in the vast desert of drifting human speech three, and only three, oases have been formed in which, before the beginning of all history, language became permanent and traditional—assumed, in fact, a new character, a character totally different from the original character of the floating and constantly varying speech of human beings. These three oases of language are known by the name of Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic. In these three centres, more particularly in the Aryan and Semitic, language ceased to be natural; its growth was arrested, and it became permanent, solid, petrified, or, if you like, historical speech. I have always maintained that this centralization and traditional conservation of language could only have been the result of religious and political influences, and I now mean to show that we really have clear evidence of three independent settlements of religion—the Turanian, the Aryan, and the Semitic—concomitantly with the three great settlements of language."
There can be no doubt that the Aryan and another branch, which Mueller calls Semitic, but which may more properly be called Hamitic, radiated from Noah; it is a question yet to be decided whether the Turanian or Mongolian is also a branch of the Noachic or Atlantean stock.
To quote again from Max Mueller:
"If it can only be proved that the religions of the Aryan nations are united by the same bonds of a real relationship which have enabled us to treat their languages as so many varieties of the same type—and so also of the Semitic—the field thus opened is vast enough, and its careful clearing, and cultivation will occupy several generations of scholars. And this original relationship, I believe, can be proved. Names of the principal deities, words also expressive of the most essential elements of religion, such as prayer, sacrifice, altar, spirit, law, and faith, have been preserved among the Aryan and among the Semitic nations, and these relics admit of one explanation only. After that, a comparative study of the Turanian religions may be approached with better hope of success; for that there was not only a primitive Aryan and a primitive Semitic religion, but likewise a primitive Turanian religion, before each of these primeval races was broken up and became separated in language, worship and national sentiment, admits, I believe, of little doubt. . . . There was a period during which the ancestors of the Semitic family had not yet been divided, whether in language or in religion. That period transcends the recollection of every one of the Semitic races, in the same way as neither Hindoos, Greeks, nor Romans have any recollection of the time when they spoke a common language, and worshipped their Father in heaven by a name that was as yet neither Sanscrit, nor Greek, nor Latin. But I do not hesitate to call this Prehistoric Period historical in the best sense of the word. It was a real period, because, unless it was real, all the realities of the Semitic languages and the Semitic religions, such as we find them after their separation, would be unintelligible. Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic point to a common source as much as Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin; and unless we can bring ourselves to doubt that the Hindoos, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutons derived the worship of their principal deity from their common Aryan sanctuary, we shall not be able to deny that there was likewise a primitive religion of the whole Semitic race, and that El, the Strong One in heaven, was invoked by the ancestors of all the Semitic races before there were Babylonians in Babylon, Phoenicians in Sidon and Tyrus—before there were Jews in Mesopotamia or Jerusalem. The evidence of the Semitic is the same as that of the Aryan languages: the conclusion cannot be different.... |
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