The Antediluvian World

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> The Antediluvian World

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If we find on both sides of the Atlantic precisely the same arts,
sciences, religious beliefs, habits, customs, and traditions, it is
absurd to say that the peoples of the two continents arrived separately,
by precisely the same steps, at precisely the same ends. When we
consider the resemblance of the civilizations of the Mediterranean
nations to one another, no man is silly enough to pretend that Rome,
Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia, each spontaneously and separately
invented the arts, sciences, habits, and opinions in which they agreed;
but we proceed to trace out the thread of descent or connection from one
to another. Why should a rule of interpretation prevail, as between the
two sides of the Atlantic, different from that which holds good as to
the two sides of the Mediterranean Sea? If, in the one case, similarity
of origin has unquestionably produced similarity of arts, customs, and
condition, why, in the other, should not similarity of arts, customs,
and condition prove similarity of origin? Is there any instance in the
world of two peoples, without knowledge of or intercourse with each
other, happening upon the same invention, whether that invention be an
arrow-head or a steam-engine? If it required of mankind a lapse of at
least six thousand years before it began anew the work of invention, and
took up the thread of original thought where Atlantis dropped it, what
probability is there of three or four separate nations all advancing at
the same speed to precisely the same arts and opinions? The proposition
is untenable.

If, then, we prove that, on both sides of the Atlantic, civilizations
were found substantially identical, we have demonstrated that they must
have descended one from the other, or have radiated from some common
source.

CHAPTER II

THE IDENTITY OF THE CIVILIZATIONS OF THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW

MOSAICS AT MITLA, MEXICO

Architecture.--Plato tells us that the Atlanteans possessed
architecture; that they built walls, temples, and palaces.

We need not add that this art was found in Egypt and all the civilized
countries of Europe, as well as in Peru, Mexico, and Central America.
Among both the Peruvians and Egyptians the walls receded inward, and the
doors were narrower at, the top than at the threshold.

The obelisks of Egypt, covered with hieroglyphics, are paralleled by the
round columns of Central America, and both are supposed to have
originated in Phallus-worship. "The usual symbol of the Phallus was an
erect stone, often in its rough state, sometimes sculptured." (Squier,
"Serpent Symbol," p. 49; Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii., p. 504.)
The worship of Priapus was found in Asia, Egypt, along the European
shore of the Mediterranean, and in the forests of Central America.

The mounds of Europe and Asia were made in the same way and for the same
purposes as those of America. Herodotus describes the burial of a
Scythian king; he says, "After this they set to work to raise a vast
mound above the grave, all of them vying with each other, and seeking to
make it as tall as possible." "It must be confessed," says Foster
("Prehistoric Races," p. 193), "that these Scythic burial rites have a
strong resemblance to those of the Mound Builders." Homer describes the
erection of a great symmetrical mound over Achilles, also one over
Hector. Alexander the Great raised a great mound over his friend
Hephaestion, at a cost of more than a million dollars; and Semiramis
raised a similar mound over her husband. The pyramids of Egypt, Assyria,
and Phoenicia had their duplicates in Mexico and Central America.

CARVING ON THE BUDDHIST TOWER, SARNATH, INDIA

The grave-cists made of stone of the American mounds are exactly like
the stone chests, or kistvaen for the dead, found in the British mounds.
(Fosters "Prehistoric Races," p. 109.) Tumuli have been found in
Yorkshire enclosing wooden coffins, precisely as in the mounds of the
Mississippi Valley. (Ibid., p. 185.) The articles associated with the
dead are the same in both continents: arms, trinkets, food, clothes, and
funeral urns. In both the Mississippi Valley and among the Chaldeans
vases were constructed around the bones, the neck of the vase being too
small to permit the extraction of the skull. (Foster's "Prehistoric
Races," p. 200.)

The use of cement was known alike to the European and American nations.

The use of the arch was known on both sides of the Atlantic.

The manufacture of bricks was known in both the Old and New Worlds.

The style of ornamentation in architecture was much the same on both
hemispheres, as shown in the preceding designs, pages 137, 139.

Metallurgy.--The Atlanteans mined ores, and worked in metals; they used
copper, tin, bronze, gold, and silver, and probably iron.

The American nations possessed all these metals. The age of bronze, or
of copper combined with tin, was preceded in America, and nowhere else,
by a simpler age of copper; and, therefore, the working of metals
probably originated in America, or in some region to which it was
tributary. The Mexicans manufactured bronze, and the Incas mined iron
near Lake Titicaca; and the civilization of this latter region, as we
will show, probably dated back to Atlantean times. The Peruvians called
gold the tears of the sun: it was sacred to, the sun, as silver was to
the moon.

Sculpture.--The Atlanteans possessed this art; so did the American and
Mediterranean nations.

Dr. Arthur Schott ("Smith. Rep.," 1869, p. 391), in describing the "Cara
Gigantesca," or gigantic face, a monument of Yzamal, in Yucatan, says,
"Behind and on both sides, from under the mitre, a short veil falls upon
the shoulders, so as to protect the back of the head and the neck. This
particular appendage vividly calls to mind the same feature in the
symbolic adornments of Egyptian and Hindoo priests, and even those of
the Hebrew hierarchy." Dr. Schott sees in the orbicular wheel-like
plates of this statue the wheel symbol of Kronos and Saturn; and, in
turn, it may be supposed that the wheel of Kronos was simply the cross
of Atlantis, surrounded by its encircling ring.

Painting.--This art was known on both sides of the Atlantic. The
paintings upon the walls of some of the temples of Central America
reveal a state of the art as high as that of Egypt.

Engraving.--Plato tells us that the Atlanteans engraved upon pillars.
The American nations also had this art in common with Egypt, Phoenicia,
and Assyria.

Agriculture.--The people of Atlantis were pre-eminently an agricultural
people; so were the civilized nations of America and the Egyptians. In
Egypt the king put his hand to the plough at an annual festival, thus
dignifying and consecrating the occupation of husbandry. In Peru
precisely the same custom prevailed. In both the plough was known; in
Egypt it was drawn by oxen, and in Peru by men. It was drawn by men in
the North of Europe down to a comparatively recent period.

Public Works.--The American nations built public works as great as or
greater than any known in Europe. The Peruvians had public roads, one
thousand five hundred to two thousand miles long, made so thoroughly as
to elicit the astonishment of the Spaniards. At every few miles taverns
or hotels were established for the accommodation of travellers. Humboldt
pronounced these Peruvian roads "among the most useful and stupendous
works ever executed by man." They built aqueducts for purposes of
irrigation some of which were five hundred miles long. They constructed
magnificent bridges of stone, and had even invented suspension bridges
thousands of years before they were introduced into Europe. They had,
both in Peru and Mexico, a system of posts, by means of which news was
transmitted hundreds of miles in a day, precisely like those known among
the Persians in the time of Herodotus, and subsequently among the
Romans. Stones similar to mile-stones were placed along the roads in
Peru. (See Prescott's "Peru,")

Navigation.--Sailing vessels were known to the Peruvians and the Central
Americans. Columbus met, in 1502, at an island near Honduras, a party of
the Mayas in a large vessel, equipped with sails, and loaded with a
variety of textile fabrics of divers colors.

ANCIENT IRISH VASE OF THE BRONZE AGE

Manufactures.--The American nations manufactured woollen and cotton
goods; they made pottery as beautiful as the wares of Egypt; they
manufactured glass; they engraved gems and precious stones. The
Peruvians had such immense numbers of vessels and ornaments of gold that
the Inca paid with them a ransom for himself to Pizarro of the value of
fifteen million dollars.

Music.--It has been pointed out that there is great resemblance between
the five-toned music of the Highland Scotch and that of the Chinese and
other Eastern nations. ("Anthropology," p. 292.)

Weapons.--The weapons of the New World were identically the same as
those of the Old World; they consisted of bows and arrows, spears,
darts, short swords, battle-axes, and slings; and both peoples used
shields or bucklers, and casques of wood or hide covered with metal. If
these weapons had been derived from separate sources of invention, one
country or the other would have possessed implements not known to the
other, like the blow-pipe, the boomerang, etc. Absolute identity in so
many weapons strongly argues identity of origin.

Religion.--The religion of the Atlanteans, as Plato tells us, was pure
and simple; they made no regular sacrifices but fruits and flowers; they
worshipped the sun.

In Peru a single deity was worshipped, and the sun, his most glorious
work, was honored as his representative. Quetzalcoatl, the founder of
the Aztecs, condemned all sacrifice but that of fruits and flowers. The
first religion of Egypt was pure and simple; its sacrifices were fruits
and flowers; temples were erected to the sun, Ra, throughout Egypt. In
Peru the great festival of the sun was called Ra-mi. The Phoenicians
worshipped Baal and Moloch; the one represented the beneficent, and the
other the injurious powers of the sun.

Religious Beliefs.--The Guanches of the Canary Islands, who were
probably a fragment of the old Atlantean population, believed in the
immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, and preserved
their dead as mummies. The Egyptians believed in the immortality of the
soul and the resurrection of the body, and preserved the bodies of the
dead by embalming them. The Peruvians believed in the immortality of the
soul and the resurrection of the body, and they too preserved the bodies
of their dead by embalming them. "A few mummies in remarkable
preservation have been found among the Chinooks and Flatheads."
(Schoolcraft, vol. v., p. 693.) The embalmment of the body was also
practised in Central America and among the Aztecs. The Aztecs, like the
Egyptians, mummified their dead by taking out the bowels and replacing
them with aromatic substances. (Dorman, "Origin Prim. Superst.," p.
173.) The bodies of the kings of the Virginia Indians were preserved by
embalming. (Beverly, p. 47.)

Here are different races, separated by immense distances of land and
ocean, uniting in the same beliefs, and in the same practical and
logical application of those beliefs.

The use of confession and penance was known in the religious ceremonies
of some of the American nations. Baptism was a religious ceremony with
them, and the bodies of the dead were sprinkled with water.

Vestal virgins were found in organized communities on both sides of the
Atlantic; they were in each case pledged to celibacy, and devoted to
death if they violated their vows. In both hemispheres the recreant were
destroyed by being buried alive. The Peruvians, Mexicans, Central
Americans, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Hebrews each had a powerful
hereditary priesthood.

The Phoenicians believed in an evil spirit called Zebub; the Peruvians
had a devil called Cupay. The Peruvians burnt incense in their temples.
The Peruvians, when they sacrificed animals, examined their entrails,
and from these prognosticated the future.

I need not add that all these nations preserved traditions of the
Deluge; and all of them possessed systems of writing.

The Egyptian priest of Sais told Solon that the myth of Phaethon, the
son of Helios, having attempted to drive the chariot of the sun, and
thereby burning up the earth, referred to "a declination of the bodies
moving round the earth and in the heavens" (comets), which caused a
"great conflagration upon the earth," from which those only escaped who
lived near rivers and seas. The "Codex Chimalpopoca"--a Nahua, Central
American record--tells us that the third era of the world, or "third
sun," is called, Quia Tonatiuh, or sun of rain, "because in this age
there fell a rain of fire, all which existed burned, and there fell a
rain of gravel;" the rocks "boiled with tumult, and there also arose the
rocks of vermilion color." In other words, the traditions of these
people go back to a great cataclysm of fire, when the earth possibly
encountered, as in the Egyptian story, one of "the bodies moving round
the earth and in the heavens;" they had also memories of "the Drift
Period," and of the outburst of Plutonic rocks. If man has existed on
the earth as long as science asserts, he must have passed through many
of the great catastrophes which are written upon the face of the planet;
and it is very natural that in myths and legends he should preserve some
recollection of events so appalling and destructive.

Among the early Greeks Pan was the ancient god; his wife was Maia. The
Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg calls attention to the fact that Pan was
adored in all parts of Mexico and Central America; and at Panuco, or
Panca, literally Panopolis, the Spaniards found, upon their entrance
into Mexico, superb temples and images of Pan. (Brasseur's Introduction
in Landa's "Relacion.") The names of both Pan and Maya enter extensively
into the Maya vocabulary, Maia being the same as Maya, the principal
name of the peninsula; and pan, added to Maya, makes the name of the
ancient capital Mayapan. In the Nahua language pan, or pani, signifies
"equality to that which is above," and Pentecatl was the progenitor of
all beings. ("North Americans of Antiquity," p. 467.)

The ancient Mexicans believed that the sun-god would destroy the world
in the last night of the fifty-second year, and that he would never come
back. They offered sacrifices to him at that time to propitiate him;
they extinguished all the fires in the kingdom; they broke all their
household furniture; they bung black masks before their faces; they
prayed and fasted; and on the evening of the last night they formed a
great procession to a neighboring mountain. A human being was sacrificed
exactly at midnight; a block of wood was laid at once on the body, and
fire was then produced by rapidly revolving another piece of wood upon
it; a spark was carried to a funeral pile, whose rising flame proclaimed
to the anxious people the promise of the god not to destroy the world
for another fifty-two years. Precisely the same custom obtained among
the nations of Asia Minor and other parts of the continent of Asia,
wherever sun-worship prevailed, at the periodical reproduction of the
sacred fire, but not with the same bloody rites as in Mexico.
(Valentini, "Maya Archaeology," p. 21.)

To this day the Brahman of India "churns" his sacred fire out of a board
by boring into it with a stick; the Romans renewed their sacred fire in
the same way; and in Sweden even now a "need-fire is kindled in this
manner when cholera or other pestilence is about." (Tylor's
"Anthropology," p. 262.)

A belief in ghosts is found on both continents. The American Indians
think that the spirits of the dead retain the form and features which
they wore while living; that there is a hell and a heaven; that hell is
below the earth, and heaven above the clouds; that the souls of the
wicked sometimes wander the face of the earth, appearing occasionally to
mortals. The story of Tantalus is found among the Chippewayans, who
believed that bad souls stand up to their chins in water in sight of the
spirit-land, which they can never enter. The dead passed to heaven
across a stream of water by means of a narrow and slippery bridge, from
which many were lost. The Zunis set apart a day in each year which they
spent among the graves of their dead, communing with their spirits, and
bringing them presents--a kind of All-souls-day. (Dorman, "Prim.
Superst.," p. 35.) The Stygian flood, and Scylla and Charybdis, are
found among the legends of the Caribs. (Ibid., p. 37.) Even the boat of
Charon reappears in the traditions of the Chippewayans.

The Oriental belief in the transmigration of souls is found in every
American tribe. The souls of men passed into animals or other men.
(Schoolcraft, vol. i., p. 33.) The souls of the wicked passed into toads
and wild beasts. (Dorman, "Prim. Superst.," p. 50.)

Among both the Germans and the American Indians lycanthropy, or the
metamorphosis of men into wolves, was believed in. In British Columbia
the men-wolves have often been seen seated around a fire, with their
wolf-hides hung upon sticks to dry! The Irish legend of hunters pursuing
an animal which suddenly disappears, whereupon a human being appears in
its place is found among all the American tribes.

That timid and harmless animal, the hare, was, singularly enough, an
object of superstitious reverence and fear in Europe, Asia, and America.
The ancient Irish killed all the hares they found on May-day among their
cattle, believing them to be witches. Caesar gives an account of the
horror in which this animal was held by the Britons. The Calmucks
regarded the rabbit with fear and reverence. Divine honors were paid to
the hare in Mexico. Wabasso was changed into a white rabbit, and
canonized in that form.

The white bull, Apis, of the Egyptians, reappears in the Sacred white
buffalo of the Dakotas, which was supposed to possess supernatural
power, and after death became a god. The white doe of European legend
had its representative in the white deer of the Housatonic Valley, whose
death brought misery to the tribe. The transmission of spirits by the
laying on of hands, and the exorcism of demons, were part of the
religion of the American tribes.

The witches of Scandinavia, who produced tempests by their incantations,
are duplicated in America. A Cree sorcerer sold three days of fair
weather for one pound of tobacco! The Indian sorcerers around Freshwater
Bay kept the winds in leather bags, and disposed of them as they pleased.

Among the American Indians it is believed that those who are insane or
epileptic are "possessed of devils." (Tylor, "Prim. Cult.," vol. ii.,
pp. 123-126.) Sickness is caused by evil spirits entering into the sick
person. (Eastman's "Sioux.") The spirits of animals are much feared, and
their departure out of the body of the invalid is a cause of
thanksgiving. Thus an Omaha, after an eructation, says, "Thank you,
animal." (Dorman, "Prim. Superst.," p. 55.) The confession of their sins
was with a view to satisfy the evil spirit and induce him to leave them.
(Ibid., p. 57.)

In both continents burnt-offerings were sacrificed to the gods. In both
continents the priests divined the future from the condition of the
internal organs of the man or animal sacrificed. (Ibid., pp. 214, 226.)
In both continents the future was revealed by the flight of birds and by
dreams. In Peru and Mexico there were colleges of augurs, as in Rome,
who practised divination by watching the movements and songs of birds.
(Ibid., p. 261.)

Animals were worshipped in Central America and on the banks of the Nile.
(Ibid., p. 259.)

The Ojibbeways believed that the barking of a fox was ominous of ill.
(Ibid., p. 225). The peasantry of Western Europe have the same belief as
to the howling of a dog.

The belief in satyrs, and other creatures half man and half animal,
survived in America. The Kickapoos are Darwinians. "They think their
ancestors had tails, and when they lost them the impudent fox sent every
morning to ask how their tails were, and the bear shook his fat sides at
the joke." (Ibid., p. 232.) Among the natives of Brazil the father cut a
stick at the wedding of his daughter; "this was done to cut off the
tails of any future grandchildren." (Tylor, vol. i., p. 384.)

Jove, with the thunder-bolts in his hand, is duplicated in the Mexican
god of thunder, Mixcoatl, who is represented holding a bundle of arrows.
"He rode upon a tornado, and scattered the lightnings." (Dorman, "Prim.
Superst.," p. 98.)

Dionysus, or Bacchus, is represented by the Mexican god Texcatzoncatl,
the god of wine. (Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 418.)

Atlas reappears in Chibchacum, the deity of the Chibchas; he bears the
world on his shoulders, and when be shifts the burden from one shoulder
to another severe earthquakes are produced. (Bollaert, pp. 12, 13.)

Deucalion repeopling the world is repeated in Xololt, who, after the
destruction of the world, descended to Mictlan, the realm of the dead,
and brought thence a bone of the perished race. This, sprinkled with
blood, grew into a youth, the father of the present race. The Quiche
hero-gods, Hunaphu and Xblanque, died; their bodies were burnt, their
bones ground to powder and thrown into the waters, whereupon they
changed into handsome youths, with the same features as before. (Dorman,
"Prim. Superst.," p. 193.)

Witches and warlocks, mermaids and mermen, are part of the mythology of
the American tribes, as they were of the European races. (Ibid., p. 79.)
The mermaid of the Ottawas was "woman to the waist and fair;" thence
fish-like. (Ibid., p. 278.)

The snake-locks of Medusa are represented in the snake-locks of
At-otarho, an ancient culture-hero of the Iroquois.

A belief in the incarnation of gods in men, and the physical translation
of heroes to heaven, is part of the mythology of the Hindoos and the
American races. Hiawatha, we are told, rose to heaven in the presence of
the multitude, and vanished from sight in the midst of sweet music.

The vocal statues and oracles of Egypt and Greece were duplicated in
America. In Peru, in the valley of Rimac, there was an idol which
answered questions and became famous as an oracle. (Dorman, "Prim.
Superst.," p. 124.)

The Peruvians believed that men were sometimes metamorphosed into stones.

The Oneidas claimed descent from a stone, as the Greeks from the stones
of Deucalion. (Ibid., p. 132.)

Witchcraft is an article of faith among all the American races. Among
the Illinois Indians "they made small images to represent those whose
days they have a mind to shorten, and which they stab to the heart,"
whereupon the person represented is expected to die. (Charlevoix, vol.
ii., p. 166.) The witches of Europe made figures of wax of their
enemies, and gradually melted them at the fire, and as they diminished
the victim was supposed to sicken and die.

A writer in the Popular Science Monthly (April, 1881, p. 828) points out
the fact that there is an absolute identity between the folk-lore of the
negroes on the plantations of the South and the myths and stories of
certain tribes of Indians in South America, as revealed by Mr. Herbert
Smith's "Brazil, the Amazons, and the Coast." (New York: Scribner,
1879.) Mr. Harris, the author of a work on the folk-lore of the negroes,
asks this question, "When did the negro or the North American Indian
come in contact with the tribes of South America?"

Customs.--Both peoples manufactured a fermented, intoxicating drink, the
one deriving it from barley, the other from maize. Both drank toasts.
Both had the institution of marriage, an important part of the ceremony
consisting in the joining of hands; both recognized divorce, and the
Peruvians and Mexicans established special courts to decide cases of
this kind. Both the Americans and Europeans erected arches, and had
triumphal processions for their victorious kings, and both strewed the
ground before them with leaves and flowers. Both celebrated important
events with bonfires and illuminations; both used banners, both invoked
blessings. The Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Egyptians practised
circumcision. Palacio relates that at Azori, in Honduras, the natives
circumcised boys before an idol called Icelca. ("Carta," p. 84.) Lord
Kingsborough tells us the Central Americans used the same rite, and
McKenzie (quoted by Retzius) says he saw the ceremony performed by the
Chippeways. Both had bards and minstrels, who on great festivals sung
the deeds of kings and heroes. Both the Egyptians and the Peruvians held
agricultural fairs; both took a census of the people. Among both the
land was divided per capita among the people; in Judea a new division
was made every fifty years. The Peruvians renewed every year all the
fires of the kingdom from the Temple of the Sun, the new fire being
kindled from concave mirrors by the sun's rays. The Romans under Numa
had precisely the same custom. The Peruvians had theatrical plays. They
chewed the leaves of the coca mixed with lime, as the Hindoo to-day
chews the leaves of the betel mixed with lime. Both the American and
European nations were divided into castes; both practised
planet-worship; both used scales and weights and mirrors. The Peruvians,
Egyptians, and Chaldeans divided the year into twelve months, and the
months into lesser divisions of weeks. Both inserted additional days, so
as to give the year three hundred and sixty-five days. The Mexicans
added five intercalary days; and the Egyptians, in the time of Amunoph
I., had already the same practice.

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