The Antediluvian World

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> The Antediluvian World

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Sun-worship was the primitive religion of the red men of America. It was
found among all the tribes. (Dorman, "Origin of Primitive Superstitions,
p. 338.) The Chichimecs called the sun their father. The Comanches have
a similar belief.

But, compared with such ancient nations as the Egyptians and
Babylonians, the Greeks were children. A priest of Sais said to Solon,

"You Greeks are novices in knowledge of antiquity. You are ignorant of
what passed either here or among yourselves in days of old. The history
of eight thousand years is deposited in our sacred books; but I can
ascend to a much higher antiquity, and tell you what our fathers have
done for nine thousand years; I mean their institutions, their laws, and
their most brilliant achievements."

The Greeks, too young to have shared in the religion of Atlantis, but
preserving some memory of that great country and its history, proceeded
to convert its kings into gods, and to depict Atlantis itself as the
heaven of the human race. Thus we find a great solar or nature worship
in the elder nations, while Greece has nothing but an incongruous jumble
of gods and goddesses, who are born and eat and drink and make love and
ravish and steal and die; and who are worshipped as immortal in presence
of the very monuments that testify to their death.

"These deities, to whom the affairs of the world were in trusted, were,
it is believed, immortal, though not eternal in their existence. In
Crete there was even a story of the death of Zeus, his tomb being
pointed out." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 2.)

The history of Atlantis is the key of the Greek mythology. There can be
no question that these gods of Greece were human beings. The tendency to
attach divine attributes to great earthly rulers is one deeply implanted
in human nature. The savages who killed Captain Cook firmly believed
that he was immortal, that he was yet alive, and would return to punish
them. The highly civilized Romans made gods out of their dead emperors.
Dr. Livingstone mentions that on one occasion, after talking to a
Bushman for some time about the Deity, he found that the savage thought
he was speaking of Sekomi, the principal chief of the district.

We find the barbarians of the coast of the Mediterranean regarding the
civilized people of Atlantis with awe and wonder: "Their physical
strength was extraordinary, the earth shaking sometimes under their
tread. Whatever they did was done speedily. They moved through space
almost without the loss of a moment of time." This probably alluded to
the rapid motion of their sailing-vessels. "They were wise, and
communicated their wisdom to men." That is to say, they civilized the
people they came in contact with. 'They had a strict sense of justice,
and punished crime rigorously, and rewarded noble actions, though it is
true they were less conspicuous for the latter." (Murray's "Mythology,"
p. 4.) We should understand this to mean that where they colonized they
established a government of law, as contradistinguished from the anarchy
of barbarism.

"There were tales of personal visits and adventures of the gods among
men, taking part in battles and appearing in dreams. They were conceived
to possess the form of human beings, and to be, like men, subject to
love and pain, but always characterized by the highest qualities and
grandest forms that could be imagined." (Ibid.)

Another proof that the gods of the Greeks were but the deified kings of
Atlantis is found in the fact that "the gods were not looked upon as
having created the world." They succeeded to the management of a world
already in existence.

The gods dwelt on Olympus. They lived together like human beings; they
possessed palaces, storehouses, stables, horses, etc.; "they dwelt in a
social state which was but a magnified reflection of the social system
on earth. Quarrels, love passages, mutual assistance, and such instances
as characterize human life, were ascribed to them." (Ibid., p. 10.)

Where was Olympus? It was in Atlantis. "The ocean encircled the earth
with a great stream, and was a region of wonders of all kinds." (Ibid.,
p. 23.) It was a great island, the then civilized world. The encircling
ocean "was spoken of in all the ancient legends. Okeanos lived there
with his wife Tethys: these were the Islands of the Blessed, the garden
of the gods, the sources of the nectar and ambrosia on which the gods
lived." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 23.) Nectar was probably a fermented
intoxicating liquor, and ambrosia bread made from wheat. Soma was a kind
of whiskey, and the Hindoos deified it. "The gods lived on nectar and
ambrosia" simply meant that the inhabitants of these blessed islands
were civilized, and possessed a liquor of some kind and a species of
food superior to anything in use among the barbarous tribes with whom
they came in contact.

This blessed land answers to the description of Atlantis. It was an
island full of wonders. It lay spread out in the ocean "like a disk,
with the mountains rising from it." (Ibid.) On the highest point of this
mountain dwelt Zeus (the king), "while the mansions of the other deities
were arranged upon plateaus, or in ravines lower down the mountain.
These deities, including Zeus, were twelve in number: Zeus (or Jupiter),
Hera (or Juno), Poseidon (or Neptune), Demeter (or Ceres), Apollo,
Artemis (or Diana), Hephaestos (or Vulcan), Pallas Athena (or Minerva),
Ares (or Mars), Aphrodite (or Venus), Hermes (or Mercury), and Hestia
(or Vesta)." These were doubtless the twelve gods from whom the
Egyptians derived their kings. Where two names are given to a deity in
the above list, the first name is that bestowed by the Greeks, the last
that given by the Romans.

It is not impossible that our division of the year into twelve parts is
a reminiscence of the twelve gods of Atlantis. Diodorus Siculus tells us
that among the Babylonians there were twelve gods of the heavens, each
personified by one of the signs of the zodiac, and worshipped in a
certain month of the year. The Hindoos had twelve primal gods, "the
Aditya." Moses erected twelve pillars at Sinai. The Mandan Indians
celebrated the Flood with twelve typical characters, who danced around
the ark. The Scandinavians believed in the twelve gods, the Aesir, who
dwelt on Asgard, the Norse Olympus. Diligent investigation may yet
reveal that the number of a modern jury, twelve, is a survival of the
ancient council of Asgard.

"According to the traditions of the Phoenicians, the Gardens of the
Hesperides were in the remote west." (Murray's "Manual of Mythology," p.
258.) Atlas lived in these gardens. (Ibid., p. 259.) Atlas, we have
seen, was king of Atlantis. "The Elysian Fields (the happy islands) were
commonly placed in the remote west. They were ruled over by Chronos."
(Ibid., p. 60.) Tartarus, the region of Hades, the gloomy home of the
dead, was also located "under the mountains of an island in the midst of
the ocean in the remote west." (Ibid., p. 58.) Atlas was described in
Greek mythology as "an enormous giant, who stood upon the western
confines of the earth, and supported the heavens on his shoulders, in a
region of the west where the sun continued to shine after he had set
upon Greece." (Ibid., p. 156.)

Greek tradition located the island in which Olympus was situated "in the
far west," "in the ocean beyond Africa," "on the western boundary of the
known world," "where the sun shone when it had ceased to shine on
Greece," and where the mighty Atlas "held up the heavens." And Plato
tells us that the land where Poseidon and Atlas ruled was Atlantis.

"The Garden of the Hesperides" (another name for the dwelling-place of
the gods) "was situated at the extreme limit of Africa. Atlas was said
to have surrounded it on every side with high mountains." (Smith's
"Sacred Annals, Patriarchal Age," p. 131.) Here were found the golden
apples.

This is very much like the description which Plato gives of the great
plain of Atlantis, covered with fruit of every kind, and surrounded by
precipitous mountains descending to the sea.

The Greek mythology, in speaking of the Garden of the Hesperides, tells
us that "the outer edge of the garden was slightly raised, so that the
water might not run in and overflow the land." Another reminiscence of
the surrounding mountains of Atlantis as described by Plato, and as
revealed by the deep-sea soundings of modern times.

Chronos, or Saturn, Dionysos, Hyperion, Atlas, Hercules, were all
connected with "a great Saturnian continent;" they were kings that ruled
over countries on the western shores of the Mediterranean, Africa and
Spain. One account says:

"Hyperion, Atlas, and Saturn, or Chronos, were sons of Uranos, who
reigned over a great kingdom composed of countries around the western
part of the Mediterranean, with certain islands in the Atlantic.
Hyperion succeeded his father, and was then killed by the Titans. The
kingdom was then divided between Atlas and Saturn--Atlas taking Northern
Africa, with the Atlantic islands, and Saturn the countries on the
opposite shore of the Mediterranean to Italy and Sicily." (Baldwin's
"Prehistoric Nations," p. 357.)

Plato says, speaking of the traditions of the Greeks ("Dialogues, Laws,"
c. iv., p. 713), "There is a tradition of the happy life of mankind in
the days when all things were spontaneous and abundant. . . . In like
manner God in his love of mankind placed over us the demons, who are a
superior race, and they, with great care and pleasure to themselves and
no less to us, taking care of us and giving us place and reverence and
order and justice never failing, made the tribes of men happy and
peaceful . . . for Cronos knew that no human nature, invested with
supreme power, is able to order human affairs and not overflow with
insolence and wrong."

In other words, this tradition refers to an ancient time when the
forefathers of the Greeks were governed by Chronos, of the Cronian Sea
(the Atlantic), king of Atlantis, through civilized Atlantean governors,
who by their wisdom preserved peace and created a golden age for all the
populations under their control--they were the demons, that is, "the
knowing ones," the civilized.

Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates these words ("Dialogues,
Cratylus," p. 397): "My notion would be that the sun, moon, and stars,
earth, and heaven, which are still the gods of many barbarians, were the
only gods known to the aboriginal Hellenes. . . . What shall follow the
gods? Must not demons and heroes and men come next? . . . Consider the
real meaning of the word demons. You know Hesiod uses the word. He
speaks of 'a golden race of men' who came first. He says of them,

But now that fate has closed over this race,
They are holy demons upon earth,
Beneficent averters of ills, guardians of mortal men.'

He means by the golden men not men literally made of gold, but good and
noble men; he says we are of the 'age of iron.' He called them demons
because they were dah'mones (knowing or wise)."

This is made the more evident when we read that this region of the gods,
of Chronos and Uranos and Zeus, passed through, first, a Golden Age,
then a Silver Age--these constituting a great period of peace and
happiness; then it reached a Bronze Age; then an Iron Age, and finally
perished by a great flood, sent upon these people by Zeus as a
punishment for their sins. We read:

"Men were rich then (in the Silver Age), as in the Golden Age of
Chronos, and lived in plenty; but still they wanted the innocence and
contentment which were the true sources of bu man happiness in the
former age; and accordingly, while living in luxury and delicacy, they
became overbearing in their manners to the highest degree, were never
satisfied, and forgot the gods, to whom, in their confidence of
prosperity and com fort, they denied the reverence they owed. . . . Then
followed the Bronze Age, a period of constant quarrelling and deeds of
violence. Instead of cultivated lands, and a life of peaceful
occupations and orderly habits, there came a day when every where might
was right, and men, big and powerful as they were, became physically
worn out. . . . Finally came the Iron Age, in which enfeebled mankind
had to toil for bread with their hands, and, bent on gain, did their
best to overreach each other. Dike, or Astraea, the goddess of justice
and good faith, modesty and truth, turned her back on such scenes, and
retired to Olympus, while Zeus determined to destroy the human race by a
great flood. The whole of Greece lay under water, and none but Deucalion
and his wife Pyrrha were saved." (Murray's "Mythology" p. 44.)

It is remarkable that we find here the same succession of the Iron Age
after the Bronze Age that has been revealed to scientific men by the
patient examination of the relics of antiquity in Europe. And this
identification of the land that was destroyed by a flood--the land of
Chronos and Poseidon and Zeus--with the Bronze Age, confirms the view
expressed in Chapter VIII. (page 237, ante), that the bronze implements
and weapons of Europe were mainly imported from Atlantis.

And here we find that the Flood that destroyed this land of the gods was
the Flood of Deucalion, and the Flood of Deucalion was the Flood of the
Bible, and this, as we have shown, was "the last great Deluge of all,"
according to the Egyptians, which destroyed Atlantis.

The foregoing description of the Golden Age of Chronos, when "men were
rich and lived in plenty," reminds us of Plato's description of the
happy age of Atlantis, when "men despised everything but virtue, not
caring for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the
possession of gold and other property;" a time when, as the chants of
the Delaware Indians stated it (page 109, ante), "all were willingly
pleased, all were well-happified." While the description given by Murray
in the above extract of the degeneracy of mankind in the land of the
gods, "a period of constant quarrelling and deeds of violence, when
might was right," agrees with Plato's account of the Atlanteans, when
they became "aggressive," "unable to bear their fortune," "unseemly,"
"base," "filled with unrighteous avarice and power,"--and "in a most
wretched state." And here again I might quote from the chant of the
Delaware Indians--"they became troubled, hating each other; both were
fighting, both were spoiling, both were never peaceful." And in all
three instances the gods punished the depravity of mankind by a great
deluge. Can all these precise coincidences be the result of accident?

May we not even suppose that the very word "Olympus" is a transformation
from "Atlantis" in accordance with the laws that regulate the changes of
letters of the same class into each other? Olympus was written by the
Greeks "Olumpos." The letter a in Atlantis was sounded by the ancient
world broad and full, like the a in our words all or altar; in these
words it approximates very closely to the sound of o. It is not far to
go to convert Otlontis into Oluntos, and this into Olumpos. We may,
therefore, suppose that when the Greeks said that their gods dwelt in
"Olympus," it was the same as if they said that they dwelt in "Atlantis."

Nearly all the gods of Greece are connected with Atlantis. We have seen
the twelve principal gods all dwelling on the mountain of Olympus, in
the midst of an island in the ocean in the far west, which was
subsequently destroyed by a deluge on account of the wickedness of its
people. And when we turn to Plato's description of Atlantis (p. 13,
ante) we find that Poseidon and Atlas dwelt upon a mountain in the midst
of the island; and on this mountain were their magnificent temples and
palaces, where they lived, separated by great walls from their subjects.

It may be urged that Mount Olympus could not have referred to any
mountain in Atlantis, because the Greeks gave that name to a group of
mountains partly in Macedonia and partly in Thessaly. But in Mysia,
Lycia, Cyprus, and elsewhere there were mountains called Olympus; and on
the plain of Olympia, in Elis, there was an eminence bearing the same
designation. There is a natural tendency among uncivilized peoples to
give a "local habitation" to every general tradition.

"Many of the oldest myths," says Baldwin (" Prehistoric Nations," p.
376), "relate to Spain, North-western Africa, and other regions on the
Atlantic, such as those concerning Hercules, the Cronidae, the
Hyperboreans, the Hesperides, and the Islands of the Blessed. Homer
described the Atlantic region of Europe in his account of the wanderings
of Ulysses. . . . In the ages previous to the decline of Phoenician
influence in Greece and around the AEgean Sea, the people of those
regions must have had a much better knowledge of Western Europe than
prevailed there during the Ionian or Hellenic period."

The mythology of Greece is really a history of the kings of Atlantis.
The Greek heaven was Atlantis. Hence the references to statues, swords,
etc., that fell from heaven, and were preserved in the temples of the
different states along the shores of the Mediterranean from a vast
antiquity, and which were regarded as the most precious possessions of
the people. They were relics of the lost race received in the early
ages. Thus we read of the brazen or bronze anvil that was preserved in
one city, which fell from heaven, and was nine days and nine nights in
falling; in other words, it took nine days and nights of a
sailing-voyage to bring it from Atlantis.

The modern theory that the gods of Greece never had any personal
existence, but represented atmospheric and meteorological myths, the
movements of clouds, planets, and the sun, is absurd. Rude nations
repeat, they do not invent; to suppose a barbarous people creating their
deities out of clouds and sunsets is to reverse nature. Men first
worship stones, then other men, then spirits. Resemblances of names
prove nothing; it is as if one would show that the name of the great
Napoleon meant "the lion of the desert" (Napo-leon), and should thence
argue that Napoleon never existed, that he was a myth, that he
represented power in solitude, or some such stuff. When we read that
Jove whipped his wife, and threw her son out of the window, the
inference is that Jove was a man, and actually did something like the
thing described; certainly gods, sublimated spirits, aerial sprites, do
not act after this fashion; and it would puzzle the mythmakers to prove
that the sun, moon, or stars whipped their wives or flung recalcitrant
young men out of windows. The history of Atlantis could be in part
reconstructed out of the mythology of Greece; it is a history of kings,
queens, and princes; of love-making, adulteries, rebellions, wars,
murders, sea-voyages, and colonizations; of palaces, temples, workshops,
and forges; of sword-making, engraving and metallurgy; of wine, barley,
wheat, cattle, sheep, horses, and agriculture generally. Who can doubt
that it represents the history of a real people?

Uranos was the first god; that is to say, the first king of the great
race. As he was at the commencement of all things, his symbol was the
sky. He probably represented the race previous even to the settlement of
Atlantis. He was a son of Gaea (the earth). He seems to have been the
parent of three races--the Titans, the Hekatoncheires, and the Kyklopes
or Cyclops.

I incline to the belief that these were civilized races, and that the
peculiarities ascribed to the last two refer to the vessels in which
they visited the shores of the barbarians.

THE EMPIRE OF ATLANTIS.

The empire of the Titans was clearly the empire of Atlantis. "The most
judicious among our mythologists" (says Dr. Rees, "New British
Cyclopaedia," art. Titans)--"such as Gerard Vossius, Marsham, Bochart,
and Father Thomassin--are of opinion that the partition of the world
among the sons of Noah-Shem, Ham, and Japheth--was the original of the
tradition of the same partition among Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto," upon
the breaking up of the great empire of the Titans. "The learned Pezron
contends that the division which was made of this vast empire came, in
after-times, to be taken for the partition of the whole world; that Asia
remaining in the hands of Jupiter (Zeus), the most potent of the three
brothers, made him looked upon as the god of Olympus; that the sea and
islands which fell to Neptune occasioned their giving him the title of
'god of the sea;' and that Spain, the extremity of the then known world,
thought to be a very low country in respect of Asia, and famous for its
excellent mines of gold and silver, failing to Pluto, occasioned him to
be taken for the 'god of the infernal regions.'" We should suppose that
Pluto possibly ruled over the transatlantic possessions of Atlantis in
America, over those "portions of the opposite continent" which Plato
tells us were dominated by Atlas and his posterity, and which, being far
beyond or below sunset, were the "under-world" of the ancients; while
Atlantis, the Canaries, etc., constituted the island division with
Western Africa and Spain. Murray tells us ("Mythology," p. 58) that
Pluto's share of the kingdom was supposed to lie "in the remote west."
The under-world of the dead was simply the world below the western
horizon; "the home of the dead has to do with that far west region where
the sun dies at night." ("Anthropology," p. 350.) "On the coast of
Brittany, where Cape Raz stands out westward into the ocean, there is
'the Bay of Souls,' the launching-place where the departed spirits sail
off across the sea." (Ibid.) In like manner, Odysseus found the land of
the dead in the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules. There, indeed, was
the land of the mighty dead, the grave of the drowned Atlanteans.

"However this be," continues F. Pezron, "the empire of the Titans,
according to the ancients, was very extensive; they possessed Phrygia,
Thrace, a part of Greece, the island of Crete, and several other
provinces to the inmost recesses of Spain. To these Sanchoniathon seems
to join Syria; and Diodorus adds a part of Africa, and the kingdoms of
Mauritania." The kingdoms of Mauritania embraced all that north-western
region of Africa nearest to Atlantis in which are the Atlas Mountains,
and in which, in the days of Herodotus, dwelt the Atlantes.

Neptune, or Poseidon, says, in answer to a message from Jupiter,

No vassal god, nor of his train am I.
Three brothers, deities, from Saturn came,
And ancient Rhea, earth's immortal dame;
Assigned by lot our triple rule we know;
Infernal Pluto sways the shades below:
O'er the wide clouds, and o'er the starry plain
Ethereal Jove extends his high domain;
My court beneath the hoary waves I keep,
And hush the roaring of the sacred deep.

Iliad, book xviii.

Homer alludes to Poseidon as

"The god whose liquid arms are hurled
Around the globs, whose earthquakes rock the world."

Mythology tells us that when the Titans were defeated by Saturn they
retreated into the interior of Spain; Jupiter followed them up, and beat
them for the last time near Tartessus, and thus terminated a ten-years'
war. Here we have a real battle on an actual battle-field.

If we needed any further proof that the empire of the Titans was the
empire of Atlantis, we would find it in the names of the Titans: among
these were Oceanus, Saturn or Chronos, and Atlas; they were all the sons
of Uranos. Oceanus was at the base of the Greek mythology. Plato says
("Dialogues," Timaeus, vol. ii., p. 533): "Oceanus and Tethys were the
children of Earth and Heaven, and from these sprung Phorcys, and
Chronos, and Rhea, and many more with them; and from Chronos and Rhea
sprung Zeus and Hera, and all those whom we know as their brethren, and
others who were their children." In other words, all their gods came out
of the ocean; they were rulers over some ocean realm; Chronos was the
son of Oceanus, and Chronos was an Atlantean god, and from him the
Atlantic Ocean was called by the ancients "the Chronian Sea." The elder
Minos was called "the Son of the Ocean:" he first gave civilization to
the Cretans; he engraved his laws on brass, precisely as Plato tells us
the laws of Atlantis were engraved on pillars of brass.

The wanderings of Ulysses, as detailed in the "Odyssey" of Homer, are
strangely connected with the Atlantic Ocean. The islands of the
Phoenicians were apparently in mid-ocean:

We dwell apart, afar
Within the unmeasured deep, amid its waves
The most remote of men; no other race
Hath commerce with us.--Odyssey, book vi.

The description of the Phaeacian walls, harbors, cities, palaces, ships,
etc., seems like a recollection of Atlantis. The island of Calypso
appears also to have been in the Atlantic Ocean, twenty days' sail from
the Phaeacian isles; and when Ulysses goes to the land of Pluto, "the
under-world," the home of the dead, he

"Reached the far confines of Oceanus,"

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