Thomas Henry Huxley - "This is Essay #6 from Science and Hebrew Tradition"

Andrew Barton Paterson - "An Outback Marriage"

Ruth Edna Kelley - "The Book of Hallowe'en"

Bernie Babcock - "The Coming of the King"

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




There can be no question that the Chinese themselves, in their early
legends, connected their origin with a people who were destroyed by
water in a tremendous convulsion of the earth. Associated with this
event was a divine personage called Niu-va (Noah?).

Sir William Jones says:

"The Chinese believe the earth to have been wholly covered with water,
which, in works of undisputed authenticity, they describe as flowing
abundantly, then subsiding and separating the higher from the lower ages
of mankind; that this division of time, from which their poetical
history begins, just preceded the appearance of Fo-hi on the mountains
of Chin." ("Discourse on the Chinese; Asiatic Researches," vol. ii., p.
376.)

The following history of this destruction of their ancestors vividly
recalls to us the convulsion depicted in the Chaldean and American
legends:

"The pillars of heaven were broken; the earth shook to its very
foundations; the heavens sunk lower toward the north; the sun, the moon,
and the stars changed their motions; the earth fell to pieces, and the
waters enclosed within its bosom burst forth with violence and
overflowed it. Man having rebelled against Heaven, the system of the
universe was totally disordered. The sun was eclipsed, the planets
altered their course, and the grand harmony of nature was disturbed."

A learned Frenchman, M. Terrien de la Couperie, member of the Asiatic
Society of Paris, has just published a work (1880) in which he
demonstrates the astonishing fact that the Chinese language is clearly
related to the Chaldean, and that both the Chinese characters and the
cuneiform alphabet are degenerate descendants of an original
hieroglyphical alphabet. The same signs exist for many words, while
numerous words are very much alike. M. de la Couperie gives a table of
some of these similarities, from which I quote as follows:

+------------+----------+----------+
| English. | Chinese. | Chaldee. |
+------------+----------+----------+
| To shine | Mut | Mul. |
+------------+----------+----------+
| To die | Mut | Mit. |
+------------+----------+----------+
| Book | King | Kin. |
+------------+----------+----------+
| Cloth | Sik | Sik. |
+------------+----------+----------+
| Right hand | Dzek | Zag. |
+------------+----------+----------+
| Hero | Tan | Dun. |
+------------+----------+----------+
| Earth | Kien-kai | Kiengi. |
+------------+----------+----------+
| Cow | Lub | Lu, lup. |
+------------+----------+----------+
| Brick | Ku | Ku. |
+------------+----------+----------+

This surprising discovery brings the Chinese civilization still nearer
to the Mediterranean head-quarters of the races, and increases the
probability that the arts of China were of Atlantean origin; and that
the name of Nai Hoang-ti, or Nai Korti, the founder of Chinese
civilization, may be a reminiscence of Nakhunta, the chief of the gods,
as recorded in the Susian texts, and this, in turn, a recollection of
the Deva-Nahusha of the Hindoos, the Dionysos of the Greeks, the king of
Atlantis, whose great empire reached to the "farther parts of India,"
and embraced, according to Plato, "parts of the continent of America."

Linguistic science achieved a great discovery when it established the
fact that there was a continuous belt of languages from Iceland to
Ceylon which were the variant forms of one mother-tongue, the
Indo-European; but it must prepare itself for a still wider
generalization. There is abundant proof--proof with which pages might be
filled--that there was a still older mother-tongue, from which Aryan,
Semitic, and Hamitic were all derived--the language of Noah, the
language of Atlantis, the language of the great "aggressive empire" of
Plato, the language of the empire of the Titans.

The Arabic word bin, within, becomes, when it means interval, space,
binnon; this is the German and Dutch binnen and Saxon binnon, signifying
within. The Ethiopian word aorf, to fall asleep, is the root of the word
Morpheus, the god of sleep. The Hebrew word chanah, to dwell, is the
parent of the Anglo-Saxon inne and Icelandic inni, a house, and of our
word inn, a hotel. The Hebrew word naval or nafal signifies to fall;
from it is derived our word fall and fool (one who falls); the Chaldee
word is nabal, to make foul, and the Arabic word nabala means to die,
that is, to fall. From the last syllable of the Chaldee nasar, to saw,
we can derive the Latin serra, the High German sagen, the Danish sauga,
and our word to saw. The Arabic nafida, to fade, is the same as the
Italian fado, the Latin fatuus (foolish, tasteless), the Dutch vadden,
and our to fade. The Ethiopic word gaber, to make, to do, and the Arabic
word jabara, to make strong, becomes the Welsh word goberu, to work, to
operate, the Latin operor, and the English operate. The Arabic word
abara signifies to prick, to sting; we see this root in the Welsh bar, a
summit, and par, a spear, and per, a spit; whence our word spear. In the
Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic zug means to join, to couple; from this the
Greeks obtained zugos, the Romans jugum, and we the word yoke; while the
Germans obtained jok or jog, the Dutch juk, the Swedes ok. The Sanscrit
is juga. The Arabic sanna, to be old, reappears in the Latin senex, the
Welsh hen, and our senile. The Hebrew banah, to build, is the Irish bun,
foundation, and the Latin fundo, fundare, to found. The Arabic baraka,
to bend the knee, to fall on the breast, is probably the Saxon brecau,
the Danish braekke, the Swedish braecka, Welsh bregu, and our word to
break. The Arabic baraka also signifies to rain violently; and from this
we get the Saxon roegn, to rain, Dutch regen, to rain, Cimbric roekia,
rain, Welsh rheg, rain. The Chaldee word braic, a branch, is the Irish
braic or raigh, an arm, the Welsh braic, the Latin brachium, and the
English brace, something which supports like an arm. The Chaldee frak,
to rub, to tread out grain, is the same as the Latin frico, frio, and
our word rake. The Arabic word to rub is fraka. The Chaldee rag, ragag,
means to desire, to long for; it is the same as the Greek oregw, the
Latin porrigere, the Saxon roeccan, the Icelandic rakna, the German
reichen, and our to reach, to rage. The Arabic rauka, to strain or
purify, as wine, is precisely our English word rack, to rack wine. The
Hebrew word bara, to create, is our word to bear, as to bear children: a
great number of words in all the European languages contain this root in
its various modifications. The Hebrew word kafar, to cover, is our word
to cover, and coffer, something which covers, and covert, a secret
place; from this root also comes the Latin cooperio and the French
couvrir, to cover. The Arabic word shakala, to bind under the belly, is
our word to shackle. From the Arabic walada and Ethiopian walad, to
beget, to bring forth, we get the Welsh llawd, a shooting out; and hence
our word lad. Our word matter, or pus, is from the Arabic madda; our
word mature is originally from the Chaldee mita. The Arabic word amida
signifies to end, and from this comes the noun, a limit, a termination,
Latin meta, and our words meet and mete.

I might continue this list, but I have given enough to show that all the
Atlantean races once spoke the same language, and that the dispersion on
the plains of Shinar signifies that breaking up of the tongues of one
people under the operation of vast spaces of time. Philology is yet in
its infancy, and the time is not far distant when the identity of the
languages of all the Noachic races will be as clearly established and as
universally acknowledged as is now the identity, of the languages of the
Aryan family of nations.

And precisely as recent research has demonstrated the relationship
between Pekin and Babylon, so investigation in Central America has
proved that there is a mysterious bond of union connecting the Chinese
and one of the races of Mexico. The resemblances are so great that Mr.
Short ("North Americans of Antiquity," p. 494) says, "There is no doubt
that strong analogies exist between the Otomi and the Chinese." Senor
Najera ("Dissertacion Sobre la lingua Othomi, Mexico," pp. 87, 88) gives
a list of words from which I quote the following:

+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Chinese. | Othomi. | English. | Chinese. | Othomi | English. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Cho | To | The, that. | Pa | Da | To give. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Y | N-y | A wound. | Tsun | Nsu | Honor. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Ten | Gu, mu | Head. | Hu | Hmu | Sir, Lord. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Siao | Sui | Night | Na | Na | That. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Tien | Tsi | Tooth | Hu | He | Cold. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Ye | Yo | Shining | Ye | He | And. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Ky | Hy (ji) | Happiness. | Hoa | Hia | Word. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Ku | Du | Death | Nugo | Nga | I |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Po | Yo | No | Ni | Nuy | Thou. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Na | Ta | Man | Hao | Nho | The good. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Nin | Nsu | Female | Ta | Da | The great. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Tseu | Tsi, ti | Son | Li | Ti | Gain. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Tso | Tsa | To perfect | Ho | To | Who. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Kuan | Khuani | True | Pa | Pa | To leave. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+
| Siao | Sa | To mock | Mu, mo | Me | Mother. |
+----------+---------+------------+----------+--------+------------+

Recently Herr Forchhammer, of Leipsic, has published a truly scientific
comparison of the grammatical structure of the Choctaw, Chickasaw,
Muscogee, and Seminole languages with the Ural-Altaic tongues, in which
he has developed many interesting points of resemblance.

It has been the custom to ascribe the recognized similarities between
the Indians of America and the Chinese and Japanese to a migration by
way of Behring's Strait from Asia into America; but when we find that
the Chinese themselves only reached the Pacific coast within the
Historical Period, and that they came to it from the direction of the
Mediterranean and Atlantis, and when we find so many and such distinct
recollections of the destruction of Atlantis in the Flood legends of the
American races, it seems more reasonable to conclude that the
resemblances between the Othomi and the Chinese are to be accounted for
by intercourse through Atlantis.

We find a confirmation in all these facts of the order in which Genesis
names the sons of Noah:

"Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and
Japheth, and unto them were sons born after the flood."

Can we not suppose that those three sons represent three great races in
the order of their precedence?

The record of Genesis claims that the Phoenicians were descended from
Ham, while the Hebrews were descended from Shem; yet we find the Hebrews
and Phoenicians united by the ties of a common language, common
traditions, and common race characteristics. The Jews are the great
merchants of the world eighteen centuries after Christ, just as the
Phoenicians were the great merchants of the world fifteen centuries
before Christ.

Moreover, the Arabians, who are popularly classed as Semites, or sons of
Shem, admit in their traditions that they are descended from "Ad, the
son of Ham;" and the tenth chapter of Genesis classes them among the
descendants of Ham, calling them Seba, Havilah, Raamah, etc. If the two
great so-called Semitic stocks--the Phoenicians and Arabians--are
Hamites, surely the third member of the group belongs to the same
"sunburnt" race.

If we concede that the Jews were also a branch of the Hamitic stock,
then we have, firstly, a Semitic stock, the Turanian, embracing the
Etruscans, the Finns, the Tartars, the Mongols, the Chinese, and
Japanese; secondly, a Hamitic family, "the sunburnt" race--a red
race--including the Cushites, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Berbers,
etc.; and, thirdly, a Japhetic or whiter stock, embracing the Greeks,
Italians, Celts, Goths, and the men who wrote Sanscrit-in other words,
the entire Aryan family.

If we add to these three races the negro race--which cannot be traced
back to Atlantis, and is not included, according to Genesis, among the
descendants of Noah--we have the four races, the white, red, yellow, and
black, recognized by the Egyptians as embracing all the people known to
them.

There seems to be some confusion in Genesis as to the Semitic stock. It
classes different races as both Semites and Hamites; as, for instance,
Sheba and Havilah; while the race of Mash, or Meshech, is classed among
the sons of Shem and the sons of Japheth. In fact, there seems to be a
confusion of Hamitic and Semitic stocks. "This is shown in the blending
of Hamitic and Semitic in some of the most ancient inscriptions; in the
facility of intercourse between the Semites of Asia and the Hamites of
Egypt; in the peaceful and unobserved absorption of all the Asiatic
Hamites, and the Semitic adoption of the Hamitic gods and religious
system. It is manifest that, at a period not long previous, the two
families had dwelt together and spoken the same language." (Winchell's
"Pre-Adamites," p. 36.) Is it not more reasonable to suppose that the
so-called Semitic races of Genesis were a mere division of the Hamitic
stock, and that we are to look for the third great division of the sons
of Noah among the Turanians?

Francis Lenormant, high authority, is of the opinion that the Turanian
races are descended from Magog, the son of Japheth. He regards the
Turanians as intermediate between the white and yellow races, graduating
insensibly into each. "The Uzbecs, the Osmanli Turks, and the Hungarians
are not to be distinguished in appearance from the most perfect branches
of the white race; on the other hand, the Tchondes almost exactly
resemble the Tongouses, who belong to the yellow race.

The Turanian languages are marked by the same agglutinative character
found in the American races.

The Mongolian and the Indian are alike in the absence of a heavy beard.
The royal color of the Incas was yellow; yellow is the color of the
imperial family in China. The religion of the Peruvians was sun-worship;
"the sun was the peculiar god of the Mongols from the earliest times."
The Peruvians regarded Pachacamac as the sovereign creator. Camac-Hya
was the name of a Hindoo goddess. Haylli was the burden of every verse
of the song composed in praise of the sun and the Incas. Mr. John
Ranking derives the word Allah from the word Haylli, also the word
Halle-lujah. In the city of Cuzco was a portion of land which none were
permitted to cultivate except those of the royal blood. At certain
seasons the Incas turned up the sod here, amid much rejoicing, and many
ceremonies. A similar custom prevails in China: The emperor ploughs a
few furrows, and twelve illustrious persons attend the plough after him.
(Du Halde, "Empire of China," vol. i., p. 275.) The cycle of sixty years
was in use among most of the nations of Eastern Asia, and among the
Muyscas of the elevated plains of Bogota. The "quipu," a knotted
reckoning-cord, was in use in Peru and in China. (Bancroft's "Native
Races," vol. v., p. 48.) In Peru and China "both use hieroglyphics,
which are read from above downward." (Ibid.)

"It appears most evident to me," says Humboldt, "that the monuments,
methods of computing time, systems of cosmogony, and many myths of
America, offer striking analogies with the ideas of Eastern
Asia--analogies which indicate an ancient communication, and are not
simply the result of that uniform condition in which all nations are
found in the dawn of civilization." ("Exam. Crit.," tom. ii., p. 68.)

"In the ruined cities of Cambodia, which lies farther to the east of
Burmah, recent research has discovered teocallis like those in Mexico,
and the remains of temples of the same type and pattern as those of
Yucatan. And when we reach the sea we encounter at Suku, in Java, a
teocalli which is absolutely identical with that of Tehuantepec. Mr.
Ferguson said, 'as we advance eastward from the valley of the Euphrates,
at every step we meet with forms of art becoming more and more like
those of Central America.'" ("Builders of Babel," p. 88.)

Prescott says:

The coincidences are sufficiently strong to authorize a belief that the
civilization of Anahuac was in some degree influenced by that of Eastern
Asia; and, secondly, that the discrepancies are such as to carry back
the communication to a very remote period." ("Mexico," vol. iii., p.
418.)

"All appearances," continues Lenormant ("Ancient History of the East,"
vol. i., p. 64), "would lead us to regard the Turanian race as the first
branch of the family of Japheth which went forth into the world; and by
that premature separation, by an isolated and antagonistic existence,
took, or rather preserved, a completely distinct physiognomy. . . . It
is a type of the white race imperfectly developed."

We may regard this yellow race as the first and oldest wave from
Atlantis, and, therefore, reaching farthest away from the common source;
then came the Hamitic race; then the Japhetic.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ANTIQUITY OF SOME OF OUR GREAT INVENTIONS.

It may seem like a flight of the imagination to suppose that the
mariner's compass was known to the inhabitants of Atlantis. And yet, if
my readers are satisfied that the Atlantean, were a highly civilized
maritime people, carrying on commerce with regions as far apart as Peru
and Syria, we must conclude that they possessed some means of tracing
their course in the great seas they traversed; and accordingly, when we
proceed to investigate this subject, we find that as far back as we may
go in the study of the ancient races of the world, we find them
possessed of a knowledge of the virtues of the magnetic stone, and in
the habit of utilizing it. The people of Europe, rising a few centuries
since out of a state of semi-barbarism, have been in the habit of
claiming the invention of many things which they simply borrowed from
the older nations. This was the case with the mariner's compass. It was
believed for many years that it was first invented by an Italian named
Amalfi, A.D. 1302. In that interesting work, Goodrich's "Life of
Columbus," we find a curious history of the magnetic compass prior to
that time, from which we collate the following points:

"In A.D. 868 it was employed by the Northmen." ("The Landnamabok," vol.
i., chap. 2.) An Italian poem Of A.D. 1190 refers to it as in use among
the Italian sailors at that date. In the ancient language of the
Hindoos, the Sanscrit--which has been a dead language for twenty-two
hundred years--the magnet was called "the precious stone beloved of
Iron." The Talmud speaks of it as "the stone of attraction;" and it is
alluded to in the early Hebrew prayers as Kalamitah, the same name given
it by the Greeks, from the reed upon which the compass floated. The
Phoenicians were familiar with the use of the magnet. At the prow of
their vessels stood the figure of a woman (Astarte) holding a cross in
one hand and pointing the way with the other; the cross represented the
compass, which was a magnetized needle, floating in water crosswise upon
a piece of reed or wood. The cross became the coat of arms of the
Phoenicians--not only, possibly, as we have shown, as a recollection of
the four rivers of Atlantis, but because it represented the secret of
their great sea-voyages, to which they owed their national greatness.
The hyperborean magician, Abaras, carried "a guiding arrow," which
Pythagoras gave him, "in order that it may be useful to him in all
difficulties in his long journey." ("Herodotus," vol. iv., p. 36.)

The magnet was called the "Stone of Hercules." Hercules was the patron
divinity of the Phoenicians. He was, as we have shown elsewhere, one of
the gods of Atlantis--probably one of its great kings and navigators.
The Atlanteans were, as Plato tells us, a maritime, commercial people,
trading up the Mediterranean as far as Egypt and Syria, and across the
Atlantic to "the whole opposite continent that surrounds the sea;" the
Phoenicians, as their successors and descendants, and colonized on the
shores of the Mediterranean, inherited their civilization and their
maritime habits, and with these that invention without which their great
voyages were impossible. From them the magnet passed to the Hindoos, and
from them to the Chinese, who certainly possessed it at an early date.
In the year 2700 B.C. the Emperor Wang-ti placed a magnetic figure with
an extended arm, like the Astarte of the Phoenicians, on the front of
carriages, the arm always turning and pointing to the south, which the
Chinese regarded as the principal pole. (See Goodrich's "Columbus," p.
31, etc.) This illustration represents one of these chariots:

In the seventh century it was used by the navigators of the Baltic Sea
and the German Ocean.

CHINESE MAGNETIC CAR

The ancient Egyptians called the loadstone the bone of Haroeri, and iron
the bone of Typhon. Haroeri was the son of Osiris and grandson of Rhea,
a goddess of the earth, a queen of Atlantis, and mother of Poseidon;
Typhon was a wind-god and an evil genius, but also a son of Rhea, the
earth goddess. Do we find in this curious designation of iron and
loadstone as "bones of the descendants of the earth," an explanation of
that otherwise inexplicable Greek legend about Deucalion "throwing the
bones of the earth behind him, when instantly men rose from the ground,
and the world was repeopled?" Does it mean that by means of the magnet
he sailed, after the Flood, to the European colonies of Atlantis.
already thickly inhabited?

A late writer, speaking upon the subject of the loadstone, tells us:

"Hercules, it was said, being once overpowered by the heat of the sun,
drew his bow against that luminary; whereupon the god Phoebus, admiring
his intrepidity, gave him a golden cup, with which he sailed over the
ocean. This cup was the compass, which old writers have called Lapis
Heracleus. Pisander says Oceanus lent him the cup, and Lucian says it
was a sea-shell. Tradition affirms that the magnet originally was not on
a pivot, but set to float on water in a cup. The old antiquarian is
wildly theoretical on this point, and sees a compass in the Golden
Fleece of Argos, in the oracular needle which Nero worshipped, and in
everything else. Yet undoubtedly there are some curious facts connected
with the matter. Osonius says that Gama and the Portuguese got the
compass from some pirates at the Cape of Good Hope, A.D. 1260. M.
Fauchet, the French antiquarian, finds it plainly alluded to in some old
poem of Brittany belonging to the year A.D. 1180. Paulo Venetus brought
it in the thirteenth century from China, where it was regarded as
oracular. Genebrand says Melvius, a Neapolitan, brought it to Europe in
A.D. 1303. Costa says Gama got it from Mohammedan seamen. But all
nations with whom it was found associate it with regions where Heraclean
myths prevailed. And one of the most curious facts is that the ancient
Britons, as the Welsh do to-day, call a pilot llywydd (lode).
Lodemanage, in Skinner's 'Etymology,' is the word for the price paid to
a pilot. But whether this famous, and afterward deified, mariner
(Hercules) had a compass or not, we can hardly regard the association of
his name with so many Western monuments as accidental."

Hercules was, as we know, a god of Atlantis, and Oceanos, who lent the
magnetic cup to Hercules, was the Dame by which the Greeks designated
the Atlantic Ocean. And this may be the explanation of the recurrence of
a cup in many antique paintings and statues. Hercules is often
represented with a cup in his hand; we even find the cup upon the handle
of the bronze dagger found in Denmark, and represented in the chapter on
the Bronze Age, in this work. (See p. 254 ante.)

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