Belle K. Maniates - "Amarilly of Clothes line Alley"

Henri Bergson - "Dreams"

J. Endell Tyler - "Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1"

Various - "The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865"

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




The Egyptian pyramids all stand with their sides to the cardinal points,
while many of the Mexican pyramids do likewise. The Egyptian pyramids
were penetrated by small passage-ways; so were the Mexican. The Pyramid
of Teotihuacan, according to Almarez, has, at a point sixty-nine feet
from the base, a gallery large enough to admit a man crawling on hands
and knees, which extends, inward, on an incline, a distance of twenty
feet, and terminates in two square wells or chambers, each five feet
square and one of them fifteen feet deep. Mr. Lowenstern states,

PYRAMIDS OF TEOTIHUACAN.

according to Mr. Bancroft ("Native Races," vol. iv., p. 533), that "the
gallery is one hundred and fifty-seven feet long, increasing in height
to over six feet and a half as it penetrates the pyramid; that the well
is over six feet square, extending (apparently) down to the base and up
to the summit; and that other cross-galleries are blocked up by debris."
In the Pyramid of Cheops there is a similar opening or passage-way
forty-nine feet above the base; it is three feet eleven inches high, and
three feet five and a half inches wide; it leads down a slope to a
sepulchral chamber or well, and connects with other passage-ways leading
up into the body of the pyramid.

THE GREAT MOUND, NEAR MIAMISBURG, OHIO.

In both the Egyptian the American pyramids the outside of the structures
was covered with a thick coating of smooth, shining cement.

Humboldt considered the Pyramid of Cholula of the same type as the
Temple of Jupiter Belus, the pyramids of Meidoun Dachhour, and the group
of Sakkarah, in Egypt.

GREAT PYRAMID OF XCOCH.

In both America and Egypt the pyramids were used as places of sepulture;
and it is a remarkable fact that the system of earthworks and mounds,
kindred to the pyramids, is found even in England. Silsbury Hill, at
Avebury, is an artificial mound one hundred and seventy feet high. It is
connected with ramparts, avenues (fourteen hundred and eighty yards
long), circular ditches, and stone circles, almost identical with those
found in the valley of the Mississippi. In Ireland the dead were buried
in vaults of stone, and the earth raised over them in pyramids flattened
on the top. They were called "moats" by the people. We have found the
stone vaults at the base of similar truncated pyramids in Ohio. There
can be no doubt that the pyramid was a developed and perfected mound,
and that the parent form of these curious structures is to be found in
Silsbury Hill, and in the mounds of earth of Central America and the
Mississippi Valley.

We find the emblem of the Cross in pre-Christian times venerated as a
holy symbol on both sides of the Atlantic; and we find it explained as a
type of the four rivers of the happy island where the civilization of
the race originated.

We find everywhere among the European and American nations the memory of
an Eden of the race, where the first men dwelt in primeval peace and
happiness, and which was afterward destroyed by water.

We find the pyramid on both sides of the Atlantic, with its four sides
pointing, like the arms of the Cross, to the four cardinal points-a
reminiscence of Olympus; and in the Aztec representation of Olympos
(Aztlan) we find the pyramid as the central and typical figure.

Is it possible to suppose all these extraordinary coincidences to be the
result of accident? We might just as well say that the similarities
between the American and English forms of government were not the result
of relationship or descent, but that men placed in similar circumstances
had spontaneously and necessarily reached the same results.

CHAPTER VI.

GOLD AND SILVER THE SACRED METALS OF ATLANTIS.

Money is the instrumentality by which man is lifted above the
limitations of barter. Baron Storch terms it "the marvellous instrument
to which we are indebted for our wealth and civilization."

It is interesting to inquire into the various articles which have been
used in different countries and ages as money. The following is a table
of some of them:

Articles of Utility.

+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| India | Cakes of tea. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| China | Pieces of silk. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Abyssinia | Salt. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Iceland and Newfoundland | Codfish. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Illinois (in early days) | Coon-skins. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Bornoo (Africa) | Cotton shirts. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Ancient Russia | Skins of wild animals. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| West India Islands (1500) | Cocoa-nuts. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Massachusetts Indians | Wampum and musket-balls. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Virginia (1700) | Tobacco. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| British West India Islands | Pins, snuff, and whiskey. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Central South America | Soap, chocolate, and eggs. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Ancient Romans | Cattle. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Ancient Greece | Nails of copper and iron. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| The Lacedemonians | Iron. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| The Burman Empire | Lead. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Russia (1828 to 1845) | Platinum. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Rome (under Numa Pompilius) | Wood and leather. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Rome (under the Caesars) | Land. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Carthaginians | Leather. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Ancient Britons Cattle, | slaves, brass, and iron. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| England (under James II.) | Tin, gun-metal, and pewter. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| South Sea Islands | Axes and hammers. |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

Articles of Ornament.

+-------------------------------+----------------+
| Ancient Jews | Jewels. |
+-------------------------------+----------------+
| The Indian Islands and Africa | Cowrie shells, |
+-------------------------------+----------------+

Conventional Signs.

+----------------+----------------------------+
| Holland (1574) | Pieces of pasteboard. |
+----------------+----------------------------+
| China (1200) | Bark of the mulberry-tree. |
+----------------+----------------------------+

It is evident that every primitive people uses as money those articles
upon which they set the highest value--as cattle, jewels, slaves, salt,
musket-balls, pins, snuff, whiskey, cotton shirts, leather, axes, and
hammers; or those articles for which there was a foreign demand, and
which they could trade off to the merchants for articles of
necessity--as tea, silk, codfish, coonskins, cocoa-nuts, and tobacco.
Then there is a later stage, when the stamp of the government is
impressed upon paper, wood, pasteboard, or the bark of trees, and these
articles are given a legal-tender character.

When a civilized nation comes in contact with a barbarous people they
seek to trade with them for those things which they need; a
metal-working people, manufacturing weapons of iron or copper, will seek
for the useful metals, and hence we find iron, copper, tin, and lead
coming into use as a standard of values--as money; for they can always
be converted into articles of use and weapons of war. But when we ask
bow it chanced that gold and silver came to be used as money, and why it
is that gold is regarded as so much more valuable than silver, no answer
presents itself. It was impossible to make either of them into pots or
pans, swords or spears; they were not necessarily more beautiful than
glass or the combinations of tin and copper. Nothing astonished the
American races more than the extraordinary value set upon gold and
silver by the Spaniards; they could not understand it. A West Indian
savage traded a handful of gold-dust with one of the sailors
accompanying Columbus for some tool, and then ran for his life to the
woods lest the sailor should repent his bargain and call him back. The
Mexicans had coins of tin shaped like a letter T. We can understand
this, for tin was necessary to them in hardening their bronze
implements, and it may have been the highest type of metallic value
among them. A round copper coin with a serpent stamped on it was found
at Palenque, and T-shaped copper coins are very abundant in the ruins of
Central America. This too we can understand, for copper was necessary in
every work of art or utility.

All these nations were familiar with gold and silver, but they used them
as sacred metals for the adornment of the temples of the sun and moon.
The color of gold was something of the color of the sun's rays, while
the color of silver resembled the pale light of the moon, and hence they
were respectively sacred to the gods of the sun and moon. And this is
probably the origin of the comparative value of these metals: they
became the precious metals because they were the sacred metals, and gold
was more valuable than silver--just as the sun-god was the great god of
the nations, while the mild moon was simply an attendant upon the sun.

The Peruvians called gold "the tears wept by the sun." It was not used
among the people for ornament or money. The great temple of the sun at
Cuzco was called the "Place of Gold." It was, as I have shown, literally
a mine of gold. Walls, cornices, statuary, plate, ornaments, all were of
gold; the very ewers, pipes, and aqueducts--even the agricultural
implements used in the garden of the temple--were of gold and silver.
The value of the jewels which adorned the temple was equal to one
hundred and eighty millions of dollars! The riches of the kingdom can be
conceived when we remember that from a pyramid in Chimu a Spanish
explorer named Toledo took, in 1577, $4,450,284 in gold and silver.
("New American Cyclopaedia," art. American Antiquities.) The gold and
silver of Peru largely contributed to form the metallic currency upon
which Europe has carried on her commerce during the last three hundred
years.

Gold and silver were not valued in Peru for any intrinsic usefulness;
they were regarded as sacred because reserved for the two great gods of
the nation. As we find gold and silver mined and worked on both sides of
the Atlantic at the earliest periods of recorded history, we may fairly
conclude that they were known to the Atlanteans; and this view is
confirmed by the statements of Plato, who represents a condition of
things in Atlantis exactly like that which Pizarro found in Peru.
Doubtless the vast accumulations of gold and silver in both countries
were due to the fact that these metals were not permitted to be used by
the people. In Peru the annual taxes of the people were paid to the Inca
in part in gold and silver from the mines, and they were used to
ornament the temples; and thus the work of accumulating the sacred
metals went on from generation to generation. The same process doubtless
led to the vast accumulations in the temples of Atlantis, as described
by Plato.

Now, as the Atlanteans carried on an immense commerce with all the
countries of Europe and Western Asia, they doubtless inquired and traded
for gold and silver for the adornment of their temples, and they thus
produced a demand for and gave a value to the two metals otherwise
comparatively useless to man--a value higher than any other commodity
which the people could offer their civilized customers; and as the
reverence for the great burning orb of the sun, master of all the
manifestations of nature, was tenfold as great as the veneration for the
smaller, weaker, and variable goddess of the night, so was the demand
for the metal sacred to the sun ten times as great as for the metal
sacred to the moon. This view is confirmed by the fact that the root of
the word by which the Celts, the Greeks, and the Romans designated gold
was the Sanscrit word karat, which means, "the color of the sun." Among
the Assyrians gold and silver were respectively consecrated to the and
moon precisely as they were in Peru. A pyramid belonging to the palace
of Nineveh is referred to repeatedly in the inscriptions. It was
composed of seven stages, equal in height, and each one smaller in area
than the one beneath it; each stage was covered with stucco of different
colors, "a different color representing each of the heavenly bodies, the
least important being at the base: white (Venus); black (Saturn); purple
(Jupiter); blue (Mercury); vermillion (Mars); silver (the Moon); and
gold (the Sun)." (Lenormant's "Ancient History of the East," vol. i., p.
463.) "In England, to this day the new moon is saluted with a bow or a
courtesy, as well as the curious practice of 'turning one's silver,'
which seems a relic of the offering of the moon's proper metal."
(Tylor's "Anthropology", p. 361.) The custom of wishing, when one first
sees the new moon, is probably a survival of moon-worship; the wish
taking the place of the prayer.

And thus has it come to pass that, precisely as the physicians of
Europe, fifty years ago, practised bleeding, because for thousands of
years their savage ancestors had used it to draw away the evil spirits
out of the man, so the business of our modern civilization is dependent
upon the superstition of a past civilization, and the bankers of the
world are to-day perpetuating the adoration of "the tears wept by the
sun" which was commenced ages since on the island of Atlantis.

And it becomes a grave question--when we remember that the rapidly
increasing business of the world, consequent upon an increasing
population, and a civilization advancing with giant steps, is measured
by the standard of a currency limited by natural laws, decreasing
annually in production, and incapable of expanding proportionately to
the growth of the world--whether this Atlantean superstition may not yet
inflict more incalculable injuries on mankind than those which resulted
from the practice of phlebotomy.

PART V.

THE COLONIES OF ATLANTIS.

CHAPTER I.

THE CENTRAL AMERICAN AND MEXICAN COLONIES.

The western shores of Atlantis were not far distant from the West India
Islands; a people possessed of ships could readily pass from island to
island until they reached the continent. Columbus found the natives
making such voyages in open canoes. If, then, we will suppose that there
was no original connection between the inhabitants of the main-land and
of Atlantis, the commercial activity of the Atlanteans would soon reveal
to them the shores of the Gulf. Commerce implies the plantation of
colonies; the trading-post is always the nucleus of a settlement; we
have seen this illustrated in modern times in the case of the English
East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company. We can therefore readily
believe that commercial intercourse between Atlantis and Yucatan,
Honduras and Mexico, created colonies along the shores of the Gulf which
gradually spread into the interior, and to the high table-lands of
Mexico. And, accordingly, we find, as I have already shown, that all the
traditions of Central America and Mexico point to some country in the
East, and beyond the sea, as the source of their first civilized people;
and this region, known among them as "Aztlan," lived in the memory of
the people as a beautiful and happy land, where their ancestors had
dwelt in peace for many generations.

Dr. Le Plongeon, who spent four years exploring Yucatan, says:

"One-third of this tongue (the Maya) is pure Greek. Who brought the
dialect of Homer to America? or who took to Greece that of the Mayas?
Greek is the offspring of the Sanscrit. Is Maya? or are they coeval? . .
. The Maya is not devoid of words from the Assyrian."

That the population of Central America (and in this term I include
Mexico) was at one time very dense, and had attained to a high degree of
civilization, higher even than that of Europe in the time of Columbus,
there can be no question; and it is also probable, as I have shown, that
they originally belonged to the white race. Desire Charnay, who is now
exploring the ruins of Central America, says (North American Review,
January, 1881, p. 48), "The Toltecs were fair, robust, and bearded. I
have often seen Indians of pure blood with blue eyes." Quetzalcoatl was
represented as large, "with a big head and a heavy beard." The same
author speaks (page 44) of "the ocean of ruins all around, not inferior
in size to those of Egypt" At Teotihuacan he measured one building two
thousand feet wide on each side, and fifteen pyramids, each nearly as
large in the base as Cheops. "The city is indeed of vast extent . . .
the whole ground, over a space of five or six miles in diameter, is
covered with heaps of ruins--ruins which at first make no impression, so
complete is their dilapidation." He asserts the great antiquity of these
ruins, because he found the very highways of the ancient city to be
composed of broken bricks and pottery, the debris left by earlier
populations. "This continent," he says (page 43), "is the land of
mysteries; we here enter an infinity whose limits we cannot estimate. .
. . I shall soon have to quit work in this place. The long avenue on
which it stands is lined with ruins of public buildings and palaces,
forming continuous lines, as in the streets of modern cities. Still, all
these edifices and balls were as nothing compared with the vast
substructures which strengthened their foundations."

We find the strongest resemblances to the works of the ancient European
races: the masonry is similar; the cement is the same; the sculptures
are alike; both peoples used the arch; in both continents we find
bricks, glassware, and even porcelain (North American Review, December,
1880, pp. 524, 525), "with blue figures on a white ground;" also bronze
composed of the same elements of copper and tin in like proportions;
coins made of copper, round and T-shaped, and even metallic candlesticks.

Desire Charnay believes that he has found in the ruins of Tula the bones
of swine, sheep, oxen, and horses, in a fossil state, indicating an
immense antiquity. The Toltecs possessed a pure and simple religion,
like that of Atlantis, as described by Plato, with the same sacrifices
of fruits and flowers; they were farmers; they raised and wove cotton;
they cultivated fruits; they used the sign of the Cross extensively;
they cut and engraved precious stones; among their carvings have been
found representations of the elephant and the lion, both animals not
known in America. The forms of sepulture were the same as among the
ancient races of the Old World; they burnt the bodies of their great
men, and enclosed the dust in funeral urns; some of their dead were
buried in a sitting position, others reclined at full length, and many
were embalmed like the Egyptian mummies.

When we turn to Mexico, the same resemblances present themselves.

The government was an elective monarchy, like that of Poland, the king
being selected from the royal family by the votes of the nobles of the
kingdom. There was a royal family, an aristocracy, a privileged
priesthood, a judiciary, and a common people. Here we have all the
several estates into which society in Europe is divided.

There were thirty grand nobles in the kingdom, and the vastness of the
realm may be judged by the fact that each of these could muster one
hundred thousand vassals from their own estates, or a total of three
millions. And we have only to read of the vast hordes brought into the
field against Cortez to know that this was not an exaggeration.

They even possessed that which has been considered the crowning feature
of European society, the feudal system. The nobles held their lands upon
the tenure of military service.

But the most striking feature was the organization of the judiciary. The
judges were independent even of the king, and held their offices for
life. There were supreme judges for the larger divisions of the kingdom,
district judges in each of the provinces, and magistrates chosen by the
people throughout the country.

There was also a general legislative assembly, congress, or parliament,
held every eighty days, presided over by the king, consisting of all the
judges of the realm, to which the last appeal lay

"The rites of marriage," says Prescott, "were celebrated with as much
formality as in any Christian country; and the institution was held in
such reverence that a tribunal was instituted for the sole purpose of
determining questions relating to it. Divorces could not be obtained
until authorized by a sentence of the court, after a patient hearing of
the parties."

Slavery was tolerated, but the labors of the slave were light, his
rights carefully guarded, and his children were free. The slave could
own property, and even other slaves.

Their religion possessed so many features similar to those of the Old
World, that the Spanish priests declared the devil had given them a
bogus imitation of Christianity to destroy their souls. "The devil,"
said they, "stole all he could."

They had confessions, absolution of sins, and baptism. When their
children were named, they sprinkled their lips and bosoms with water,
and "the Lord was implored to permit the holy drops to wash away the sin
that was given it before the foundation of the world."

The priests were numerous and powerful. They practised fasts, vigils,
flagellations, and many of them lived in monastic seclusion.

The Aztecs, like the Egyptians, had progressed through all the three
different modes of writing--the picture-writing, the symbolical, and the
phonetic. They recorded all their laws, their tribute-rolls specifying
the various imposts, their mythology, astronomical calendars, and
rituals, their political annals and their chronology. They wrote on
cotton-cloth, on skins prepared like parchment, on a composition of silk
and gum, and on a species of paper, soft and beautiful, made from the
aloe. Their books were about the size and shape of our own, but the
leaves were long strips folded together in many folds.

They wrote poetry and cultivated oratory, and paid much attention to
rhetoric. They also had a species of theatrical performances.

Their proficiency in astronomy is thus spoken of by Prescott:

"That they should be capable of accurately adjusting their festivals by
the movements of the heavenly bodies, and should fix the true length of
the tropical year with a precision unknown to the great philosophers of
antiquity, could be the result only of a long series of nice and patient
observations, evincing no slight progress in civilization."

"Their women," says the same author, "are described by the Spaniards as
pretty, though with a serious and rather melancholy cast of countenance.
Their long, black hair might generally be seen wreathed with flowers,
or, among the richer people, with strings of precious stones and pearls
from the Gulf of California. They appear to have been treated with much
consideration by their husbands; and passed their time in indolent
tranquillity, or in such feminine occupations as spinning, embroidery,
and the like; while their maidens beguiled the hours by the rehearsal of
traditionary tales and ballads.

"Numerous attendants of both sexes waited at the banquets. The balls
were scented with perfumes, and the courts strewed with odoriferous
herbs and flowers, which were distributed in profusion among the guests
as they arrived. Cotton napkins and ewers of water were placed before
them as they took their seats at the board. Tobacco was them offered, in
pipes, mixed with aromatic substances, or in the form of cigars inserted
in tubes of tortoise-shell or silver. It is a curious fact that the
Aztecs also took the dried tobacco leaf in the pulverized form of snuff.

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