population of the whole island was more or less mixed. Two kingdoms
and one small republic in the west divided the island between them.
The northern portion was ruled by an Initiate king. In the south too
the hereditary principle had given way to election by the people.
Exclusive race-dynasties were at an end, but kings of Toltec blood
occasionally rose to power both in the north and south, the northern
kingdom being constantly encroached upon by its southern rival, and
more and more of its territory annexed.
Having dealt at some length with the state of things under the
Toltecs, the leading political characteristics of the four following
sub-races need not long detain us, for none of them reached the
heights of civilization that the Toltecs did--in fact the degeneration
of the race had set in.
It seems to have been some sort of feudal system that the natural bent
of the Turanian race tended to develop. Each chief was supreme on his
own territory, and the king was only _primus inter pares_. The chiefs
who formed his council occasionally murdered their king and set up one
of their own number in his place. They were a turbulent and lawless
race--brutal and cruel also. The fact that at some periods of their
history regiments of women took part in their wars is significant of
the last named characteristics.
But the strange experiment they made in social life which, but for its
political origin, would more naturally have been dealt with under
"manners and customs," is the most interesting fact in their record.
Being continually worsted in war with their Toltec neighbours, knowing
themselves to be greatly outnumbered, and desiring above all things
increase of population, laws were passed, by which every man was
relieved from the direct burden of maintaining his family. The State
took charge of and provided for the children, and they were looked
upon as its property. This naturally tended to increase the birth-rate
amongst the Turanians, and the ceremony of marriage came to be
disregarded. The ties of family life, and the feeling of parental love
were of course destroyed, and the scheme having been found to be a
failure, was ultimately given up. Other attempts at finding
socialistic solutions of economical problems which still vex us
to-day, were tried and abandoned by this race.
The original Semites, who were a quarrelsome marauding and energetic
race, always leant towards a patriarchal form of government. Their
colonists, who generally took to the nomadic life, almost exclusively
adopted this form, but as we have seen they developed a considerable
empire in the days of the second map period, and possessed the great
"City of the Golden Gates." They ultimately, however, had to give way
before the growing power of the Akkadians.
It was in the third map period, about 100,000 years ago, that the
Akkadians finally overthrew the Semite power. This 6th sub-race were a
much more law-abiding people than their predecessors. Traders and
sailors, they lived in settled communities, and naturally produced an
oligarchical form of government. A peculiarity of theirs, of which
Sparta is the only modern example, was the dual system of two kings
reigning in one city. As a result probably of their sea-going taste,
the study of the stars became a characteristic pursuit, and this race
made great advances both in astronomy and astrology.
The Mongolian people were an improvement on their immediate ancestors
of the brutal Turanian stock. Born as they were on the wide steppes of
Eastern Siberia, they never had any touch with the mother-continent,
and owing, doubtless, to their environment, they became a nomadic
people. More psychic and more religious than the Turanians from whom
they sprang, the form of government towards which they gravitated
required a suzerain in the background who should be supreme both as a
territorial ruler and as a chief high priest.
_Emigrations._--Three causes contributed to produce emigrations. The
Turanian race, as we have seen, was from its very start imbued with
the spirit of colonizing, which it carried out on a considerable
scale. The Semites and Akkadians were also to a certain extent
colonizing races.
Then, as time went on and population tended more and more to outrun
the limits of subsistence, necessity operated with the least
well-to-do in every race alike, and drove them to seek for a
livelihood in less thickly populated countries. For it should be
realized that when the Atlanteans reached their zenith in the Toltec
era, the proportion of population to the square mile on the continent
of Atlantis probably equalled, even if it did not exceed, our modern
experience in England and Belgium. It is at all events certain that
the vacant spaces available for colonization were very much larger in
that age than in ours, while the total population of the world, which
at the present moment is probably not more than twelve hundred to
fifteen hundred millions, amounted in those days to the big figure of
about two thousand millions.
Lastly, there were the priest-led emigrations which took place prior
to each catastrophe--and there were many more of these than the four
great ones referred to above. The initiated kings and priests who
followed the "good law" were aware beforehand of the impending
calamities. Each one, therefore, naturally became a centre of
prophetic warning, and ultimately a leader of a band of colonists. It
may be noted here that in later days the rulers of the country deeply
resented these priest-led emigrations, as tending to impoverish and
depopulate their kingdoms, and it became necessary for the emigrants
to get on board ship secretly during the night.
In roughly tracing the lines of emigration followed by each sub-race
in turn, we shall of necessity ultimately reach the lands which their
respective descendants to-day occupy.
For the earliest emigrations we must go back to the Rmoahal days. It
will be remembered that that portion of the race which inhabited the
north-eastern coasts alone retained its purity of blood. Harried on
their southern borders and driven further north by the Tlavatli
warriors, they began to overflow to the neighbouring land to the east,
and to the still nearer promontory of Greenland. In the second map
period no pure Rmoahals were left on the then reduced mother-continent,
but the northern promontory of the continent then rising on the west was
occupied by them, as well as the Greenland cape already mentioned, and
the western shores of the great Scandinavian island. There was also a
colony on the land lying north of the central Asian sea.
Brittany and Picardy then formed part of the Scandinavian island, while
the island itself became in the third map period part of the growing
continent of Europe. Now it is in France that remains of this race have
been found in the quaternary strata, and the brachycephalous, or
round-headed specimen known as the "Furfooz man," may be taken as a fair
average of the type of the race in its decay.
Many times forced to move south by the rigours of a glacial epoch,
many times driven north by the greed of their more powerful
neighbours, the scattered and degraded remnants of this race may be
found to-day in the modern Lapps, though even here there was some
infusion of other blood. And so it comes to pass that these faded and
stunted specimens of humanity are the lineal descendants of the black
race of giants who arose on the equatorial lands of Lemuria well nigh
five million years ago.
The Tlavatli colonists seem to have spread out towards every point of
the compass. By the second map period their descendants were settled
on the western shores of the then growing American continent
(California) as well as on its extreme southern coasts (Rio de
Janeiro). We also find them occupying the eastern shores of the
Scandinavian island, while numbers of them sailed across the ocean,
rounded the coast of Africa, and reached India. There, mixing with the
indigenous Lemurian population, they formed the Dravidian race. In
later days this in its turn received an infusion of Aryan or Fifth
Race blood, from which results the complexity of type found in India
to-day. In fact we have here a very fair example of the extreme
difficulty of deciding any question of race upon merely physical
evidence, for it would be quite possible to have Fifth Race egos
incarnate among the Brahmans, Fourth Race egos among the lower castes,
and some lingering Third Race among the hill tribes.
By the fourth map period we find a Tlavatli people occupying the
southern parts of South America, from which it may be inferred that
the Patagonians probably had remote Tlavatli ancestry.
Remains of this race, as of the Rmoahals, have been found in the
quaternary strata of Central Europe, and the dolichocephalous
"Cro-Magnon man"[1] may be taken as an average specimen of the race in
its decadence, while the "Lake-Dwellers" of Switzerland formed an even
earlier and not quite pure offshoot. The only people who can be cited
as fairly pure-blooded specimens of the race at the present day are
some of the brown tribes of Indians of South America. The Burmese and
Siamese have also Tlavatli blood in their veins, but in their case it
was mixed with, and therefore dominated by, the nobler stock of one of
the Aryan sub-races.
We now come to the Toltecs. It was chiefly to the west that their
emigrations tended, and the neighbouring coasts of the American
continent were in the second map period peopled by a pure Toltec race,
the greater part of those left on the mother-continent being then of
very mixed blood. It was on the continents of North and South America
that this race spread abroad and flourished, and on which thousands of
years later were established the empires of Mexico and Peru. The
greatness of these empires is a matter of history, or at least of
tradition supplemented by such evidence as is afforded by magnificent
architectural remains. It may here be noted that while the Mexican
empire was for centuries great and powerful in all that is usually
regarded as power and greatness in our civilization of to-day, it
never reached the height attained by the Peruvians about 14,000 years
ago under their Inca sovereigns, for as regards the general well-being
of the people, the justice and beneficence of the government, the
equitable nature of the land tenure, and the pure and religious life
of the inhabitants, the Peruvian empire of those days might be
considered a traditional though faint echo of the golden age of the
Toltecs on the mother-continent of Atlantis.
The average Red Indian of North or South America is the best
representative to-day of the Toltec people, but of course bears no
comparison with the highly civilized individual of the race at its
zenith.
Egypt must now be referred to, and the consideration of this subject
should let in a flood of light upon its early history. Although the
first settlement in that country was not in the strict sense of the
term a colony, it was from the Toltec race that was subsequently drawn
the first great body of emigrants intended to mix with and dominate
the aboriginal people.
In the first instance it was the transfer of a great Lodge of
initiates. This took place about 400,000 years ago. The golden age of
the Toltecs was long past. The first great catastrophe had taken
place. The moral degradation of the people and the consequent practice
of the "black arts" were becoming more accentuated and widely spread.
Purer surroundings for the White Lodge were needed. Egypt was isolated
and was thinly peopled, and therefore Egypt was chosen. The settlement
so made answered its purpose, and undisturbed by adverse conditions
the Lodge of Initiates for nearly 200,000 years did its work.
About 210,000 years ago, when the time was ripe, the Occult Lodge
founded an empire--the first "Divine Dynasty" of Egypt--and began to
teach the people. Then it was that the first great body of colonists
was brought from Atlantis, and some time during the ten thousand years
that led up to the second catastrophe, the two great Pyramids of Gizeh
were built, partly to provide permanent Halls of Initiation, but also
to act as treasure-house and shrine for some great talisman of power
during the submergence which the Initiates knew to be impending. Map
No. 3 shows Egypt at that date as under water. It remained so for a
considerable period, but on its re-emergence it was again peopled by
the descendants of many of its old inhabitants who had retired to the
Abyssinian mountains (shown in Map No. 3 as an island) as well as by
fresh bands of Atlantean colonists from various parts of the world. A
considerable immigration of Akkadians then helped to modify the
Egyptian type. This is the era of the second "Divine Dynasty" of
Egypt--the rulers of the country being again Initiated Adepts.
The catastrophe of 80,000 years ago again laid the country under
water, but this time it was only a temporary wave. When it receded the
third "Divine Dynasty"--that mentioned by Manetho--began its rule, and
it was under the early kings of this dynasty that the great Temple of
Karnak and many of the more ancient buildings still standing in Egypt
were constructed. In fact with the exception of the two pyramids no
building in Egypt predates the catastrophe of 80,000 years ago.
The final submergence of Poseidonis sent another tidal wave over
Egypt. This too, was only a temporary calamity, but it brought the
Divine Dynasties to an end, for the Lodge of Initiates had transferred
its quarters to other lands.
Various points here left untouched have already been dealt with in the
_Transaction of the London Lodge_, "The Pyramids and Stonehenge."
The Turanians who in the first map period had colonized the northern
parts of the land lying immediately to the east of Atlantis, occupied
in the second map period its southern shores (which included the
present Morocco and Algeria). We also find them wandering eastwards,
and both the east and west coasts of the central Asian sea were
peopled by them. Bands of them ultimately moved still further east,
and the nearest approximation to the type of this race is to-day to be
found in the inland Chinese. A curious freak of destiny must be
recorded about one of their western offshoots. Dominated all through
the centuries by their more powerful Toltec neighbours, it was yet
reserved for a small branch of the Turanian stock to conquer and
replace the last great empire that the Toltecs raised, for the brutal
and barely civilized Aztecs were of pure Turanian blood.
The Semite emigrations were of two kinds, first, those which were
controlled by the natural impulse of the race: second, that special
emigration which was effected under the direct guidance of the Manu;
for, strange as it may seem, it was not from the Toltecs but from this
lawless and turbulent though vigorous and energetic sub-race that was
chosen the nucleus destined to be developed into our great Fifth or
Aryan Race. The reason, no doubt, lay in the Mânasic characteristic
with which the number five is always associated. The sub-race of that
number was inevitably developing its physical brain power and
intellect; although at the expense of the psychic perceptions, while
that same development of intellect to infinitely higher levels is at
once the glory and the destined goal of our Fifth Root Race.
Dealing first with the natural emigrations we find that in the second
map period while still leaving powerful nations on the mother-continent,
the Semites had spread both west and east--west to the lands now forming
the United States, and thus accounting for the Semitic type to be found
in some of the Indian races, and east to the northern shores of the
neighbouring continent, which combined all there then was of Europe,
Africa and Asia. The type of the ancient Egyptians, as well as of other
neighbouring nations, was to some extent modified by this original
Semite blood; but with the exception of the Jews, the only
representatives of comparatively unmixed race at the present day are the
lighter coloured Kabyles of the Algerian mountains.
The tribes resulting from the segregation effected by the Manu for the
formation of the new Root Race eventually found their way to the
southern shores of the central Asian sea, and there the first great
Aryan kingdom was established. When the Transaction dealing with the
origin of a Root Race comes to be written, it will be seen that many
of the peoples we are accustomed to call Semitic are really Aryan in
blood. The world will also be enlightened as to what constitutes the
claim of the Hebrews to be considered a "chosen people." Shortly it
may be stated that they constitute an abnormal and unnatural link
between the Fourth and Fifth Root Races.
The Akkadians, though eventually becoming supreme rulers on the
mother-continent of Atlantis, owed their birthplace as we have seen in
the second map period, to the neighbouring continent--that part
occupied by the basin of the Mediterranean about the present island of
Sardinia being their special home. From this centre they spread
eastwards, occupying what eventually became the shores of the Levant,
and reaching as far as Persia and Arabia. As we have seen, they also
helped to people Egypt. The early Etruscans, the Phoenicians,
including the Carthaginians and the Shumero-Akkads, were branches of
this race, while the Basques of to-day have probably more of the
Akkadian than of any other blood which flows in their veins.
A reference to the early inhabitants of our own islands may
appropriately be made here, for it was in the early Akkadian days,
about 100,000 years ago, that the colony of Initiates who founded
Stonehenge landed on these shores--"these shores" being, of course,
the shores of the Scandinavian part of the continent of Europe, as
shown in Map No. 3. The initiated priests and their followers appear
to have belonged to a very early strain of the Akkadian race--they
were taller, fairer, and longer headed than the aborigines of the
country, who were a very mixed race, but mostly degenerate remnants of
the Rmoahals. As readers of the _Transaction of the London Lodge_ on
the "Pyramids and Stonehenge," will know, the rude simplicity of
Stonehenge was intended as a protest against the extravagant ornament
and over-decoration of the existing temples in Atlantis, where the
debased worship of their own images was being carried on by the
inhabitants.
The Mongolians, as we have seen, never had any touch with the
mother-continent. Born on the wide plains of Tartary, their
emigrations for long found ample scope within those regions; but more
than once tribes of Mongol descent have overflowed from northern Asia
to America, across Behring's Straits, and the last of such
emigrations--that of the Kitans, some 1,300 years ago--has left traces
which some western savants have been able to follow. The presence of
Mongolian blood in some tribes of North American Indians has also been
recognized by various writers on ethnology. The Hungarians and Malays
are both known to be offshoots of this race, ennobled in the one case
by a strain of Aryan blood, degraded in the other by mixture with the
effete Lemurians. But the interesting fact about the Mongolians is
that its last family race is still in full force--it has not in fact
yet reached its zenith--and the Japanese nation has still got history
to give to the world.
_Arts and Sciences._--It must primarily be recognized that our own
Aryan race has naturally achieved far greater results in almost every
direction than did the Atlanteans, but even where they failed to reach
our level, the records of what they accomplished are of interest as
representing the high water mark which their tide of civilization
reached. On the other hand, the character of the scientific
achievements in which they did outstrip us are of so dazzling a
nature, that bewilderment at such unequal development is apt to be the
feeling left.
The arts and sciences, as practised by the first two races, were, of
course, crude in the extreme, but we do not propose to follow the
progress achieved by each sub-race separately. The history of the
Atlantean, as of the Aryan race, was interspersed with periods of
progress and of decay. Eras of culture were followed by times of
lawlessness, during which all artistic and scientific development was
lost, these again being succeeded by civilizations reaching to still
higher levels. It must naturally be with the periods of culture that
the following remarks will deal, chief among which stands out the
great Toltec era.
Architecture and sculpture, painting and music were all practised in
Atlantis. The music even at the best of times was crude, and the
instruments of the most primitive type. All the Atlantean races were
fond of colour, and brilliant hues decorated both the insides and the
outsides of their houses, but painting as a fine art was never well
established, though in the later days some kind of drawing and
painting was taught in the schools. Sculpture on the other hand, which
was also taught in the schools, was widely practised, and reached
great excellence. As we shall see later on under the head of
"Religion" it became customary for every man who could afford it to
place in one of the temples an image of himself. These were sometimes
carved in wood or in hard black stone like basalt, but among the
wealthy it became the fashion to have their statues cast in one of the
precious metals, aurichalcum, gold or silver. A very fair resemblance
of the individual usually resulted, while in some cases a striking
likeness was achieved.
Architecture, however, was naturally the most widely practised of
these arts. Their buildings were massive structures of gigantic
proportions. The dwelling houses in the cities were not, as ours are,
closely crowded together in streets. Like their country houses some
stood in their own garden grounds, others were separated by plots of
common land, but all were isolated structures. In the case of houses
of any importance four blocks of building surrounded a central
courtyard, in the centre of which generally stood one of the fountains
whose number in the "City of the Golden Gates" gained for it the
second appellation of the "City of Waters." There was no exhibition of
goods for sale as in modern streets. All transactions of buying and
selling took place privately, except at stated times, when large
public fairs were held in the open spaces of the cities. But the
characteristic feature of the Toltec house was the tower that rose
from one of its corners or from the centre of one of the blocks. A
spiral staircase built outside led to the upper stories, and a pointed
dome terminated the tower--this upper portion being very commonly used
as an observatory. As already stated the houses were decorated with
bright colours. Some were ornamented with carvings, others with
frescoes or painted patterns. The window-spaces were-filled with some
manufactured article similar to, but less transparent than, glass. The
interiors were not furnished with the elaborate detail of our modern
dwellings, but the life was highly civilized of its kind.
The temples were huge halls resembling more than anything else the
gigantic piles of Egypt, but built on a still more stupendous scale.
The pillars supporting the roof were generally square, seldom
circular. In the days of the decadence the aisles were surrounded with
innumerable chapels in which were enshrined the statues of the more
important inhabitants. These side shrines indeed were occasionally of
such considerable size as to admit a whole retinue of priests whom
some specially great man might have in his service for the ceremonial
worship of his image. Like the private houses the temples too were
never complete without the dome-capped towers, which of course were of
corresponding size and magnificence. These were used for astronomical
observations and for sun-worship.