THE ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN SCHOLARS KNEW OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE
WESTERN CONTINENT.
In the earlier existence of the Greek and Roman peoples, knowledge was
extremely limited. These peoples were without any mode of perpetuating
or transmitting knowledge until the days, a little more than a thousand
years before the Christian Era, when Cadmus brought from Phoenecia the
letters which had been invented and adopted there for the representation
and expression of articulate sounds; and by the combination of these
letters to transmit and perpetuate human ideas. There is scarce a race
of savages in our day where the mass of the body politic are as
profoundly ignorant as were the great body of the Greek people a
thousand years before Christ.
Even those men who made such acquisitions of knowledge as were possible
in that day, could only learn from the lips of their imperfectly trained
teacher, and by travel to those countries which the barbarous condition
of the world allowed them to visit; and even after the learned men of
the Greek Islands came to know the power of letters, how small must have
been the amount of knowledge existing in the world, and how slow must
have been its spread amongst the untaught commonalty of the then Greek
world? In the day when the Phoenician ship Argo made a voyage to
Colchis, at the east end of the Black Sea, it so fired the imagination
of the Greek poets that they dreamed of the voyage and composed poems
about it for centuries.
Indeed it was not until the Romans, just before the Christian Era, had
subdued all the borders of the historic Mediterranean Sea, that free
intercourse amongst the inhabitants prevailed. Up to that period every
people, as a rule, carefully guarded all knowledge of their own wealth,
and of their own acts and possessions from the rest of mankind, instead
of making public expositions to attract the attention of the outside
world to their useful achievements, and they sometimes passed laws for
inflicting the severest punishments upon citizens who should reveal to
the outside world the locations, nature, or extent, or value of their
possessions.
Still, we glean from the ancient writers the following announcements.
1. That ancient book entitled "The Book of Wonders," ascribed to
Aristotle, contains the following: "When the Carthagenians, who were
masters of the western ocean, observed that many traders and other men,
attracted by the fertility of the soil and the pleasant climate, had
fixed there their homes, they feared that the knowledge of this land
should reach other nations, a great concourse to it of men from the
various lands of the earth would follow, that the conditions of life,
then so happy on that island, would not only be unfavorably affected,
but the Carthagenian Empire itself suffer injury, and the dominion of
the sea be wrested from their hands; and so they issued a decree that no
one, under penalty of death, should thereafter sail thither." This
passage is quoted, not merely with a claim that it refers to the
Continent of America, but for the purpose of showing how carefully the
Phoenician people, whether Asiatic, Carthagenian, or Spanish, guarded
from the great world the foreign discoveries which they had made, and
where their kindred were enjoying prosperity; and to enable us to see
how little likely their discoveries would be to come to the knowledge of
the great mass of mankind.
2. Let us look for a moment at some of the things which the ancient
Greek and Latin authors have said indicating their knowledge of the
existence of a western continent. Crates, a commentator on Homer, is
quoted by authority of Strabo, a very learned author of the century
before Christ, as saying that Homer means in his account of the western
Ethiopians the inhabitants of the Atlantis or the Hesperides, as the
unknown world of the west was then variously called.
3. Pliny also 6: 31-36, locates the western Ethiopians somewhere in the
Atlantic. This shows that Crates and Pliny believed that the great poet
Homer believed in the existence of a great continent on the western
shore of the Atlantic ocean.
4. Plato says in his Timaeus, Chapter VI.: "The sea" (the Atlantic
ocean), "was indeed navigable and had an island fronting the mouth which
you in your tongue call the Pillars of Hercules, and this island is
larger than Libya and Asia put together, and there is a passage hence
for travelers of that day to the rest of the islands, as well as from
those islands to the whole opposite continent that surrounds the real
sea.[TN-1]
5. Humboldt quotes that Anaxagoras, who was born five hundred years
B. C., and was a most eminent Greek philosopher, speaks of the grand
division of the world beyond the ocean.
6. Aelian in his Variæ Historiæ, Book 3, Chapter 18, cites Theopompus,
an eminent Greek historian, born about three hundred years B. C., as
stating that the Meropians inhabit a large continent beyond the ocean,
in comparison with which the known world was but an island.
7. Aristotle says in Chapters 84 and 85: "Beyond the Pillars of
Hercules, they say that an inhabited island was discovered by the
Carthagenians, which abounded in forests and navigable rivers and fruits
of all kinds, distant from the continent many days' sail. And while the
Carthagenians were engaged in making voyages to this land, and some had
even settled there on account of the fertility of the soil, the Senate
decreed that no one thereafter, under penalty of death, should voyage
thither." Aristotle was born three hundred and eighty-four years before
Christ.
8. Diodorus of Sicily, who lived in the century preceding the Christian
Era, says in his Book 5,--19 and 20, that it was the "Phoenicians
instead of the Carthagenians who were cast upon a most fertile island
opposite Africa, where the climate was that of perpetual spring, and
that the land was the proper habitation for gods rather than men."
He speaks of the continent, however, at length and with great detail,
enumerating its fertile valleys and navigable rivers, its rich and
abundant fruits and supply of game, its valuable forests and its genial
climate.
9. Pliny quotes Statius Sebosus, in his volume 2, page 106, Bohn, as
saying that _the two Hesperides are forty-two days' sail from the coast
of Africa_.
THE PHOENICIAN PEOPLE WERE EQUAL TO THE DISCOVERIES ON THE WESTERN
CONTINENT, IF WE JUDGE THEM BY WHAT THEY ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHED.
The prophet Isaiah, writing soon after seven hundred and fifty years
before Christ, in the twenty-third chapter of his prophecy, gives us a
pretty good idea of the unlimited commerce and the unlimited prosperity
of the merchants of Tyre. Among other things he says the following,
speaking of the City "_Whose antiquity is of ancient days_." He calls
the City "The Crowning City," "whose merchants are princes, whose
traffickers are the honorable of the earth." The wealth and luxury of
Tyre was eternally injurious to the Jewish people from the time of their
return from Egypt to Canaan to the carrying away of Israel to Babylon in
the later days. The Jewish husbandman, dazzled by the luxuries of Tyre
and Sidon, was affected as those in more moderate circumstances are in
later days, by the manners and customs of their rich neighbors, and were
building groves in high places under which to worship, as did the
priests of Baal in Palestine, and under the oaks in the northwest of
Europe, where they acquired the name of Druids. They forsook the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and worshipped Baal and Ashtaroth and Astarte,
the Phoenician Venus.
They even sacrificed their children to Moloch, the relentless fire god,
as Baal appeared in his sterner characteristics. But upon the loss of
wealth which Phoenicia sustained in the wars with Nebuchadnezzar and
subsequently with Alexander, the Phoenicians ceased to be conspicuously
wealthy and luxurious, and Israel was left to worship that God who
called their father Abraham from upper Chaldea, and who afterwards
brought him out of the "House of Bondage" in Egypt after having been
four hundred years enslaved there.
We have now glanced at the widespread influence of the Phoenician
people over the borders of the Mediterranean sea and over the west and
northwest of Europe.
Let it be remembered that what we have said upon this subject is founded
upon authentic evidence from ancient history and modern fact.
Let us look for a moment now and see what these peoples accomplished
through the waters of the Red sea and upon the waters easterly of the
straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. After Solomon had associated with Hiram, King
of Tyre, and Hiram, the son of Abif, the chief of the mechanics who
built the temple, and become acquainted with the wealth brought home by
Phoenician ships from the great outside world, his spirit of Jewish
thrift was excited, and he determined to share in the profits of
nautical adventures. In the first book of Kings, chapter 9, verses 26,
27 and 28, we find the following: "And King Solomon made a navy of ships
in Ezion Geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in
the land of Edom. And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen who
had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon.
"And they came to Ophir and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and
twenty talents, and brought it to King Solomon." In the 18th chapter of
this book, 11th and 12th verses, we find the following: "And the navy
also of Hiram that brought gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great
plenty of almug trees and precious stones, and the king made of the
almug trees pillars for the house of the lord and for the king's house,
harps also and psalteries for the singers. There came no such almug
trees nor were seen unto this day."
In the Second of Chronicles, chapter 9, verses 10 and 11, we find the
following: "And the servants also of Hiram and the servants of Solomon,
which brought gold from Ophir, brought algum trees and precious stones,
and the king made of the algum trees terraces to the house of the lord
and to the king's palace, and harps and psalteries for the singers, and
there were none such seen before in the land of Judah."
In Second Kings, chapter 10, verse 22, we find the following: "For the
king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram. Once in
three years came the navy of Tharshish bringing gold and silver, ivory
and apes and peacocks." This navy of Tharshish is beyond question the
navy of big ships manned by Jews and Phoenicians, and the expression
here used beyond question is used in the sense we should use in speaking
of a navy of big ships, or Baltimore Clippers.
In Second Chronicles, chapter 3, verse 6, we find the following: "And he
garnished the house with precious stones for beauty, and the gold was
gold of Parvaim."
We will not at the present time stop to ask where was Ophir, where was
Parvaim, where did the sailors of Tyre, so skilled in navigation and so
capable of navigating the western ocean, as we have seen them to be, as
to make successful voyages over to the Orkneys, a distance of some four
thousand miles from their homes, spend the three years during which they
were absent on their voyages from the easterly gulf of the Red Sea? No
Jewish lexicon tells us of almug or algum trees; no Hebrew writer
undertakes to describe them. But that enterprising publicist, O'Donovan,
who for the purposes of knowledge a few years ago traversed the
Caucasus, crossed the Caspian sea and buried himself for two or three
years among the still wild tribes of Turkestan, tells us that after his
liberation from the Turks, and while traveling in eastern Persia towards
the capital, he found a tree which attracted his attention because its
fibre reminded him of that of the Lignum Vitæ, which tree the natives
called "The Yalgam." Here we have Solomon's algum tree with the name
scarcely modified. Would it be the strangest thing that ever happened if
these "yalgam," "almug," or "algum" trees, so beautiful as to be
unequalled by anything known in Palestine, and for that reason set up as
ornaments in God's house, should turn out in the day when all things
become known to be rosewood and mahogany from the west coast of Central
America, taken on board by Solomon's servants on their return from
Parvaim or Peru and the old mines of Potosi, where they had gone for the
gold which filled the coffers of Solomon. It may be said that such would
be a long voyage; true, but not much longer than a voyage to the
Orkneys. Authentic profane history tells us that between six and seven
hundred years before the birth of Christ, Pharaoh Necho, King of Egypt,
built a fleet in the Red Sea, manned it with Phoenician sailors and
sent them out upon the waters to discover the shape and dimensions of
the continent of Africa. These sailors passed down through the straits
of Bab et Mandel and clear around the Cape of Good Hope and the
continent of Africa more than two thousand years before Vasco Degama,
and coming in through the straits of Gibraltar after an absence of about
two years. Their food supply run low, their supply was mainly wheat,
they tied up their ships, landed, plowed the ground with sharpened
sticks, cast their bread, not upon the waters, but upon the ground, and
thus raised a new crop of wheat, preparing to supply their wants until
they should return to Egypt, that eternal land of plenty.
It will be remembered that for centuries previous to the close of the
Punic wars under Hannibal the Phoenician people owned and controlled
the whole north of Africa, west of Egypt, and the whole of Spain up to
the Ebro, and the whole of Cyprus and a very large portion of Sicily,
and that when the ancient writers, and even modern writers speak of
Spain, the Carthagenians and northern Africa, they refer to the people
who sprang from the commercial cities on the eastern shore of the
Mediterranean sea, occupying a territory of not more than one hundred
miles in extent north and south, and extending back into Syria not more
than fifteen miles, whence all these people sprang, and applied to them
the general term of Phoenicians.
From the authorities we have quoted we think there can be no doubt but
that here and there a learned man among the Greek scholars had come to
believe that some eastern navigator had discovered a western world
exceedingly productive and beautiful, and that a population of eastern
origin had sprung up and existed in the lands so discovered.
IF THE WESTERN CONTINENT HAD REALLY BEEN DISCOVERED ACCIDENTALLY, OR OF
SET PURPOSE, WHAT EASTERN NATION WOULD BE MOST LIKELY TO HAVE BEEN THE
DISCOVERERS OF THIS WESTERN WORLD.
Nineveh and Babylon are never spoken of as having sent even a keel boat
out upon the seas. Egypt has been called the "Cradle of The Arts" and
the "Birthplace of Science and Civilization," but Egypt never attained
the maritime power or skill to enable her to navigate the waters of the
Mediterranean beyond the mouths of her eternal river.
Greece, afterwards so celebrated for science, art and philosophy, was at
the day of which Homer sung, a mere association of savage groups,
engaged in wars instead of seeking commercial profits in distributing
the products of civilized life among the nations of mankind.
And Romulus and Remus had not yet emerged from the sheep folds upon the
Italian hills. But very early in the history of the world, and as
students of history believe, earlier than the call of Abraham, the
interests of mankind had called into existence along the eastern shore
of the Mediterranean Sea an active and intelligent population which had
engaged in commerce as a means of subsistence, and were carrying it on
with such success as was possible in the then condition of the world of
mankind. A civilization had sprung up at a very early period along the
banks of the united rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and from the
Persian gulf to Nineveh and Nimroud, where was produced a great variety
of articles of necessity and luxury unknown to the rest of the world.
We all understand the story told of Aehan, who secreted in the floor of
his tent a Babalonish garment about fourteen hundred years before the
Christian era, while Israel was battling against Ai[TN-2] See Joshua,
Chap. 8. The children of Japhet had passed up through Persia to the
Caucasus, and from the Caucasus around the Black Sea to the waters of
the Danube and the Grecian Islands. The luxuries produced in the valley
of the Euphrates and the Tigris, called Mesopotamia, furnished a ready
basis for a successful commerce across the desert by the way of Damascus
to the shores of the Mediterranean; and it was by this means that a
commerce sprang up along these shores such as the world had never seen,
and which rendered the people resident there the leaders in all the arts
of life, including the art of navigation, throughout the then known
world, a result but twice paralleled on earth, once in the middle ages
at Venice and once in our own age at our magical Chicago. This enabled
this people to become the leaders of their race down to about six
hundred years before Christ, when there came that terrible war wherein
Nebuchadnezzar, by besieging Tyre, caused "every head of that people to
become bald and every shoulder to become pealed."[TN-3] Tyre subsisted
after the siege of Nebuchadnezzar, but Tyre never attained again the
prosperity or influence which she possessed at the commencement of this
memorable siege. She had before this time planted two hundred and fifty
cities upon the north coast of Africa, including the celebrated city of
Carthage. She had settled and occupied two hundred cities in the
territory of Spain, and for centuries occupied the whole of that country
up to the Ebro. The Jewish historians speak of Spain as Tharshish. Greek
writers speak of Spain as Tartesus. Jewish historians and prophets
speak of the ships of Tharshish as the most magnificent sea-going crafts
known to the world, as we for half of a century boasted of our Baltimore
Clipper. Her sailors passed beyond the Pillars of Hercules and passed up
the northwest coast of France and established their religion, the
worship of Baal, or the sun, among the simple people of Bretagne so
firmly and universally that at this day at Carnac, in the Morbihan,
there stand more Phoenician funereal monuments of unknown antiquity
than can be found together in any form of religion in any other portion
of the world's surface. They discovered tin in the Scilly Islands, off
the coast of Cornwall, and wrought those mines for centuries. Those
Islands were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as the
Cassiterrides, or Tin Islands. They worked both tin and copper mines in
Cornwall, and made profits on the sale of the products throughout the
known world. They passed up the British channel and through the German
Ocean, and in the immense sand dunes at the mouth of the Baltic
discovered and utilized that beautiful product of the primeval forests
called amber, which they dug from the sand hills. They took with them
their priests (the priests of Baal) and introduced the worship of the
sun, and made that worship paramount and universal in England, Ireland
and Scotland, as well as in Bretagne and the northwest of France. So
thoroughly has the religion of Baal been fastened upon the peoples of
these regions that portions of them at this day salute the arrival of
the Summer Solstice, June twenty-fourth, with burning fires, the precise
meaning of which is forgotten, but through those fires in all the early
portions of the present century the inhabitants have jumped with their
little ones in their arms, as the phrase goes, on Saint John's eve,
"for luck." The wizard of the north, Sir Walter Scott, in his song
entitled "Hail to the Chief," in the Lady of the Lake, has the following
when speaking of "Clan Alpines Pine":
"Ours is no saplin,
Chance sown by the fountain,
Blooming at Beltane," (Baaltime)
"In winter to fade."
Indeed the literary men of Scotland very generally call the Summer
Solstice the Beltane. One of the finest of the smaller towns in England
even to this day bears the name of Belper, (i. e. Baalpeor.)
They built that wonderful prehistoric open air temple, still standing
upon Salsbury Plain, and bearing the name of Stonehenge, the most
wonderful monument now standing upon the earth's surface. They built
several other circular open air temples in the British Islands, and
conspicuously among them, away up in the Orkneys, above Scotland, a very
perfect and beautiful one called the "Standing Stones of Stennes."
They visited the Azore Islands, west of Gibraltar, out in the Atlantic
ocean, and as we learn by Chateaubriand's Outretombe, Phoenician coin
in the last century was found scattered in the soil of these Islands. A
man who carries his eyes about him will rarely enter a large Irish
assembly, or an assembly of Canadian Frenchmen whose blood comes
principally from Bretagne, without noticing here and there a swarthy
complexion surrounding intensely bright flashing eyes which speak of
Spain and Carthage and the blood of warmer climes.
About one thousand years before Christ, Solomon, the Prince of Israel,
resolved to build a temple to the God of Abraham which should exhibit on
Mount Zion architectural skill and beauty such as the world had never
seen. The construction of that erection was intrusted entirely to the
people of Phoenicia; everything was perfected at Tyre so completely
that "no hammer or instrument of iron sounded upon the building" after
its component parts reached the Mount of God. Even the basins that were
to be used in the Lord's house were constructed by the artizans of
Phoenicia.
IS THERE ANY EVIDENCE EXISTING UPON THE WESTERN CONTINENT SHOWING OR
TENDING TO SHOW WHENCE THE PEOPLE WHO ERECTED THE PREHISTORIC STRUCTURES
ON THE WESTERN CONTINENT CAME?