The Antediluvian World

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> The Antediluvian World

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It will be observed that, while he locates Paradise in the east, he
places the scene of the Deluge in the west; and he supposes that Noah
came from the scene of the Deluge to Europe.

This shows that the traditions in the time of Cosmos looked to the west
as the place of the Deluge, and that after the Deluge Noah came to the
shores of the Mediterranean. The fact, too, that there was land in the
west beyond the ocean is recognized by Cosmos, and is probably a dim
echo from Atlantean times.

MAP OF EUROPE, AFTER COSMOS

The following rude cut, from Cosmos, represents the high mountain in the
north behind which the sun hid himself at night, thus producing the
alternations of day and night. His solar majesty is just getting behind
the mountain, while Luna looks calmly on at the operation. The mountain
is as crooked as Culhuacan, the crooked mountain of Atzlan described by
the Aztecs.

THE MOUNTAIN THE SUN GOES BEHIND AT NIGHT

CHAPTER V

THE DELUGE LEGENDS OF AMERICA.

"It is a very remarkable fact," says Alfred Maury, "that we find in
America traditions of the Deluge coming infinitely nearer to that of the
Bible and the Chaldean religion than among any people of the Old World.
It is difficult to suppose that the emigration that certainly took place
from Asia into North America by the Kourile and Aleutian Islands, and
still does so in our day, should have brought in these memories, since
no trace is found of them among those Mongol or Siberian populations
which were fused with the natives of the New World. . . . The attempts
that have been made to trace the origin of Mexican civilization to Asia
have not as vet led to any sufficiently conclusive facts. Besides, had
Buddhism, which we doubt, made its way into America, it could not have
introduced a myth not found in its own scriptures. The cause of these
similarities between the diluvian traditions of the nations of the New
World and that of the Bible remains therefore unexplained."

The cause of these similarities can be easily explained: the legends of
the Flood did not pass into America by way of the Aleutian Islands, or
through the Buddhists of Asia, but were derived from an actual knowledge
of Atlantis possessed by the people of America.

Atlantis and the western continent had from an immemorial age held
intercourse with each other: the great nations of America were simply
colonies from Atlantis, sharing in its civilization, language, religion,
and blood. From Mexico to the peninsula of Yucatan, from the shores of
Brazil to the heights of Bolivia and Peru, from the Gulf of Mexico to
the head-waters of the Mississippi River, the colonies of Atlantis
extended; and therefore it is not strange to find, as Alfred Maury says,
American traditions of the Deluge coming nearer to that of the Bible and
the Chaldean record than those of any people of the Old World.

"The most important among the American traditions are the Mexican, for
they appear to have been definitively fixed by symbolic and mnemonic
paintings before any contact with Europeans. According to these
documents, the Noah of the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by
certain peoples Teocipactli or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together
with his wife Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, according to other
traditions, on a raft made of cypress-wood (Cupressus disticha).
Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox have been discovered among the
Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs, and Mechoacaneses. The tradition
of the latter is still more strikingly in conformity with the story as
we have it in Genesis, and in Chaldean sources. It tells how Tezpi
embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife, his children, and several
animals, and grain, whose preservation was essential to the subsistence
of the human race. When the great god Tezcatlipoca decreed that the
waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture from the bark. The bird,
feeding on the carcasses with which the earth was laden, did not return.
Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the humming-bird only came back
with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi, seeing that the country
began to vegetate, left his bark on the mountain of Colhuacan.

"The document, however, that gives the most valuable information," says
Lenormant, "as to the cosmogony of the Mexicans is one known as 'Codex
Vaticanus,' from the library where it is preserved. It consists of four
symbolic pictures, representing the four ages of the world preceding the
actual one. They were copied at Chobula from a manuscript anterior to
the conquest, and accompanied by the explanatory commentary of Pedro de
los Rios, a Dominican monk, who, in 1566, less than fifty years after
the arrival of Cortez, devoted himself to the research of indigenous
traditions as being necessary to his missionary work."

There were, according to this document, four ages of the world. The
first was an age of giants (the great mammalia?) who were destroyed by
famine; the second age ended in a conflagration; the third age was an
age of monkeys.

"Then comes the fourth age, Atonatiuh, 'Sun of Water,' whose number is
10 X 400 + 8, or 4008. It ends by a great inundation, a veritable
deluge. All mankind are changed into fish, with the exception of one man
and his wife, who save themselves in a bark made of the trunk of a
cypress-tree. The picture represents Matlalcueye, goddess of waters, and
consort of Tlaloc, god of rain, as darting down toward earth. Coxcox and
Xochiquetzal, the two human beings preserved, are seen seated on a
tree-trunk and floating in the midst of the waters. This flood is
represented as the last cataclysm that devastates the earth."

The learned Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg translates from the Aztec
language of the "Codex Chimalpopoca" the following Flood legend:

"This is the sun called Nahui-atl, '4 water.' Now the water was tranquil
for forty years, plus twelve, and men lived for the third and fourth
times. When the sun Nahui-atl came there had passed away four hundred
years, plus two ages, plus seventy-six years. Then all mankind was lost
and drowned, and found themselves changed into fish. The sky came nearer
the water. In a single day all was lost, and the day Nahui-xochitl, '4
flower,' destroyed all our flesh.

"And that year was that of ce-calli, '1 house,' and the day Nahui-atl
all was lost. Even the mountains sunk into the water, and the water
remained tranquil for fifty-two springs.

"Now at the end of the year the god Titlacahuan had warned Nata and his
spouse Nena, saying, 'Make no more wine of Agave, but begin to hollow
out a great cypress, and you will enter into it when in the month
Tozontli the water approaches the sky.'

"Then they entered in, and when the god had closed the door, he said,
'Thou shalt eat but one ear of maize, and thy wife one also.'

"But as soon as they had finished they went out, and the water remained
calm, for the wood no longer moved, and, on opening it, they began to
see fish.

"Then they lit a fire, by rubbing together pieces of wood, and they
roasted fish.

"The gods Citlallinicue and Citlalatonac, instantly looking down said:
'Divine Lord, what is that fire that is making there? Why do they thus
smoke the sky?' At once Titlacahuan-Tezcatlipoca descended. He began to
chide, saying, 'Who has made this fire here?' And, seizing hold of the
fish, he shaped their loins and heads, and they were transformed into
dogs (chichime)."

Here we note a remarkable approximation to Plato's account of the
destruction of Atlantis. "In one day and one fatal night," says Plato,
"there came mighty earthquakes and inundations that ingulfed that
warlike people." "In a single day all was lost," says the Aztec legend.
And, instead of a rainfall of forty days and forty nights, as
represented in the Bible, here we see "in a single day. . . even the
mountains sunk into the water;" not only the land on which the people
dwelt who were turned into fish, but the very mountains of that land
sunk into the water. Does not this describe the fate of Atlantis? In the
Chaldean legend "the great goddess Ishtar wailed like a child," saying,
"I am the mother who gave birth to men, and, like to the race of fishes,
they are filling the sea."

In the account in Genesis, Noah "builded an altar unto the Lord, and
took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt
offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord
said in his heart, 'I will not again curse the ground any more for man's
sake.'" In the Chaldean legend we are told that Khasisatra also offered
a sacrifice, a burnt offering, "and the gods assembled like flies above
the master of the sacrifice." But Bel came in a high state of
indignation, just as the Aztec god did, and was about to finish the work
of the Deluge, when the great god Ea took ''pity in his heart and
interfered to save the remnant of mankind.

These resemblances cannot be accidental; neither can they be the
interpolations of Christian missionaries, for it will be observed the
Aztec legends differ from the Bible in points where they resemble on the
one hand Plato's record, and on the other the Chaldean legend.

The name of the hero of the Aztec story, Nata, pronounced with the broad
sound of the a, is not far from the name of Noah or Noe. The Deluge of
Genesis is a Phoenician, Semitic, or Hebraic legend, and yet, strange to
say, the name of Noah, which occurs in it, bears no appropriate meaning
in those tongues, but is derived from Aryan sources; its fundamental
root is Na, to which in all the Aryan language is attached the meaning
of water--{Greek} na'ein, to flow; {Greek} na~ma, water; Nympha,
Neptunus, water deities. (Lenormant and Chevallier, "Anc. Hist. of the
East," vol. i., p. 15.) We find the root Na repeated in the name of this
Central American Noah, Na-ta, and probably in the word "Na-hui-atl"--the
age of water.

But still more striking analogies exist between the Chaldean legend and
the story of the Deluge as told in the "Popul Vuh" (the Sacred Book) of
the Central Americans:

"Then the waters were agitated by the will of the Heart of Heaven
(Hurakan), and a great inundation came upon the heads of these
creatures. . . . They were ingulfed, and a resinous thickness descended
from heaven; . . . the face of the earth was obscured, and a heavy
darkening rain commenced-rain by day and rain by night. . . . There was
heard a great noise above their heads, as if produced by fire. Then were
men seen running, pushing each other, filled with despair; they wished
to climb upon their houses, and the houses, tumbling down, fell to the
ground; they wished to climb upon the trees, and the trees shook them
off; they wished to enter into the grottoes (eaves), and the grottoes
closed themselves before them. . . . Water and fire contributed to the
universal ruin at the time of the last great cataclysm which preceded
the fourth creation."

Observe the similarities here to the Chaldean legend. There is the same
graphic description of a terrible event. The "black cloud" is referred
to in both instances; also the dreadful noises, the rising water, the
earthquake rocking the trees, overthrowing the houses, and crushing even
the mountain caverns; "the men running and pushing each other, filled
with despair," says the "Popul Vuh;" "the brother no longer saw his
brother," says the Assyrian legend.

And here I may note that this word hurakan--the spirit of the abyss, the
god of storm, the hurricane--is very suggestive, and testifies to an
early intercourse between the opposite shores of the Atlantic. We find
in Spanish the word huracan; in Portuguese, furacan; in French, ouragan;
in German, Danish, and Swedish, orcan--all of them signifying a storm;
while in Latin furo, or furio, means to rage. And are not the old
Swedish hurra, to be driven along; our own word hurried; the Icelandic
word hurra, to be rattled over frozen ground, all derived from the same
root from which the god of the abyss, Hurakan, obtained his name? The
last thing a people forgets is the name of their god; we retain to this
day, in the names of the days of the week, the designations of four
Scandinavian gods and one Roman deity.

It seems to me certain the above are simply two versions of the same
event; that while ships from Atlantis carried terrified passengers to
tell the story of the dreadful catastrophe to the people of the
Mediterranean shores, other ships, flying from the tempest, bore similar
awful tidings to the civilized races around the Gulf of Mexico.

The native Mexican historian, Ixtlilxochitl, gave this as the Toltec
legend of the Flood:

It is found in the histories of the Toltecs that this age and first
world, as they call it, lasted 1716 years; that men were destroyed by
tremendous rains and lightning from the sky, and even all the land,
without the exception of anything, and the highest mountains, were
covered up and submerged in water fifteen cubits (caxtolmolatli); and
here they added other fables of how men came to multiply from the few
who escaped from this destruction in a "toptlipetlocali;" that this word
nearly signifies a close chest; and how, after men had multiplied, they
erected a very high "zacuali," which is to-day a tower of great height,
in order to take refuge in it should the second world (age) be
destroyed. Presently their languages were confused, and, not being able
to understand each other, they went to different parts of the earth.

"The Toltecs, consisting of seven friends, with their wives, who
understood the same language, came to these parts, having first passed
great land and seas, having lived in caves, and having endured great
hardships in order to reach this land; . . . they wandered 104 years
through different parts of the world before they reached Hue Hue
Tlapalan, which was in Ce Tecpatl, 520 years after the Flood."
("Ixtlilxochitl Relaciones," in Kingsborough's "Mex. Ant.," vol. ix.,
pp. 321, 322.)

It will of course be said that this account, in those particulars where
it agrees with the Bible, was derived from the teachings of the Spanish
priests; but it must be remembered that Ixtlilxochitl was an Indian, a
native of Tezeuco, a son of the queen, and that his "Relaciones" were
drawn from the archives of his family and the ancient writings of his
nation: he had no motive to falsify documents that were probably in the
hands of hundreds at that time.

Here we see that the depth of the water over the earth, "fifteen
cubits," given in the Toltec legend, is precisely the same as that named
in the Bible: "fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail." (Gen.,
chap. vii., 20.)

In the two curious picture-histories of the Aztecs preserved in the
Boturini collection, and published by Gamelli Careri and others, there
is a record of their migrations from their original location through
various parts of the North American continent until their arrival in
Mexico. In both cases their starting-point is an island, from which they
pass in a boat; and the island contains in one case a mountain, and in
the other a high temple in the midst thereof. These things seem to be
reminiscences of their origin in Atlantis.

In each case we see the crooked mountain of the Aztec legends, the
Calhuacan, looking not unlike the bent mountain of the monk, Cosmos.

In the legends of the Chibchas of Bogota we seem to have distinct
reminiscences of Atlantis. Bochica was their leading divinity. During
two thousand years he employed himself in elevating his subjects. He
lived in the sun, while his wife Chia occupied the moon. This would
appear to be an allusion to the worship of the sun and moon. Beneath
Bochica in their mythology was Chibchacum. In an angry mood he brought a
deluge on the people of the table-land. Bochica punished him for this
act, and obliged him ever after, like Atlas, to bear the burden of the
earth on his back. Occasionally be shifts the earth from one shoulder to
another, and this causes earthquakes!

Here we have allusions to an ancient people who, during thousands of
years, were elevated in the scale of civilization, and were destroyed by
a deluge; and with this is associated an Atlantean god bearing the world
on his back. We find even the rainbow appearing in connection with this
legend. When Bochica appeared in answer to prayer to quell the deluge he
is seated on a rainbow. He opened a breach in the earth at Tequendama,
through which the waters of the flood escaped, precisely as we have seen
them disappearing through the crevice in the earth near Bambyce, in
Greece.

The Toltecs traced their migrations back to a starting-point called
"Aztlan," or "Atlan." This could be no other than, Atlantis. (Bancroft's
"Native Races," vol. v., p. 221.) "The original home of the Nahuatlacas
was Aztlan, the location of which has been the subject of much
discussion. The causes that led to their exodus from that country can
only be conjectured; but they may be supposed to have been driven out by
their enemies, for Aztlan is described as a land too fair and beautiful
to be left willingly in the mere hope of finding a better." (Bancroft's
"Native Races," vol. v., p. .306.) The Aztecs also claimed to have come
originally from Aztlan. (Ibid., p. 321.) Their very name, Aztecs, was
derived from Aztlan. (Ibid., vol. ii., p. 125). They were Atlanteans.

The "Popul Vuh" tells us that after the migration from Aztlan three sons
of the King of the Quiches, upon the death of their father, "determined
to go as their fathers had ordered to the East, on the shores of the sea
whence their fathers had come, to receive the royalty, 'bidding adieu to
their brothers and friends, and promising to return.' Doubtless they
passed over the sea when they went to the East to receive the royalty.
Now this is the name of the lord, of the monarch of the people of the
East where they went. And when they arrived before the lord Nacxit, the
name of the great lord, the only judge, whose power was without limit,
behold he granted them the sign of royalty and all that represents it .
. . and the insignia of royalty . . . all the things, in fact, which
they brought on their return, and which they went to receive from the
other side of the sea--the art of painting from Tulan, a system of
writing, they said, for the things recorded in their histories."
(Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 553 "Popul Vuh," p. 294.)

This legend not only points to the East as the place of origin of these
races, but also proves that this land of the East, this Aztlan, this
Atlantis, exercised dominion over the colonies in Central America, and
furnished them with the essentials of civilization. How completely does
this agree with the statement of Plato that the kings of Atlantis held
dominion over parts of "the great opposite continent!"

Professor Valentini ("Maya Archaeol.," p. 23) describes an Aztec picture
in the work of Gemelli ("Il giro del mondo," vol. vi.) of the migration
of the Aztecs from Aztlan:

"Out of a sheet of water there projects the peak of a mountain; on it
stands a tree, and on the tree a bird spreads its .wings. At the foot of
the mountain-peak there comes out of the water the heads of a man and a
woman. The one wears on his head the symbol of his name, Coxcox, a
pheasant. The other head bears that of a hand with a bouquet (xochitl, a
flower, and quetzal, shining in green gold). In the foreground is a
boat, out of which a naked man stretches out his hand imploringly to
heaven. Now turn to the sculpture in the Flood tablet (on the great
Calendar stone). There you will find represented the Flood, and with
great emphasis, by the accumulation of all those symbols with which the
ancient Mexicans conveyed the idea of water: a tub of standing water,
drops springing out--not two, as heretofore in the symbol for Atl,
water--but four drops; the picture for moisture, a snail; above, a
crocodile, the king of the rivers. In the midst of these symbols you
notice the profile of a man with a fillet, and a smaller one of a woman.
There can be doubt these are the Mexican Noah, Coxcox, and his wife,
Xochiquetzal; and at the same time it is evident (the Calendar stone, we
know, was made in A.D., 1478) that the story of them, and the pictures
representing the story, have not been invented by the Catholic clergy,
but really existed among these nations long before the Conquest."

The above figure represents the Flood tablet on the great Calendar stone.

When we turn to the uncivilized Indians of America, while we still find
legends referring to the Deluge, they are, with one exception, in such
garbled and uncouth forms that we can only see glimpses of the truth
shining through a mass of fable.

The following tradition was current among the Indians of the Great Lakes:

"In former times the father of the Indian tribes dwelt toward the rising
sun. Having been warned in a dream that a deluge was coming upon the
earth, he built a raft, on which he saved himself, with his family and
all the animals. He floated thus for several months. The animals, who at
that time spoke, loudly complained and murmured against him. At last a
new earth appeared, on which he landed with all the animals, who from
that time lost the power of speech, as a punishment for their murmurs
against their deliverer."

According to Father Charlevoix, the tribes of Canada and the valley of
the Mississippi relate in their rude legends that all mankind was
destroyed by a flood, and that the Good Spirit, to repeople the earth,
had changed animals into men. It is to J. S. Kohl we owe our
acquaintance with the version of the Chippeways--full of grotesque and
perplexing touches--in which the man saved from the Deluge is called
Menaboshu. To know if the earth be drying, he sends a bird, the diver,
out of his bark; then becomes the restorer of the human race and the
founder of existing society.

A clergyman who visited the Indians north-west of the Ohio in 1764 met,
at a treaty, a party of Indians from the west of the Mississippi.

"They informed him that one of their most ancient traditions was that, a
great while ago, they had a common father, who lived toward the rising
of the sun, and governed the whole world; that all the white people's
heads were under his feet; that he had twelve sons, by whom he
administered the government; that the twelve sons behaved very bad, and
tyrannized over the people, abusing their power; that the Great Spirit,
being thus angry with them, suffered the white people to introduce
spirituous liquors among them, made them drunk, stole the special gift
of the Great Spirit from them, and by this means usurped power over
them; and ever since the Indians' heads were under the white people's
feet." (Boudinot's "Star in the West," p. 111.)

Here we note that they looked "toward the rising sun"--toward
Atlantis--for the original home of their race; that this region governed
"the whole world;" that it contained white people, who were at first a
subject race, but who subsequently rebelled, and acquired dominion over
the darker races. We will see reason hereafter to conclude that Atlantis
had a composite population, and that the rebellion of the Titans in
Greek mythology was the rising up of a subject population.

In 1836 C. S. Rafinesque published in Philadelphia, Pa., a work called
"The American Nations," in which he gives the historical songs or chants
of the Lenni-Lenapi, or Delaware Indians, the tribe that originally
dwelt along, the Delaware River. After describing a time "when there was
nothing but sea-water on top of the land," and the creation of sun,
moon, stars, earth, and man, the legend depicts the Golden Age and the
Fall in these words: "All were willingly pleased, all were
easy-thinking, and all were well-happified. But after a while a
snake-priest, Powako, brings on earth secretly the snake-worship
(Initako) of the god of the snakes, Wakon. And there came wickedness,
crime, and unhappiness. And bad weather was coming, distemper was
coming, with death was coming. All this happened very long ago, at the
first land, Netamaki, beyond the great ocean Kitahikau." Then follows
the Song of the Flood:

"There was, long ago, a powerful snake, Maskanako, when the men had
become bad beings, Makowini. This strong snake had become the foe of the
Jins, and they became troubled, hating each other. Both were fighting,
both were, spoiling, both were never peaceful. And they were fighting,
least man Mattapewi with dead-keeper Nihaulowit. And the strong snake
readily resolved to destroy or fight the beings or the men. The dark
snake he brought, the monster (Amanyam) he brought, snake-rushing water
he brought (it). Much water is rushing, much go to hills, much
penetrate, much destroying. Meanwhile at Tula (this is the same Tula
referred to in the Central American legends), at THAT ISLAND, Nana-Bush
(the great hare Nana) becomes the ancestor of beings and men. Being born
creeping, he is ready to move and dwell at Tula. The beings and men all
go forth from the flood creeping in shallow water or swimming afloat,
asking which is the way to the turtle-back, Tula-pin. But there are many
monsters in the way, and some men were devoured by them. But the
daughter of a spirit helped them in a boat, saying, 'Come, come;' they
were coming and were helped. The name of the boat or raft is Mokol. . .
. Water running off, it is drying; in the plains and the mountains, at
the path of the cave, elsewhere went the powerful action or motion."
Then follows Song 3, describing the condition of mankind after the
Flood. Like the Aryans, they moved into a cold country: "It freezes was
there; it snows was there; it is cold was there." They move to a milder
region to hunt cattle; they divided their forces into tillers and
hunters. "The good and the holy were the hunters;" they spread
themselves north, south, east, and west." Meantime all the snakes were
afraid in their huts, and the Snake-priest Nakopowa said to all, 'Let us
go.' Eastwardly they go forth at Snakeland (Akhokink), and they went
away earnestly grieving." Afterward the fathers of the Delawares, who
"were always boating and navigating," find that the Snake-people have
taken possession of a fine country; and they collect together the people
from north, south, east, and west, and attempt "to pass over the waters
of the frozen sea to possess that land." They seem to travel in the dark
of an Arctic winter until they come to a gap of open sea. They can go no
farther; but some tarry at Firland, while the rest return to where they
started from, "the old turtle land."

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