Atlantis: The Antideluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly

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We find in Sanchoniathon's "Legends of the Phœnicians that Ouranus, the
first god of the people of Atlantis, "devised Bætulia, CONTRIVING
STONES THAT MOVED AS HAVING LIFE, which were supposed to fall from
heaven." These stones were probably magnetic loadstones; in other words,
Ouranus, the first god of Atlantis, devised the mariner's compass.

I find in the "Report of United States Explorations for a Route for a
Pacific Railroad" a description of a New Mexican Indian priest, who
foretells the result of a proposed war by placing a piece of wood in a
bowl of water, and causing it to turn to the right or left, or sink or
rise, as he directs it. This is incomprehensible, unless the wood, like
the ancient Chinese compass, contained a piece of magnetic iron hidden
in it, which would be attracted or repulsed, or even drawn downward, by
a piece of iron held in the hand of the priest, on the outside of the
bowl. If so, this trick was a remembrance of the mariner's compass
transmitted from age to age by the medicine men. The reclining statue of
Chac-Mol, of Central America, holds a bowl or dish upon its breast.

Divination was the ARS ETRUSCA. The Etruscans set their temples
squarely with the cardinal points of the compass; so did the Egyptians,
the Mexicans, and THE MOUND BUILDERS OF AMERICA. Could they have
done this without the magnetic compass?

The Romans and the Persians called the line of the axis of the globe
CARDO, and it was to CARDO the needle pointed. Now
"CARDO was the name of the mountain on which the human race took
refuge from the Deluge . . . the primitive geographic point for the
countries which were the cradle of the human race." (Urquhart's "Pillars
of Hercules," vol. i., p. 145.) From this comes our word "cardinal," as
the cardinal points.

NAVIGATION.--Navigation was not by any means in a rude state in
the earliest times:

"In the wanderings of the heroes returning from Troy, Aristoricus makes
Menelaus circumnavigate Africa more than 500 years before Neco sailed
from Gadeira to India." ("Cosmos," vol. ii., p. 144.)

"In the tomb of Rameses the Great is a representation of a naval combat
between the Egyptians and some other people, supposed to be the
Phœnicians, whose huge ships are propelled by sails." (Goodrich's
"Columbus," p. 29.)

The proportions of the fastest sailing-vessels of the present day are
about 300 feet long to 50 wide and 30 high; these were precisely the
proportions of Noah's ark--300 cubits long, 50 broad, and 30 high.

"Hiero of Syracuse built, under the superintendence of Archimedes, a
vessel which consumed in its construction the material for fifty
galleys; it contained galleries, gardens, stables, fish-ponds, mills,
baths, a temple of Venus, and an engine to throw stones three hundred
pounds in weight, and arrows thirty-six feet long. The floors of this
monstrous vessel were inlaid with scenes from Homer's 'Iliad.'"
(IBID., p. 30.)

The fleet of Sesostris consisted of four hundred ships; and when
Semiramis invaded India she was opposed by four thousand vessels.

It is probable that in the earliest times the vessels were sheeted with
metal. A Roman ship of the time of Trajan has been recovered from Lake
Ricciole after 1300 years. The outside was covered with sheets of lead
fastened with small copper nails. Even the use of iron chains in place
of ropes for the anchors was known at an early period. Julius Cæsar
tells us that the galleys of the Veneti were thus equipped. (Goodrich's
"Columbus," p. 31.)

GUNPOWDER.--It is not impossible that even the invention of
gunpowder may date back to Atlantis. It was certainly known in Europe
long before the time of the German monk, Berthold Schwarz, who is
commonly credited with the invention of it. It was employed in 1257 at
the siege of Niebla, in Spain. It was described in an Arab treatise of
the thirteenth century. In A.D. 811 the Emperor Leo employed fire-arms.
"Greek-fire" is supposed to have been gunpowder mixed with resin or
petroleum, and thrown in the form of fuses and explosive shells. It was
introduced from Egypt A.D. 668. In A.D. 690 the Arabs used fire-arms
against Mecca, bringing the knowledge of them from India. IN A.D. 80
THE CHINESE OBTAINED FROM INDIA A KNOWLEDGE OF GUNPOWDER. There is
reason to believe that the Carthaginian (Phœnician) general, Hannibal,
used gunpowder in breaking a way for his army over the Alps. The Romans,
who were ignorant of its use, said that Hannibal made his way by making
fires against the rocks, and pouring vinegar and water over the ashes.
It is evident that fire and vinegar would have no effect on masses of
the Alps great enough to arrest the march of an army. Dr. William Maginn
has suggested that the wood was probably burnt by Hannibal to obtain
charcoal; and the word which has been translated "vinegar" probably
signified some preparation of nitre and sulphur, and that Hannibal made
gunpowder and blew up the rocks. The same author suggests that the story
of Hannibal breaking loose from the mountains where he was surrounded on
all sides by the Romans, and in danger of starvation, by fastening
firebrands to the horns of two thousand oxen, and sending them rushing
at night among the terrified Romans, simply refers to the use of
rockets. As Maginn well asks, how could Hannibal be in danger of
starvation when he had two thousand oxen to spare for such an
experiment? And why should the veteran Roman troops have been so
terrified and panic-stricken by a lot of cattle with firebrands on their
horns? At the battle of Lake Trasymene, between Hannibal and Flaminius,
we have another curious piece of information which goes far to confirm
the belief that Hannibal was familiar with the use of gunpowder. In the
midst of the battle there was, say the Roman historians, an
"earthquake;" the earth reeled under the feet of the soldiers, a
tremendous crash was heard, a fog or smoke covered the scene, the earth
broke open, and the rocks fell upon the beads of the Romans. This reads
very much as if the Carthaginians had decoyed the Romans into a pass
where they had already planted a mine, and had exploded it at the proper
moment to throw them into a panic. Earthquakes do not cast rocks up in
the air to fall on men's heads!

And that this is not all surmise is shown by the fact that a city of
India, in the time of Alexander the Great, defended itself by the use of
gunpowder: it was said to be a favorite of the gods, because thunder and
lightning came from its walls to resist the attacks of its assailants.

As the Hebrews were a branch of the Phœnician race, it is not surprising
that we find some things in their history which look very much like
legends of gunpowder.

When Korah, Dathan, and Abiram led a rebellion against Moses, Moses
separated the faithful from the unfaithful, and thereupon "the ground
clave asunder that was under them: and the earth opened her mouth, and
swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained
unto Korah, and all their goods. . . . And there came out a fire from
the Lord, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered
incense. . . . But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of
Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed
the people of the Lord." (Numb. xvi., 31-41.)

This looks very much as if Moses had blown up the rebels with gunpowder.

Roger Bacon, who himself rediscovered gunpowder, was of opinion that the
event described in Judges vii., where Gideon captured the camp of the
Midianites with the roar of trumpets, the crash caused by the breaking
of innumerable pitchers, and the flash of a multitude of lanterns, had
reference to the use of gunpowder; that the noise made by the breaking
of the pitchers represented the detonation of an explosion, the flame of
the lights the blaze, and the noise of the trumpets the thunder of the
gunpowder. We can understand, in this wise, the results that followed;
but we cannot otherwise understand how the breaking of pitchers, the
flashing of lamps, and the clangor of trumpets would throw an army into
panic, until "every man's sword was set against his fellow, and the host
fled to Beth-shittah;" and this, too, without any attack upon the part
of the Israelites, for "they stood every man in his place around the
camp; and all the host ran and cried and fled."

If it was a miraculous interposition in behalf of the Jews, the Lord
could have scared the Midianites out of their wits without the smashed
pitchers and lanterns; and certain it is the pitchers, and lanterns
would not have done the work with out a miraculous interposition.

Having traced the knowledge of gunpowder back to the most remote times,
and to the different races which were descended from Atlantis, we are
not surprised to find in the legends of Greek mythology events described
which are only explicable by supposing that the Atlanteans possessed the
secret of this powerful explosive.

A rebellion sprang tip in Atlantis (see Murray's "Manual of Mythology,"
p. .30) against Zeus; it is known in mythology as the "War of the
Titans:"

"The struggle lasted many years, all the might which the Olympians could
bring to bear being useless, until, on the advice of Gæa, Zeus set free
the Kyklopes and the Hekatoncheires" (that is, brought the ships into
play), "of whom the former fashioned thunder-bolts for him, while the
latter advanced on his side with force equal to the shock of an
earthquake. The earth trembled down to lowest Tartarus as Zeus now
appeared with his terrible weapon and new allies. Old Chaos thought his
hour had come, as from a continuous blaze of thunder-bolts the earth
took fire, and the waters seethed in the sea. The rebels were partly
slain or consumed, and partly hurled into deep chasms, with rocks and
hills reeling after them."

Do not these words picture the explosion of a mine with a "force equal
to the shock of an earthquake?"

We have already shown that the Kyklopes and Hekatoncheires were probably
great war-ships, armed with some explosive material in the nature of
gunpowder.

Zeus, the king of Atlantis, was known as "the thunderer," and was
represented armed with thunder-bolts.

Some ancient nation must, in the most remote ages, have invented
gunpowder; and is it unreasonable to attribute it to that "great
original race" rather than to any one people of their posterity, who
seem to have borrowed all the other arts from them; and who, during many
thousands of years, did not add a single new invention to the list they
received from Atlantis?

IRON.--have seen that the Greek mythological legends asserted
that before the submergence of the great race over whom their gods
reigned there had been not only an Age of Bronze but an Age of Iron.
This metal was known to the Egyptians in the earliest ages; fragments of
iron have been found in the oldest pyramids. The Iron Age in Northern
Europe far antedated intercourse with the Greeks or Romans. In the
mounds of the Mississippi Valley, as I have shown, the remains of iron
implements have been found. In the "Mercurio Peruano" (tom. i., p. 201,
1791) it is stated that "anciently the Peruvian sovereigns worked
magnificent iron mines at Ancoriames, on the west shore of Lake
Titicaca." "It is remarkable," says Molina, "that iron, which has been
thought unknown to the ancient Americans, had particular names in some
of their tongues." In official Peruvian it was called QUILLAY,
and in Chilian PANILIC. The Mound Builders fashioned implements
out of meteoric iron. (Foster's "Prehistoric Races," p. 333.)

As we find this metal known to man in the earliest ages on both sides of
the Atlantic, the presumption is very strong that it was borrowed by the
nations, east and west, from Atlantis.

PAPER.--The same argument holds good as to paper. The oldest
Egyptian monuments contain pictures of the papyrus roll; while in
Mexico, as I have shown, a beautiful paper was manufactured and formed
into books shaped like our own. In Peru a paper was made of plantain
leaves, and books were common in the earlier ages. Humboldt mentions
books of hieroglyphical writings among the Panoes, which were "bundles
of their paper resembling our volumes in quarto."

SILK MANUFACTURE.--The manufacture of a woven fabric of great
beauty out of the delicate fibre of the egg-cocoon of a worm could only
have originated among a people who had attained the highest degree of
civilization; it implies the art of weaving by delicate instruments, a
dense population, a patient, skilful, artistic people, a sense of the
beautiful, and a wealthy and luxurious class to purchase such costly
fabrics.

We trace it back to the most remote ages. In the introduction to the
"History of Hindostan," or rather of the Mohammedan Dynasties, by
Mohammed Cassim, it is stated that in the year 3870 B.C. an Indian king
sent various silk stuffs as a present to the King of Persia. The art of
making silk was known in China more than two thousand six hundred years
before the Christian era, at the time when we find them first possessed
of civilization. The Phœnicians dealt in silks in the most remote past;
they imported them from India and sold them along the shores of the
Mediterranean. It is probable that the Egyptians understood and
practised the art of manufacturing silk. It was woven in the island of
Cos in the time of Aristotle. The "Babylonish garment" referred to in
Joshua (chap. vii., 21), and for secreting which Achan lost his life,
was probably a garment of silk; it was rated above silver and gold in
value.

It is not a violent presumption to suppose that an art known to the
Hindoos 3870 B.C., and to the Chinese and Phœnicians at the very
beginning of their history--an art so curious, so extraordinary--may
have dated back to Atlantean times.

CIVIL GOVERNMENT.--Mr. Baldwin shows ("Prehistoric Nations," p.
114) that the Cushites, the successors of the Atlanteans, whose very
ancient empire extended from Spain to Syria, were the first to establish
independent municipal republics, with the right of the people to govern
themselves; and that this system was perpetuated in the great Phœnician
communities; in "the fierce democracies" of ancient Greece; in the
"village republics" of the African Berbers and the Hindoos; in the "free
cities" of the Middle Ages in Europe; and in the independent governments
of the Basques, which continued down to our own day. The Cushite state
was an aggregation of municipalities, each possessing the right of
self-government, but subject within prescribed limits to a general
authority; in other words, it was precisely the form of government
possessed to-day by the United States. It is a surprising thought that
the perfection of modern government may be another perpetuation of
Atlantean civilization.

AGRICULTURE.--The Greek traditions of "the golden apples of the
Hesperides" and "the golden fleece" point to Atlantis. The allusions to
the golden apples indicate that tradition regarded the "Islands of the
Blessed" in the Atlantic Ocean as a place of orchards. And when we turn
to Egypt we find that in the remotest times many of our modern garden
and field plants were there cultivated. When the Israelites murmured in
the wilderness against Moses, they cried out (Numb., chap. xi., 4, 5),
"Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish which we did eat
in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the Melons, and the leeks, and the
onions, and the garlic." The Egyptians also cultivated wheat, barley,
oats, flax, hemp, etc. In fact, if we were to take away from civilized
man the domestic animals, the cereals, and the field and garden
vegetables possessed by the Egyptians at the very dawn of history, there
would be very little left for the granaries or the tables of the world.

ASTRONOMY.--The knowledge of the ancients as to astronomy was
great and accurate. Callisthenes, who accompanied Alexander the Great to
Babylon, sent to Aristotle a series of Chaldean astronomical
observations which he found preserved there, recorded on tablets of
baked clay, and extending back as far as 2234 B.C. Humboldt says, "The
Chaldeans knew the mean motions of the moon with an exactness which
induced the Greek astronomers to use their calculations for the
foundation of a lunar theory." The Chaldeans knew the true nature of
comets, and could foretell their reappearance. "A lens of considerable
power was found in the ruins of Babylon; it was an inch and a half in
diameter and nine-tenths of an inch thick." (Layard's "Nineveh and
Babylon," pp. 16,17.) Nero used optical glasses when be watched the
fights of the gladiators; they are supposed to have come from Egypt and
the East. Plutarch speaks of optical instruments used by Archimedes "to
manifest to the eye the largeness of the sun." "There are actual
astronomical calculations in existence, with calendars formed upon them,
which eminent astronomers of England and France admit to be genuine and
true, and which carry back the antiquity of the science of astronomy,
together with the constellations, to within a few years of the Deluge,
even on the longer chronology of the Septuagint." ("The Miracle in
Stone," p. 142.) Josephus attributes the invention of the constellations
to the family of the antediluvian Seth, the son of Adam, while Origen
affirms that it was asserted in the Book of Enoch that in the time of
that patriarch the constellations were already divided and named. The
Greeks associated the origin of astronomy with Atlas and Hercules,
Atlantean kings or heroes. The Egyptians regarded Taut (At?) or Thoth,
or AT-hotes, as the originator of both astronomy and the
alphabet; doubtless he represented a civilized people, by whom their
country was originally colonized. Bailly and others assert that
astronomy "must have been established when the summer solstice was in
the first degree of Virgo, and that the solar and lunar zodiacs were of
similar antiquity, which would be about four thousand years before, the
Christian era. They suppose the originators to have lived in about the
FORTIETH DEGREE OF NORTH LATITUDE, and to have been a
highly-civilized people." It will be remembered that the fortieth degree
of north latitude passed through Atlantis. Plato knew (" Dialogues,
Phædo," 108) that the earth "is a body in the centre of the heavens"
held in equipoise. He speaks of it as a "round body," a "globe;" he even
understood that it revolved on its axis, and that these revolutions
produced day and night. He says--"Dialogues, Timæus"--"The earth
circling around the pole (which is extended through the universe) be
made to be the artificer of night and day." All this Greek learning was
probably drawn from the Egyptians.

Only among the Atlanteans in Europe and America do we find traditions
preserved as to the origin of all the principal inventions which have
raised man from a savage to a civilized condition. We can give in part
the very names of the inventors.

Starting with the Chippeway legends, and following with the Bible and
Phœnician records, we make a table like the appended:

+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| THE INVENTION OR | THE RACE. | THE INVENTORS. |
| Discovery. | | |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| Fire | Atlantean | Phos, Phur, and Phlox. |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| The bow and arrow | Chippeway | Manaboshu. |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| The use of flint | " | " |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| The use of copper | " | " |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| The manufacture of | Atlantean | Autochthon and |
| bricks | | Technites. |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| Agriculture and hunting | " | Argos and Agrotes. |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| Village life, and the | " | Amynos and Magos. |
| rearing of flocks | | |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| The use of salt | " | Misor and Sydyk. |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| The use of letters | " | Taautos, or Taut. |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| Navigation | " | The Cabiri, or |
| | | Corybantes. |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| The art of music | Hebrew | Jubal. |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| Metallurgy, and the use | " | Tubal-cain. |
| of iron | | |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| The syrinx | Greek | Pan. |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
| The lyre | " | Hermes. |
+--------------------------+------------------+-------------------------+
We cannot consider all these evidences of the vast antiquity of the
great inventions upon which our civilization mainly rests, including the
art of writing, which, as I have shown, dates back far beyond the
beginning of history; we cannot remember that the origin of all the
great food-plants, such as wheat, oats, barley, rye, and maize, is lost
in the remote past; and that all the domesticated animals, the horse,
the ass, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and the hog had been reduced to
subjection to man in ages long previous to written history, without
having the conclusion forced upon us irresistibly that beyond Egypt and
Greece, beyond Chaldea and China, there existed a mighty civilization,
of which these states were but the broken fragments.

CHAPTER X.
THE ARYAN COLONIES FROM ATLANTIS.

We come now to another question: "Did the Aryan or Japhetic race come
from Atlantis?"

If the Aryans are the Japhetic race, and if Japheth was one of the sons
of the patriarch who escaped from the Deluge, then assuredly, if the
tradition of Genesis be true, the Aryans came from the drowned land, to
wit, Atlantis. According to Genesis, the descendants of the Japheth who
escaped out of the Flood with Noah are the Ionians, the inhabitants of
the Morea, the dwellers on the Cilician coast of Asia Minor, the
Cyprians, the Dodoneans of Macedonia, the Iberians, and the Thracians.
These are all now recognized as Aryans, except the Iberians.

"From non-Biblical sources," says Winchell, "we obtain further
information respecting the early dispersion of the Japhethites or
Indo-Europeans--called also Aryans. ALL DETERMINATIONS CONFIRM THE
BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF THEIR PRIMITIVE RESIDENCE IN THE SAME COUNTRY WITH
THE HAMITES AND SEMITES. Rawlinson informs us that even Aryan roots
are mingled with Presemitic in some of the old inscriptions of Assyria.
The precise region where these three families dwelt in a common home has
not been pointed out." ("Preadamites," p. 43.)

I have shown in the chapter in relation to Peru that all the languages
of the Hamites, Semites, and Japhethites are varieties of one aboriginal
speech.

The centre of the Aryan migrations (according to popular opinion) within
the Historical Period was Armenia. Here too is Mount Ararat, where it is
said the ark rested--another identification with the Flood regions, as
it represents the usual transfer of the Atlantis legend by an Atlantean
people to a high mountain in their new home.

Now turn to a map: Suppose the ships of Atlantis to have reached the
shores of Syria, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, where dwelt a
people who, as we have seen, used the Central American Maya alphabet;
the Atlantis ships are then but two hundred miles distant from Armenia.
But these ships need not stop at Syria, they can go by the Dardanelles
and the Black Sea, by uninterrupted water communication, to the shores
of Armenia itself. If we admit, then, that it was from Armenia the
Aryans stocked Europe and India, there is no reason why the original
population of Armenia should not have been themselves colonists from
Atlantis.

But we have seen that in the earliest ages, before the first Armenian
migration of the historical Aryans, a people went from Iberian Spain and
settled in Ireland, and the language of this people, it is now admitted,
is Aryan. And these Iberians were originally, according to tradition,
from the West.

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