THE LOST ATLANTIS.
“Man’s steps are not upon thy paths; thy fields
Are not a spoil for him; thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth’s destruction, thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send him, shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dash him again to earth--there let him lie.”
“The Story of Atlantis,” recorded by Plato in his Timaeus, as
communicated to Solon by the Egyptian priests, has, in the light of
modern geography, been generally regarded as a myth, but within a few
years has been revived, and there are not wanting investigators of
profound learning who regard it as authentic. The following is the
translation from the Greek of Plato: “Among the great deeds of Athens,
of which the recollection is preserved in our books, there is one which
should be placed above all others. Our books tell that the Athenians
destroyed an army which came across the Atlantic Sea, and insolently
invaded Europe and Asia; for this sea was then navigable, and beyond the
strait where you place the Pillars of Hercules, there was an island
larger than Asia (Minor) and Lybya combined. From this island one could
pass easily to other islands, and from these to the continent which lies
around the Interior Sea.
“The sea on this side the strait (Gibraltar) of which we speak,
resembles an harbor with a narrow entrance; but there is a genuine sea,
and the land which surrounds it is a veritable continent. In the Island
of Atlantis lived three kings with great and marvelous power. They had
under their dominion the whole of Atlantis, several other islands and
some parts of the continent.
“At one time their power extended into Lybya, and into Europe as far as
Tyrrhenia (Italy), and uniting their whole force, they sought to destroy
our whole country at a blow; but their defeat stopped the invasion and
gave entire independence to all the countries this side the Pillars of
Hercules. Afterwards, in one day and one fatal night, there came
earthquakes and inundations which engulfed the warlike people.
“Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea, and then that sea became
inaccessible so that navigation on it ceased on account of the quantity
of mud the engulfed island left in its place.”
Plutarch, in his life of Solon, relates that when the law-giver was in
Egypt “he conferred with the priests and learned the story of Atlantis.”
Diodorus Siculus states that: “Over against Africa lies a very great
island, in the vast ocean many days’ sail from Lybya westward. The soil
there is very fruitful, a great part whereof is mountainous, but much
likewise champaign, which is the most sweet and pleasant part, for it
is watered by several navigable streams, and beautiful with many gardens
of pleasure, planted by divers sorts of trees and an abundance of
orchards. The towns are adorned with stately buildings and banqueting
houses, pleasantly situated in the gardens and orchards.”
Theopompus who wrote in the fourth century B. C. tells substantially the
same story, which was given by Silenus to the ancient King Midas,
recorded by Aristotle.[B] The Gauls possessed traditions on the subject,
which were collected by the Roman historian Timagenes, who lived in the
first century, B. C. This record states that three distinct people dwelt
in Gaul (France). 1, The Aborigines; 2, The invaders from a distant
island, (Atlantis); 8, The Aryan Gauls. Marcellus also, in a book on the
Ethiopians speaks of several islands lying on the Atlantic ocean near
Europe, which we may undoubtedly identify as the Canaries; but he adds:
“The inhabitants of these islands preserve the memory of a much greater
island, Atlantis, which had for a long time exercised dominion over the
smaller ones.”
Now, all these writers most positively state that an island did exist
west of Africa, and was destroyed by a cataclysm. This island could not
have been very far from the shores of America, for the tribes of Central
America, in Mexico, in Venezuela and in British and Dutch Guiana,
distinctly describe these cataclysms, one by water, one by fire and a
third by winds.
Catlin, in his “Lifted and Subsided Rocks in America,” describes the
traditions of such a cataclysm. The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, in his
“Quatre Lettres sur La Mexique,” and his “Sources de l’Histoire
Primitive du Mexique,” has translated the “Teo Amoxtli,” which is the
Toltecan mythological history of the cataclysm of the Antilles. Catlin
found the tradition of such a cataclysm among the Indians of North
America. The Indians farther south state that the water was seen coming
in waves like mountains from the east, and of the tens of thousands who
ran for the high ground of the west, only one man, by one authority, and
two by another, and seven by another, succeeded in reaching high ground,
and from them sprang the present race of Indians. The tribes near the
coast distinctly describe three cataclysms, water, fire, and winds,
while those inland were sensible only of the flood of waters which ran
to the base of the mountains.[C]
“From amidst the thunder and flames which came out of the sea, whilst
mountains were sinking and rising, the terror-stricken inhabitants
sought every expedient of safety. Some fled to the mountains, and some
launched their rafts and canoes upon the turbulent waters, trusting that
a favorable current might land them upon a hospitable shore, and thus in
the elemental strife the ancient civilized people became widely
dispersed.”[D]
“The festival of$1‘Izcalli’ was instituted to commemorate this terrible
calamity, in which princes and people humbled themselves before the
Divinity and besought Him not to renew the frightful convulsions.”
It is claimed that by this catastrophe, an area larger than the Kingdom
of France became engulfed, including the Lesser Antilles, the extensive
banks at their eastern base, which at that date were vast fertile
plains, the peninsula of Yucatan, Honduras and Guatemala and the great
estuaries of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. With the
peninsula of Yucatan went down the splendid cities of Palenque, whose
sites are now in the ocean bed as well as the bones of the inhabitants,
and the continent has since risen sufficiently to restore the sites of a
number of the ancient cities, but the people were blotted from the face
of the earth. There is nothing more remarkable than the truthfulness of
the traditions of North American Indians. For hundreds of years
tradition has said that the Enchanted Mesa in New Mexico had been once
inhabited, and during the present year, an expedition from the
Smithsonian Institution explored the Mesa and verified the tradition.
In proof of the Cataclysm and submergence of Central America, our modern
geographies tell us that Old Guatemala was destroyed by a water volcano
in the sixteenth century, and again in the eighteenth by an earthquake.
The sea shells on both sides the Isthmus of Panama are alike, and
according to the law of the geographical distribution of animals, this
could only have come about by the Isthmus having at one time been
submerged, and remaining so long enough for the intermingling of species
and being raised again, and the fossils on both sides support the
hypothesis. The situation of Atlantis, west of Africa in the Atlantic
Ocean, would be so near to Central America that any disturbance, like
the one described by Plato, would be compelled to affect Central
America in the manner described by the traditions of the natives.
The nearest lands west of Africa, where Plato locates Atlantis, are the
Canary Islands, the nearest being fifty miles from Africa, and the whole
group extending three hundred miles, and are separated from the mainland
by a channel more than five thousand feet deep. Of all the oceanic
islands (not continental) discovered by Europeans, the _Canaries alone
were inhabited_, Here they found the Guanches, now extinct, who at the
time of their discovery were not aware that a continent existed in their
neighborhood, for, on being asked by the missionaries how they came to
this archipelago, they answered: “God placed us on these islands, and
then forsook and forgot us.”
Now who were the Guanches? Their islands had never been connected with
Africa, because the channel between them is a mile deep, and Wallace in
his “Island Life” has proved that any island surrounded by water more
than five thousand feet deep is of volcanic origin. If craniometry is a
reliable science the Guanches were not savages, but superior to the
Egyptians. According to Prof. Flower’s measurements, the skull of the
English of low grade contains one thousand five hundred and forty-two
cubic centimeters, the Guanches one thousand four hundred and
ninety-eight, Japanese one thousand four hundred and eighty-six, Chinese
one thousand four hundred and twenty-four, Italians one thousand four
hundred and seventy-five, and the ancient Egyptians one thousand four
hundred and sixty-four. That the remnant of a race found in mid-ocean
should have a better developed brain than many continental nations, is
significant, and if the Guanches were a part of the inhabitants of
Atlantis, we can easily understand their ability to make war and subdue
their neighbors as related by Plato.
The late Sir Anders Retzius, of Stockholm, the learned authority on
craniometry says: “The Dolichocephali of America are nearly related to
the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and to the Atlantic population of
Africa,--Moors, Turaricks, Copts, etc.--and the same kind of skull is
found in the Canary Islands in front of the African Coast, and on the
Islands in the Caribbean Sea on the opposite coast which faces Africa.
The color of the skin in the population on both sides of the Atlantic is
reddish brown, resembling tanned leather; the hair is the same; the
features of the face and the build of the frame as I am led to believe,
presenting the same analogy.”[E]
And now as to their dispersion. When Columbus set sail from Palos in
1492, he steered direct for the Canary Islands for repairs, and when he
left the Canaries, without any effort of his own, the trade winds
carried his vessels straight to the West Indies, and these winds blow in
this direction all the time. In December 1731 a ship started from
Teneriffe with a cargo of wine for one of the western Canaries, and
having only six men on board the ship became unmanageable, and the trade
winds carried them straight to Trinidad on the Island of Cuba. While
Atlantis was sinking, some of the inhabitants likely escaped on rafts
and boats, and being exactly in the location whence Columbus and the
Teneriffe ship were, they had nothing to do but to wait, and the trade
winds would take them to the West Indices and Yucatan and Central
America. We can now easily see why the oldest civilization of America is
in Central America. Some of the immigrants stopped in the West Indies,
for the aborigines Columbus found there spoke the same language as the
Mayas and Caribs of Yucatan speak today. Some stopped in South America,
for Dr. Lund, the Swedish naturalist, found in the bone caves of Minas
Geraes, Brazil, human skulls identical with those of Mexico. This may
possibly account for the superior civilization of Peru, where the
ingrafted population would amalgamate with the native races and produce
those wonderful paved roads the Spaniards found there.
Of course there will be objections to this hypothesis, and we will now
proceed to answer the objections.
Dr. Waitz, in his “Anthropology of Primitive Peoples” says: “The first
elements of civilization as far as history reaches, always appear as
communicated from one people to another, and of no people can it be
proved how, where and when they have become civilized by their own
inherent power.”
If this be true, then the ancient Mexican must have learned civilization
from some other people, and we know the red Indian had none to spare.
Winchell in his genealogical charts, represents the entire peopling of
the Pacific Slope from Alaska to Chili by Mongoloid branches. The world
knows that Mongolian civilization has always been fossilized and the
race is absolutely devoid of civilizing qualities. Their state is
founded upon the worship of their ancestors, and their exalted egotism
has for ages resisted every attempt to force advancement among them. To
say that the Mongols crossed Behring Strait and gave origin to the
Esquimaux is entirely compatible, for the Esquimaux are just about the
calibre a Chinese colony of that date would produce. To say that Mongols
are the source of Aztec civilization and Inca sun-worship is to propound
an anthropological paradox. From Alaska to the ancient confines of
Mexico, there is not one stone left to acknowledge the hundreds of years
of Esquimo and Indian occupancy, so we cannot expect light from that
source.
Separated from Africa by a channel only fifty miles wide, we may with
justice assume that the civilization of the continent of Atlantis and
that of Egypt was very similar. Egypt is the only land of the ancient
world where pyramids are found, and on a direct line with the trade
winds we find pyramids in Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. In
Egypt we find the temples emblazoned with hieroglyphics chiseled in the
solid rock, describing one of the oldest civilizations in the world. In
Uxmal, Mexico, Palenque and Copan are tablets, friezes, bas-reliefs,
facades and hieroglyphics, though inferior to the Egyptian in mimetic
art, still of the highest order, considering this to be the product of
the neolithic age, and the length of time since the separation from the
home roof-tree. The Egyptians were the only ones of the ancient people
who embalmed their dead. According to the French Historian, Lucien
Biart, the Zapotecs and Chicimecs of the Mexican Valley embalmed their
chiefs, and if we may believe this same author, the caves of the
Cordilleras are vast museums as full of interest us the catacombs of
Rome. That the Americans mummified their dead is proved by mummies
having been found in Peru and in the northwestern part of Patagonia. Dr.
Aq. Ried, the discoverer, has deposited one in the museum of Ratisbon,
Bavaria, and another was sent to the Smithsonian Institution.[F]
This mummy led to the remark of Professor Alexander Winchell in his
“Pre-Adamites.” “The humid atmosphere, unlike that of Peru, leads to the
inference that the mummification of the dead was practiced under some
controlling motive which must have been inherited from ancestors
dwelling in a more propitious clime, and which even the dripping
meteorology of Patagonia was insufficient to eradicate.”
The Egyptians were accurate astrologers and astronomers. They accurately
calculated the eclipses and the reappearance of stars whose journey
would require over a thousand years, and the pyramids are set to the
cardinal points in Egypt and in Mexico. In the City of Mexico is the
great calendar stone of solid porphyry weighing fifty tons. It was
brought many leagues across a broken country, without beasts of burden,
and Bustamente states that a thousand men were employed in its
transportation. From it we learn that the Aztecs or Toltecs were
astronomers and astrologers and calculated eclipses and knew the
solstices of the sun. They divided the year into eighteen months of
twenty days each, and, like the Egyptians, had five complementary days
to make out the three hundred and sixty-five, and every fifty-two years
they added thirteen (twelve and a half) days for a leap year to make the
solar and civil years agree. Like the Persians and Egyptians, a cycle of
fifty-two years or “An Age,” was represented by a serpent, so prominent
in mythology. Their astrological year was divided into months of
thirteen days each, and there were thirteen years in their indications,
which contained each, three hundred and sixty-five periods of thirteen
days.
It is also worthy of note that their number of lunar months of thirteen
days was contained in a cycle of fifty-two years, with the intercalation
of thirteen days (twelve and a half,) should correspond exactly with the
number of years in a great Sothic Period of the Egyptians, viz. 1461. Is
it reasonable to suppose that this strange affinity with Egyptian
civilization was accidental, or that a Turanian people independently
evolved itself into a counterpart of Hamitic Berbers? The stone is not
modern; it is not written in Aztec characters but in Toltec, a people
whom the Aztecs supplanted, and they claimed that the knowledge was not
original with them, but acquired from the Mayas who had preceded them in
Yucatan. The ideographic paintings of the Aztecs preserve traditions of
the creation of the world, a universal flood, the confusion of tongues
and the dispersion of man; and that a single man and woman saved
themselves in a boat which landed at Mount Colhuacan, and that all their
children were born deaf and remained so until a dove, one day, from the
top of a tree, taught them each in a different tongue.
All Aztec traditions, without exception, insist that they came from a
far-off island called “Azatlan” (probably Atlantis.) Dr. Lapham, in his
“Antiquities of Wisconsin,” claims that the Aztecs were identical with
the Mound-builders, and locates Azatlan in Wisconsin, on account of the
large number of effigy mounds there; and Dr. Foster in his “Prehistoric
Races” pictures these mounds called Azatlan; but the Aztec painting
published by Gemelle Carera in his _Giro del Mondo_, has hieroglyphics
representing their departure from Azatlan in canoes and on rafts, after
their confusion of tongues, and a _teocalli_, or temple by the side of a
palm tree, of which neither condition can be true of Wisconsin.
Max Muller, the greatest authority on philology, says that of all
indices to the mysteries of the ancient world, language is the most
satisfactory, and the _only_ evidence worth listening to with regard to
ante-historic periods. If we class the languages of the world into
groups according to cognation, we find the Aryan languages comprising
the Indian, Persian (Sanskrit), Hellenic, Latin group (Italian,
Wallacian, Provencal, French, Portugese and Spanish), Slavonic
(Russian), Teutonic (English), and the Keltic or Welsh, of which the
oldest is the Sanskrit and Zend. The Semitic group comprises the Hebrew,
Phœnician, Assyrian and Arabic, while the Babylonian and Chinese stand
alone. The Aryan and Semitic form a class known as _the inflectional_,
and are the only languages of the world that are adapted to and possess
a literature, and that have advanced the progress of the world in
religion, arts or sciences. Though springing from a common center, they
have grammatical structures that prevent the one being derived from the
other. The Semitic branched southward and westward, and was the language
of the Chaldee, Arab, Hebrew and Egyptian, the latter sometimes classed
as Hamitic. The Chinese is an organic language, monosyllabic, and
destitute of all grammar. The nouns have no number, declension or cases,
and the verbs are without conjugation through moods, tenses and persons.
All Mongoloid that reached America must have done so by Behring Strait,
and all such races, or descendants of such races, would undoubtedly have
kept a trace of their parental language. If the Aztecs were derived from
Mongoloids, we should expect a monosyllabic language, but on the
contrary, the Aztec language has more diminutives and augmentatives than
the Italian, and its substantives and verbs are more numerous than in
any other language.
Another proof of its wealth is, that when missionaries first went among
them, they found no trouble in expressing abstract ideas like religion,
virtue, etc. The consonants most used are l, t, x, z; next the sound of
tl and tz. L is of most frequent occurrence, but is never found at the
beginning of a word. The Aztec language, sweet and harmonious to the
ear, has no sharp or nasal sounds; the penultimate of most of its words
is long. The language is rich, exact and expressive, as is proven in the
“Natural History” by Dr. Hernandez, who describes twelve hundred plants,
two hundred birds, many quadrupeds, reptiles, insects, metals, etc., and
was able to call each by a separate name, given by the Indians. Poets
and orators there were by the hundred, and their written inaugurals make
as interesting reading as we hear from many of our legislators, many of
which were translated by the French scholar, Lucien Biart, who died
since these pages were begun.
If Max Muller is correct, then there can be no kinship between the
Mongols and Aztecs, and if they ever had communication with other
people, it must have been from the east. The Sanskrit word for God, is
_Devan_; the Latin, _Deus_; the Greek, _Oeoo_; and the Aztec, _Teotl_.
This similarity of sound and spelling might be purely accidental, and on
the other hand, it might have something of a long kinship to identify
it. The Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration of souls was a ruling
passion with the Aztec. This may have been the fruition of all
polytheistic religions, or it might have been the retention of
primordial culture, for we know the Egyptian embalmed his dead, lest the
dissolution of the body would destroy the soul also.
The greatest desecration that could befall the ancient Greeks and Romans
was the refusal of burial, because the soul of him thus uncared for
wandered thenceforth as a disembodied ghost.
We read in Homer’s Iliad how the dead Patroclus comes to the sleeping
Achilles, and tries in vain to grasp him with loving arms, but the soul,
like smoke, flits away below earth. How Hermotimos the seer used to go
out of his body, till at last, the soul, coming back from a spirit
journey, found that his wife had burnt his body on a funeral pile, and
that he had become a bodyless ghost. How Odysseus visits the bloodless
ghosts in Hades, and the shadows of the dead in Purgatory wondered to
see the body of Dante there, which stopped the sunlight and cast a
shadow.
How, in Virgil’s Æneid, the love-maddened Queen Dido could wish no
greater curse to befall Æneas, than that his body should lie unburied on
the plain, and even the old boatman, Charon, in Hades, refused to ferry
across the River Styx the shades of any who lacked burial while on
earth.
This idea of the phantom life of souls as shades and shadows,
constitutes the higher philosophy of the transcendental metaphysics of
the ancient Greeks, whose exponent was Pythagoras. Religious fervor was
strong in the Aztec, and from his devotion to formality, Atlantis must
have been the home of ceremonial religion. The words _Atlas_ and
_Atlantic_ have no satisfactory etymology in any language known to
Europe. These are not Greek and cannot be referred to any European
language, but in the Nahuatl or Toltecan language we find the radical
_a_, _atl_, which signifies water, man and top of the head. From these
come a series of words, such as _atlan_, on the border of, or amid the
water, from which comes the adjective _Atlantic_. Therefore the Atlantic
Ocean must have received its name from the continent Atlantis before the
cataclysm. We have also _Atlaca_, to combat, to be in agony. It also
means to hurl, to dart from the water, and in the preterit makes Atlaz.
From the island of Atlantis, the Atlas mountain in northern Africa would
seem to the inhabitants to be hurled out of the water, hence its name
was probably given by these same people, as the word occurs in no other
language.
On the map of Mexico today are more than a hundred towns with the same
combination of letters of _atl_ or _lan_ which shows that the
combination is an essential part of the Aztec language. There are many
traditions that are receiving light from the nineteenth century that
crystalizes them into accepted history. For twenty-six centuries has the
siege of Troy stood out in profile as the model epic of the world, but,
on account of its antiquity, of doubted veracity. Now Dr. Schlieman’s
excavations seem destined yet to find the funeral pyre of Patroclus,
surrounded by the remains of Trojan captives. And even later, the French
archaeologist M. Marcel Dieulafay has brought to light the ancient city
of Susa, and we may even now behold the Palace of Artaxerxes Mnemon,
whose foundations were laid by Xerxes I. 485 B. C.; and now after
twenty-three centuries, the student may take his Bible in his hand, turn
to the Book of Esther and read, while the guide in the ancient capital
of Persia points to the spot where Mordecai sat, to that corner where
Haman was hanged, and to this court where the lovely Esther was crowned
queen, and whence the sorrowing Vashti departed, as the unfortunate
Hebe, cup-bearer of Jove, before the victorious Ganymede.
Plato records the sad fate of Atlantis nearly five hundred years B. C.,
and Solom had recorded it in a poem two hundred years earlier. Plato
says the expedition against Egypt took place during the reign of the
Athenian Kings, Cecrops and Erectheus, and, according to the “Marble of
Paros,” these Kings ruled 1582 B. C. and 1409 B. C., which is not a
great deal earlier than the siege of Troy. Though this is very ancient
history, we have as much right to believe Plato’s history as Homer’s, if
it can be well established.
The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg is the greatest authority on the
translation of Aztec literature, and he maintains that the oldest
certain date in the Nahuatl or Toltecan language reaches back to 955 B.
C., and as the Toltecs dwelt some time in the country of Zibalba before
they dispossessed the Colhuas, their migration must have begun more than
a thousand years B. C. The Colhuas were the remnant of those who had
escaped the terrible calamity of Atlantis. To those who reject the
theory here offered, I would say the field is large and inviting to any
whose insight into the past can help solve the problems of the origin of
the ancient Mexicans.
[Illustration]