Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World - Ignatius Donnelly (short novels to read .txt) 📗

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 Cyclopædia,”

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 Cyclopædia,” 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 Brètons) 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 Señor 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 Señor 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 Pérou 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 Cæsars. 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. Cieça 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,