Ellis Wynne - "The Sleeping Bard"

Frank L. Packard - "The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale"

A. M. Barnard - "The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation"

Scott Nearing - "The Debs Decision"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Antediluvian World

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> The Antediluvian World




1. The admitted fact that it is anterior in time to the Iron Age
relegates it to a great antiquity.

2. The fact that it is anterior in time to the Iron Age is conclusive
that it is not due to any of the known European or Asiatic nations, all
of which belong to the Iron Age.

3. The fact that there was in Europe, Asia, or Africa no copper or tin
age prior to the Bronze Age, is conclusive testimony that the
manufacture of bronze was an importation into those continents from some
foreign country.

4. The fact that in America alone of all the world is found the Copper
Age, which must necessarily have preceded the Bronze Age, teaches us to
look to the westward of Europe and beyond the sea for that foreign
country.

5. We find many similarities in forms of implements between the Bronze
Age of Europe and the Copper Age of America.

6. if Plato told the truth, the Atlanteans were a great commercial
nation, trading to America and Europe, and, at the same time, they
possessed bronze, and were great workers in the other metals.

7. We shall see hereafter that the mythological traditions of Greece
referred to a Bronze Age which preceded an Iron Age, and placed this in
the land of the gods, which was an island in the Atlantic Ocean, beyond
the Pillars of Hercules; and this land was, as we shall see, clearly
Atlantis.

8. As we find but a small development of the Bronze Age in America, it
is reasonable to suppose that there must have been some intermediate
station between America and Europe, where, during a long period of time,
the Bronze Age was developed out of the Copper Age, and immense
quantities of bronze implements were manufactured and carried to Europe.

CHAPTER IX.

ARTIFICIAL DEFORMATION OF THE SKULL.

An examination of the American monuments shows (see figure on page 269)
that the people represented were in the habit of flattening the skull by
artificial means. The Greek and Roman writers had mentioned this
practice, but it was long totally forgotten by the civilized world,
until it was discovered, as an unheard-of wonder, to be the usage among
the Carib Islanders, and several Indian tribes in North America. It was
afterward found that the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans practised this
art: several flattened Peruvian skulls are depicted in Morton's "Crania
Americana." It is still in use among the Flat-head Indians of the
north-western part of the United States.

In 1849 a remarkable memoir appeared from the pen of M. Rathke, showing
that similar skulls had been found near Kertsch, in the Crimea, and
calling attention to the book of Hippocrates, "De Aeris, Aquis et Locu,"
lib. iv., and a passage of Strabo, which speaks of the practice among
the Scythians. In 1854 Dr. Fitzinger published a learned memoir on the
skulls of the Avars, a branch of the Uralian race of Turks. He shows
that the practice of flattening the head had existed from an early date
throughout the East, and described an ancient skull, greatly distorted
by artificial means, which had lately been found in Lower Austria.
Skulls similarly flattened have been found in Switzerland and Savoy. The
Huns under Attila had the same practice of flattening the heads.
Professor Anders Retzius proved (see "Smithsonian Report," 1859) that
the custom still exists in the south of France, and in parts of Turkey.
"Not long since a French physician surprised the world by the fact that
nurses in Normandy were still giving the children's heads a sugar-loaf
shape by bandages and a tight cap,

STUCCO BAS-RELIEF IN THE PALACE OF PALENQUE.

while in Brittany they preferred to press it round. No doubt they are
doing so to this day." (Tylor's "Anthropology," p. 241.)

Professor Wilson remarks:

"Trifling as it may appear, it is not without interest to have the fact
brought under our notice, by the disclosures of ancient barrows and
cysts, that the same practice of nursing the child and carrying it
about, bound to a flat cradle-board, prevailed in Britain and the north
of Europe long before the first notices of written history reveal the
presence of man beyond the Baltic or the English Channel, and that in
all probability the same custom prevailed continuously from the shores
of the German Ocean to Behring's Strait." ("Smithsonian Report," 1862,
p. 286.)

Dr. L. A. Gosse testifies to the prevalence of the same custom among the
Caledonians and Scandinavians in the earliest times; and Dr. Thurman has
treated of the same peculiarity among the Anglo-Saxons. ("Crania
Britannica," chap. iv., p. 38.)

PERUVIAN SKULL.

CHINOOK (FLAT-HEAD), AFTER CATLIN.

Here, then, is an extraordinary and unnatural practice which has existed
from the highest antiquity, over vast regions of country, on both sides
of the Atlantic, and which is perpetuated unto this day in races as
widely separated as the Turks, the French, and the Flat-head Indians. Is
it possible to explain this except by supposing that it originated from
some common centre?

The annexed out represents an ancient Swiss skull, from a cemetery near
Lausanne, from a drawing of Frederick Troyon. Compare this with the
illustration given on page 271, which represents a Peruvian flat-head,
copied from Morton's "Ethnography and Archaeology of the American
Aborigines," 1846. This skull is shockingly distorted. The dotted lines
indicate the course of the bandages by which the skull was deformed.

The following heads are from Del Rio's "Account of Palenque," copied
into Nott and Gliddon's "Types of Mankind," p. 440. They show that the
receding forehead was a natural characteristic of the ancient people of
Central America. The same form of head has been found even in fossil
skulls. We may therefore conclude that the skull-flattening, which we
find to have been practised in both the Old and New Worlds, was an
attempt of other races to imitate the form of skull of a people whose
likenesses are found on the monuments of Egypt and of America. It has
been shown that this peculiar form of the head was present even in the
foetus of the Peruvian mummies.

Hippocrates tells us that the practice among the Scythians was for the
purpose of giving a certain aristocratic distinction.

HEADS FROM PALENQUE.

Amedee Thierry, in his "History of Attila," says the Huns used it for
the same reason; and the same purpose influences the Indians of Oregon.

Dr. Lund, a Swedish naturalist, found in the bone caves of Minas-Geraes,
Brazil, ancient human bones associated with the remains of extinct
quadrupeds. "These skulls," says Lund, "show not only the peculiarity of
the American race but in an excessive degree, even to the entire
disappearance of the forehead." Sir Robert Schomburgh found on some of
the affluents of the Orinoco a tribe known as Frog Indians, whose heads
were flattened by Nature, as shown in newly-born children.

In the accompanying plate we show the difference in the conformation of
the forehead in various races. The upper dotted line, A, represents the
shape of the European forehead; the next line, B, that of the
Australian; the next, C, that of the Mound Builder of the United States;
the next, D, that of the Guanche of the Canary Islands; and the next, E,
that of a skull from the Inca cemetery of Peru. We have but to compare
these lines with the skulls of the Egyptians, Kurds, and the heroic type
of heads in the statues of the gods of Greece, to see that there was
formerly an ancient race marked by a receding forehead; and that the
practice of flattening the skull was probably an attempt to approximate
the shape of the head to this standard of an early civilized and
dominant people.

Not only do we find the same receding forehead in the skulls of the
ancient races of Europe and America, and the same attempt to imitate
this natural and peculiar conformation by artificial flattening of the
head, but it has been found (see Henry Gillman's "Ancient Man in
Michigan," "Smithsonian Report," 1875, p. 242) that the Mound Builders
and Peruvians of America, and the Neolithic people of France and the
Canary Islands, had alike an extraordinary custom of boring a circular
bole in the top of the skulls of their dead, so that the soul might
readily pass in and out. More than this, it has been found that in all
these ancient populations the skeletons exhibit a remarkable degree of
platicnemism, or flattening of the tibiae or leg bones. (Ibid., 1873,
p.367.) In this respect the Mound Builders of Michigan were identical
with the man of Cro Magnon and the ancient inhabitants of Wales.

The annexed ancient Egyptian heads, copied from the monuments, indicate
either that the people of the Nile deformed their beads by pressure upon
the front of the skull, or that

EGYPTIAN HEADS.

there was some race characteristic which gave this appearance to their
heads. These heads are all the heads of priests, and therefore
represented the aristocratic class.

The first illustration below is taken from a stucco relief found in a
temple at Palenque, Central America. The second is from an Egyptian
monument of the time of Rameses IV.

The outline drawing on the following page shows the form of the skull of
the royal Inca line: the receding forehead here seems to be natural, and
not the result of artificial compression.

Both illustrations at the bottom of the preceding page show the same
receding form of the forehead, due to either artificial deformation of
the skull or to a common race characteristic.

We must add the fact that the extraordinary practice of deforming the
skull was found all over Europe and America to the catalogue of other
proofs that the people of both continents were originally united in
blood and race. With the couvade, the practice of circumcision, unity of
religious beliefs and customs, folk-lore, and alphabetical signs,
language and flood legends, we array together a mass of unanswerable
proofs of prehistoric identity of race.

PART IV.

THE MYTHOLOGIES OF THE OLD WORLD A RECOLLECTION OF ATLANTIS.

CHAPTER I. TRADITIONS OF ATLANTIS.

We find allusions to the Atlanteans in the most ancient traditions of
many different races.

The great antediluvian king of the Mussulman was Shedd-Ad-Ben-Ad, or
Shed-Ad, the son of Ad, or Atlantis.

Among the Arabians the first inhabitants of that country are known as
the Adites, from their progenitor, who is called Ad, the grandson of
Ham. These Adites were probably the people of Atlantis or Ad-lantis.
"They are personified by a monarch to whom everything is ascribed, and
to whom is assigned several centuries of life." ("Ancient History of the
East," Lenormant and Chevallier, vol. ii., p. 295.), Ad came from the
northeast. "He married a thousand wives, had four thousand sons, and
lived twelve hundred years. His descendants multiplied considerably.
After his death his sons Shadid and Shedad reigned in succession over
the Adites. In the time of the latter the people of Ad were a thousand
tribes, each composed of several thousands of men. Great conquests are
attributed to Shedad; he subdued, it is said, all Arabia and Irak. The
migration of the Canaanites, their establishment in Syria, and the
Shepherd invasion of Egypt are, by many Arab writers, attributed to an
expedition of Shedad." (Ibid., p. 296.)

Shedad built a palace ornamented with superb columns, and surrounded by
a magnificent garden. It was called Irem. "It was a paradise that Shedad
had built in imitation of the celestial Paradise, of whose delights he
had heard." ("Ancient History of the East," p. 296.) In other words, an
ancient, sun-worshipping, powerful, and conquering race overran Arabia
at the very dawn of history; they were the sons of Adlantis: their king
tried to create a palace and garden of Eden like that of Atlantis.

The Adites are remembered by the Arabians as a great and civilized race.
"They are depicted as men of gigantic stature; their strength was equal
to their size, and they easily moved enormous blocks of stone." (Ibid.)
They were architects and builders. They raised many monuments of their
power; and hence, among the Arabs, arose the custom of calling great
ruins "buildings of the Adites." To this day the Arabs say "as old as
Ad." In the Koran allusion is made to the edifices they built on "high
places for vain uses;" expressions proving that their "idolatry was
considered to have been tainted with Sabaeism or star-worship." (Ibid.)
"In these legends," says Lenormant, "we find traces of a wealthy nation,
constructors of great buildings, with an advanced civilization,
analogous to that of Chaldea, professing a religion similar to the
Babylonian; a nation, in short, with whom material progress was allied
to great moral depravity and obscene rites. These facts must be true and
strictly historical, for they are everywhere met with among the
Cushites, as among the Canaanites, their brothers by origin."

Nor is there wanting a great catastrophe which destroys the whole Adite
nation, except a very few who escape because they had renounced
idolatry. A black cloud assails their country, from which proceeds a
terrible hurricane (the water-spout?) which sweeps away everything.

The first Adites were followed by a second Adite race; probably the
colonists who had escaped the Deluge. The centre of its power was the
country of Sheba proper. This empire endured for a thousand years. The
Adites are represented upon the Egyptian monuments as very much like the
Egyptians themselves; in other words, they were a red or sunburnt race:
their great temples were pyramidal, surmounted by buildings. ("Ancient
History of the East," p. 321.) "The Sabaeans," says Agatharchides ("De
Mari Erythraeo," p. 102), "have in their houses an incredible number of
vases, and utensils of all sorts, of gold and silver, beds and tripods
of silver, and all the furniture of astonishing richness. Their
buildings have porticos with columns sheathed with gold, or surmounted
by capitals of silver. On the friezes, ornaments, and the framework of
the doors they place plates of gold incrusted with precious stones."

All this reminds one of the descriptions given by the Spaniards of the
temples of the sun in Peru.

The Adites worshipped the gods of the Phoenicians under names but
slightly changed; "their religion was especially solar... It was
originally a religion without images, without idolatry, and without a
priesthood." (Ibid., p. 325.) They "worshipped the sun from the tops of
pyramids." (Ibid.) They believed in the immortality of the soul.

In all these things we see resemblances to the Atlanteans.

The great Ethiopian or Cushite Empire, which in the earliest ages
prevailed, as Mr. Rawlinson says, "from the Caucasus to the Indian
Ocean, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the mouth of the Ganges,"
was the empire of Dionysos, the empire of "Ad," the empire of Atlantis.
El Eldrisi called the language spoken to this day by the Arabs of
Mahrah, in Eastern Arabia, "the language of the people of Ad," and Dr.
J. H. Carter, in the Bombay Journal of July, 1847, says, "It is the
softest and sweetest language I have ever heard." It would be
interesting to compare this primitive tongue with the languages of
Central America.

The god Thoth of the Egyptians, who was the god of a foreign country,
and who invented letters, was called At-hothes.

We turn now to another ancient race, the Indo-European family--the Aryan
race.

In Sanscrit Adim, means first. Among the Hindoos the first man was
Ad-ima, his wife was Heva. They dwelt upon an island, said to be Ceylon;
they left the island and reached the main-land, when, by a great
convulsion of nature, their communication with the parent land was
forever cut off. (See "Bible in India.")

Here we seem to have a recollection of the destruction of Atlantis.

Mr. Bryant says, "Ad and Ada signify the first." The Persians called the
first man "Ad-amah." "Adon" was one of the names of the Supreme God of
the Phoenicians; from it was derived the name of the Greek god
"Ad-onis." The Arv-ad of Genesis was the Ar-Ad of the Cushites; it is
now known as Ru-Ad. It is a series of connected cities twelve miles in
length, along the coast, full of the most massive and gigantic ruins.

Sir William Jones gives the tradition of the Persians as to the earliest
ages. He says: "Moshan assures us that in the opinion of the best
informed Persians the first monarch of Iran, and of the whole earth, was
Mashab-Ad; that he received from the Creator, and promulgated among men
a sacred book, in a heavenly language, to which the Mussulman author
gives the Arabic title of 'Desatir,' or 'Regulations.' Mashab-Ad was, in
the opinion of the ancient Persians, the person left at the end of the
last great cycle, and consequently the father of the present world. He
and his wife having survived the former cycle, were blessed with a
numerous progeny; he planted gardens, invented ornaments, forged
weapons, taught men to take the fleece from sheep and make clothing; he
built cities, constructed palaces, fortified towns, and introduced arts
and commerce."

We have already seen that the primal gods of this people are identical
with the gods of the Greek mythology, and were originally kings of
Atlantis. But it seems that these ancient divinities are grouped
together as "the Aditya;" and in this name "Ad-itya" we find a strong
likeness to the Semitic "Adites," and another reminiscence of Atlantis,
or Adlantis. In corroboration of this view we find,

1. The gods who are grouped together as the Aditya are the most ancient
in the Hindoo mythology.

2. They are all gods of light, or solar gods. (Whitney's Oriental and
Linguistic Studies," p. 39.)

3. There are twelve of them. (Ibid.)

4. These twelve gods presided over twelve months in the year.

5. They are a dim recollection of a very remote past. Says Whitney, "It
seems as if here was an attempt on the part of the Indian religion to
take a new development in a moral direction, which a change in the
character and circumstances of the people has caused to fail in the
midst, and fall back again into forgetfulness, while yet half finished
and indistinct." (Ibid.)

6. These gods are called "the sons of Aditi," just as in the Bible we
have allusions to "the sons of Adab," who were the first metallurgists
and musicians. "Aditi is not a goddess. She is addressed as a queen's
daughter, she of fair children."

7. The Aditya "are elevated above all imperfections; they do not sleep
or wink." The Greeks represented their gods as equally wakeful and
omniscient. "Their character is all truth; they hate and punish guilt."
We have seen the same traits ascribed by the Greeks to the Atlantean
kings.

8. The sun is sometimes addressed as an Aditya.

9. Among the Aditya is Varuna, the equivalent of Uranos, whose
identification with Atlantis I have shown. In the vedas Varuna is "the
god of the ocean."

10. The Aditya represent an earlier and purer form of religion: "While
in hymns to the other deities long: life, wealth, power, are the objects
commonly prayed for, of the Aditya is craved purity, forgiveness of sin,
freedom from guilt, and repentance." ("Oriental and Linguistic Studies,"
p. 43.)

11. The Aditya, like the Adites, are identified with the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul. Yama is the god of the abode beyond the grave.
In the Persian story he appears as Yima, and "is made ruler of the
golden age and founder of the Paradise." (Ibid., p. 45.) (See "Zamna,"
p. 167 ante.)

In view of all these facts, one cannot doubt that the legends of the
"sons of Ad," "the Adites," and "the Aditya," all refer to Atlantis.

Mr. George Smith, in the Chaldean account of the Creation (p. 78),
deciphered from the Babylonian tablets, shows that there was an original
race of men at the beginning of Chaldean history, a dark race, the
Zalmat-qaqadi, who were called Ad-mi, or Ad-ami; they were the race "who
had fallen," and were contradistinguished from "the Sarku, or light
race." The "fall" probably refers to their destruction by a deluge, in
consequence of their moral degradation and the indignation of the gods.
The name Adam is used in these legends, but as the name of a race, not
of a man.

Genesis (chap. v., 2) distinctly says that God created man male and
female, and "called their name Adam." That is to say, the people were
the Ad-ami, the people of "Ad," or Atlantis. "The author of the Book of
Genesis," says M. Schoebel, "in speaking of the men who were swallowed
up by the Deluge, always describes them as 'Haadam,' 'Adamite
humanity.'" The race of Cain lived and multiplied far away from the land
of Seth; in other words, far from the land destroyed by the Deluge.
Josephus, who gives us the primitive traditions of the Jews, tells us
(chap. ii., p. 42) that "Cain travelled over many countries" before he
came to the land of Nod. The Bible does not tell us that the race of
Cain perished in the Deluge. "Cain went out from the presence of
Jehovah;" he did not call on his name; the people that were destroyed
were the "sons of Jehovah." All this indicates that large colonies had
been sent out by the mother-land before it sunk in the sea.

Across the ocean we find the people of Guatemala claiming their descent
from a goddess called At-tit, or grandmother, who lived for four hundred
years, and first taught the worship of the true God, which they
afterward forgot. (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii., p. 75.) While
the famous Mexican calendar stone shows that the sun was commonly called
tonatiuh but when it was referred to as the god of the Deluge it was
then called Atl-tona-ti-uh, or At-onatiuh. (Valentini's "Mexican
Calendar Stone," art. Maya Archaeology, p. 15.)

We thus find the sons of Ad at the base of all the most ancient races of
men, to wit, the Hebrews, the Arabians, the Chaldeans, the Hindoos, the
Persians, the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Mexicans, and the Central
Americans; testimony that all these races traced their beginning back to
a dimly remembered Ad-lantis.

CHAPTER II

THE KINGS OF ATLANTIS BECOME THE GODS OF THE GREEKS.

Lord Bacon said:

"The mythology of the Greeks, which their oldest writers do not pretend
to have invented, was no more than a light air, which had passed from a
more ancient people into the flutes of the Greeks, which they modulated
to such descants as best suited their fancies."

This profoundly wise and great man, who has illuminated every subject
which he has touched, guessed very close to the truth in this utterance.

The Hon. W. E. Gladstone has had quite a debate of late with Mr. Cox as
to whether the Greek mythology was underlaid by a nature worship, or a
planetary or solar worship.

Peru, worshipping the sun and moon and planets, probably represents very
closely the simple and primitive religion of Atlantis, with its
sacrifices of fruits and flowers. This passed directly to their colony
in Egypt. We find the Egyptians in their early ages sun and planet
worshippers. Ptah was the object of their highest adoration. He is the
father of the god of the sun, the ruler of the region of light. Ra was
the sun-god. He was the supreme divinity at On, or Heliopolis, near
Memphis. His symbol was the solar disk, supported by two rings. He
created all that exists below the heavens.

The Babylonian trinity was composed of Idea, Anu, and Bel. Bel
represented the sun, and was the favorite god. Sin was the goddess of
the moon.

The Phoenicians were also sun-worshippers. The sun was represented by
Baal-Samin, the great god, the god of light and the heavens, the creator
and rejuvenator.

"The attributes of both Baal and Moloch (the good and bad powers of the
sun) were united in the Phoenician god Melkart, "king of the city," whom
the inhabitants of Tyre considered their special patron. The Greeks
called him "Melicertes," and identified him with Hercules. By his great
strength and power he turned evil into good, brought life out of
destruction, pulled back the sun to the earth at the time of the
solstices, lessened excessive beat and cold, and rectified the evil
signs of the zodiac. In Phoenician legends he conquers the savage races
of distant coasts, founds the ancient settlements on the Mediterranean,
and plants the rocks in the Straits of Gibraltar." ("American
Cyclopaedia," art. Mythology.)

The Egyptians worshipped the sun under the name of Ra; the Hindoos
worshipped the sun under the name of Rama; while the great festival of
the sun, of the Peruvians, was called Ray-mi.

Sun-worship, as the ancient religion of Atlantis, underlies all the
superstitions of the colonies of that country. The Samoyed woman says to
the sun, "When thou, god, risest, I too rise from my bed." Every morning
even now the Brahmans stand on one foot, with their hands held out
before them and their faces turned to the east, adoring the sun. "In
Germany or France one may still see the peasant take off his hat to the
rising sun." ("Anthropology," p. 361.) The Romans, even, in later times,
worshipped the sun at Emesa, under the name of Elagabalus, "typified in
the form of a black conical stone, which it was believed had fallen from
heaven." The conical stone was the emblem of Bel. Did it have relation
to the mounds and pyramids?

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