The Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly

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Is it not more reasonable to suppose that the plantain, or banana, was
cultivated by the people of Atlantis, and carried by their civilized
agricultural colonies to the east and the west? Do we not find a
confirmation of this view in the fact alluded to by Professor Kuntze in
these words: "A cultivated plant which does not possess seeds must have
been under culture for a very long period--we have not in Europe a
single exclusively seedless, berry-bearing, cultivated plant--and hence
it is perhaps fair to infer that these plants were cultivated as early
as the beginning of the middle of the Diluvial Period."

Is it possible that a plant of this kind could have been cultivated for
this immense period of time in both Asia and America? Where are the two
nations, agricultural and highly civilized, on those continents by whom
it was so cultivated? What has become of them? Where are the traces of
their civilization? All the civilizations of Europe, Asia, and Africa
radiated from the Mediterranean; the Hindoo-Aryans advanced from the
north-west; they were kindred to the Persians, who were next-door
neighbors to the Arabians (cousins of the Phœnicians), and who lived
along-side of the Egyptians, who had in turn derived their civilization
from the Phœnicians.

It would be a marvel of marvels if one nation, on one continent, had
cultivated the banana for such a vast period of time until it became
seedless; the nation retaining a peaceful, continuous, agricultural
civilization during all that time. But to suppose that two nations could
have cultivated the same plant, under the same circumstances, on two
different continents, for the same unparalleled lapse of time, is
supposing an impossibility.

We find just such a civilization as was necessary, according to Plato,
and under just such a climate, in Atlantis and nowhere else. We have
found it reaching, by its contiguous islands, within one hundred and
fifty miles of the coast of Europe on the one side, and almost touching
the West India Islands on the other, while, by its connecting ridges, it
bound together Brazil and Africa.

But it may be said these animals and plants may have passed from Asia to
America across the Pacific by the continent of Lemuria; or there may
have been continuous land communication at one time at Behring's Strait.
True; but an examination of the flora of the Pacific States shows that
very many of the trees and plants common to Europe and the Atlantic
States are not to be seen west of the Rocky Mountains. The magnificent
magnolias, the tulip-trees, the plane-trees, etc., which were found
existing in the Miocene Age in Switzerland, and are found at the present
day in the United States, are altogether lacking on the Pacific coast.
The sources of supply of that region seem to have been far inferior to
the sources of supply of the Atlantic States. Professor Asa Gray tells
us that, out of sixty-six genera and one hundred and fifty-five species
found in the forests cast of the Rocky Mountains, only thirty-one genera
and seventy-eight species are found west of the mountains. The Pacific
coast possesses no papaw, no linden or basswood, no locust-trees, no
cherry-tree large enough for a timber tree, no gum-trees, no
sorrel-tree, nor kalmia; no persimmon-trees, not a holly, only one ash
that may be called a timber tree, no catalpa or sassafras, not a single
elm or hackberry, not a mulberry, not a hickory, or a beech, or a true
chestnut. These facts would seem to indicate that the forest flora of
North America entered it from the east, and that the Pacific States
possess only those fragments of it that were able to struggle over or
around the great dividing mountain-chain.

We thus see that the flora and fauna of America and Europe testify not
only to the existence of Atlantis, but to the fact that in an earlier
age it must have extended from the shores of one continent to those of
the other; and by this bridge of land the plants and animals of one
region passed to the other.

The cultivation of the cotton-plant and the manufacture of its product
was known to both the Old and New World. Herodotus describes it (450
B.C.) as the tree of India that bears a fleece more beautiful than that
of the sheep. Columbus found the natives of the West Indies using cotton
cloth. It was also found in Mexico and Peru. It is a significant fact
that the cotton-plant has been found growing wild in many parts of
America, but never in the Old World. This would seem to indicate that
the plant was a native of America; and this is confirmed by the
superiority of American cotton, and the further fact that the plants
taken from America to India constantly degenerate, while those taken
from India to America as constantly improve.

There is a question whether the potato, maize, and tobacco were not
cultivated in China ages before Columbus discovered America. A recent
traveller says, "The interior of China, along the course of the
Yang-tse-Kiang, is a land full of wonders. In one place piscicultural
nurseries line the banks for nearly fifty miles. All sorts of
inventions, the cotton-gin included, claimed by Europeans and Americans,
are to be found there forty centuries old. Plants, yielding drugs of
great value, without number, the familiar tobacco and potato, maize,
white and yellow corn, and other plants believed to be indigenous to
America, have been cultivated there from time immemorial."

Bonafous ("Histoire Naturelle du Mais," Paris, 1826) attributes a
European or Asiatic origin to maize. The word maize, (Indian corn) is
derived from mahiz or mahis, the name of the plant in the language of
the Island of Hayti. And yet, strange to may, in the Lettish and
Livonian languages, in the north of Europe, mayse signifies bread; in
Irish, maise is food, and in the Old High German, maz is meat. May not
likewise the Spanish maiz have antedated the time of Columbus, and borne
testimony to early intercommunication between the people of the Old and
New Worlds?

It is to Atlantis we must look for the origin of nearly all our valuable
plants. Darwin says ("Animals and Plants under Domestication," vol. i.,
p. 374), "It has often been remarked that we do not owe a single useful
plant to Australia, or the Cape of Good Hope--countries abounding to an
unparalleled degree with endemic species--or to New Zealand, or to
America south of the Plata; and, according to some authors, not to
America north of Mexico." In other words, the domesticated plants are
only found within the limits of what I shall show hereafter was the
Empire of Atlantis and its colonies; for only here was to be found an
ancient, long-continuing civilization, capable of developing from a wild
state those plants which were valuable to man, including all the cereals
on which to-day civilized man depends for subsistence. M. Alphonse de
Candolle tells us that we owe 33 useful plants to Mexico, Peru, and
Chili. According to the same high authority, of 157 valuable cultivated
plants 85 can be traced back to their wild state; as to 40, there is
doubt as to their origin; while 32 are utterly unknown in their
aboriginal condition. ("Geograph. Botan. Raisonnée," 1855, pp. 810-991.)
Certain roses--the imperial lily, the tuberose and the lilac--are said
to have been cultivated from such a vast antiquity that they are not
known in their wild state. (Darwin, "Animals and Plants," vol. i., p.
370.) And these facts are the more remarkable because, as De Candolle
has shown, all the plants historically known to have been first
cultivated in Europe still exist there in the wild state. (Ibid.) The
inference is strong that the great cereals--wheat, oats, barley, rye,
and maize--must have been first domesticated in a vast antiquity, or in
some continent which has since disappeared, carrying the original wild
plants with it.

CEREALS OF THE AGE OF STONE IN EUROPE

Darwin quotes approvingly the opinion of Mr. Bentham ("Hist. Notes Cult.
Plants"), "as the result of all the most reliable evidence that none of
the Ceralia--wheat, rye, barley, and oats--exist or have existed truly
wild in their present state." In the Stone Age of Europe five varieties
of wheat and three of barley were cultivated. (Darwin, "Animals and
Plants," vol. i., p. 382.) He says that it may be inferred, from the
presence in the lake habitations of Switzerland of a variety of wheat
known as the Egyptian wheat, and from the nature of the weeds that grew
among their crops, "that the lake inhabitants either still kept up
commercial intercourse with some southern people, or had originally
proceeded as colonists from the south." I should argue that they were
colonists from the land where wheat and barley were first domesticated,
to wit, Atlantis. And when the Bronze Age came, we find oats and rye
making their appearance with the weapons of bronze, together with a
peculiar kind of pea. Darwin concludes (Ibid., vol. i., p. 385) that
wheat, barley, rye, and oats were either descended from ten or fifteen
distinct species, "most of which are now unknown or extinct," or from
four or eight species closely resembling our present forms, or so
"widely different as to escape identification;" in which latter case, he
says, "man must have cultivated the cereals at an enormously remote
period," and at that time practised "some degree of selection."

Rawlinson ("Ancient Monarchies," vol. i., p. 578) expresses the opinion
that the ancient Assyrians possessed the pineapple. "The representation
on the monuments is so exact that I can scarcely doubt the pineapple
being intended." (See Layard's "Nineveh and Babylon," p. 338.) The
pineapple (Bromelia ananassa) is supposed to be of American origin, and
unknown to Europe before the time of Columbus; and yet, apart from the
revelations of the Assyrian monuments, there has been some dispute upon
this point. ("Amer. Cyclop.," vol. xiii., p. .528.)

ANCIENT IRISH PIPES

It is not even certain that the use of tobacco was not known to the
colonists from Atlantis settled in Ireland in an age long prior to Sir
Walter Raleigh. Great numbers of pipes have been found in the raths and
tumuli of Ireland, which, there is every reason to believe, were placed
there by men of the Prehistoric Period. The illustration on p. 63
represents some of the so-called "Danes' pipes" now in the collection of
the Royal Irish Academy. The Danes entered Ireland many centuries before
the time of Columbus, and if the pipes are theirs, they must have used
tobacco, or some substitute for it, at that early period. It is
probable, however, that the tumuli of Ireland antedate the Danes
thousands of years.

ANCIENT INDIAN PIPE, NEW JERSEY

Compare these pipes from the ancient mounds of Ireland with the
accompanying picture of an Indian pipe of the Stone Age of New Jersey.
("Smithsonian Rep.," 1875, p. 342.)

Recent Portuguese travellers have found the most remote tribes of savage
negroes in Africa, holding no commercial intercourse with Europeans,
using strangely shaped pipes, in which they smoked a plant of the
country. Investigations in America lead to the conclusion that tobacco
was first burnt as an incense to the gods, the priest alone using the
pipe; and from this beginning the extraordinary practice spread to the
people, and thence over all the world. It may have crossed the Atlantic
in a remote age, and have subsequently disappeared with the failure of
retrograding colonists to raise the tobacco-plant.

PART II. THE DELUGE.

CHAPTER I.

THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS DESCRIBED IN THE DELUGE LEGENDS.

Having demonstrated, as we think successfully, that there is no
improbability in the statement of Plato that a large island, almost a
continent, existed in the past in the Atlantic Ocean, nay, more, that it
is a geological certainty that it did exist; and having further shown
that it is not improbable but very possible that it may have sunk
beneath the sea in the manner described by Plato, we come now to the
next question, Is the memory of this gigantic catastrophe preserved
among the traditions of mankind? We think there can be no doubt that an
affirmative answer must be given to this question.

An event, which in a few hours destroyed, amid horrible convulsions, an
entire country, with all its vast population-that Population the
ancestors of the great races of both continents, and they themselves the
custodians of the civilization of their age-could not fail to impress
with terrible force the minds of men, and to project its gloomy shadow
over all human history. And hence, whether we turn to the Hebrews, the
Aryans, the Phœnicians, the Greeks, the Cushites, or the inhabitants of
America, we find everywhere traditions of the Deluge; and we shall see
that all these traditions point unmistakably to the destruction of
Atlantis.

François Lenormant says (Contemp. Rev., Nov., 1879):

"The result authorizes us to affirm the story of the Deluge to be a
universal tradition among all branches of the human race, with the one
exception, however, of the black. Now, a recollection thus precise and
concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily invented. No religious or
cosmogonic myth presents this character of universality. It must arise
from the reminiscence of a real and terrible event, so powerfully
impressing the imagination of the first ancestors of our race as never
to have been forgotten by their descendants. This cataclysm must have
occurred near the first cradle of mankind, and before the dispersion of
the families from which the principal races were to spring; for it would
be at once improbable and uncritical to admit that, at as many different
points of the globe as we should have to assume in order to explain the
wide spread of these traditions, local phenomena so exactly alike should
have occurred, their memory having assumed an identical form, and
presenting circumstances that need not necessarily have occurred to the
mind in such cases.

"Let us observe, however, that probably the diluvian tradition is not
primitive, but imported in America; that it undoubtedly wears the aspect
of an importation among the rare populations of the yellow race where it
is found; and lastly, that it is doubtful among the Polynesians of
Oceania. There will still remain three great races to which it is
undoubtedly peculiar, who have not borrowed it from each other, but
among whom the tradition is primitive, and goes back to the most ancient
times, and these three races are precisely the only ones of which the
Bible speaks as being descended from Noah--those of which it gives the
ethnic filiation in the tenth chapter of Genesis. This observation.
which I hold to be undeniable, attaches a singularly historic and exact
value to the tradition as recorded by the Sacred Book, even if, on the
other hand, it may lead to giving it a more limited geographical and
ethnological significance. . . .

"But, as the case now stands, we do not hesitate to declare that, far
from being a myth, the Biblical Deluge is a real and historical fact,
having, to say the least, left its impress on the ancestors of three
races--Aryan, or Indo-European, Semitic, or Syro-Arabian, Chamitic, or
Cushite--that is to say, on the three great civilized races of the
ancient world, those which constitute the higher humanity--before the
ancestors of those races had as yet separated, and in the part of Asia
they together inhabited."

Such profound scholars and sincere Christians as M. Schwœbel (Paris,
1858), and M. Omalius d'Halloy (Bruxelles, 1866), deny the universality
of the Deluge, and claim that "it extended only to the principal centre
of humanity, to those who remained near its primitive cradle, without
reaching the scattered tribes who had already spread themselves far away
in almost desert regions. It is certain that the Bible narrative
commences by relating facts common to the whole human species, confining
itself subsequently to the annals of the race peculiarly chosen by the
designs of Providence." (Lenormant and Chevallier, "Anc. Hist. of the
East," p. 44.) This theory is supported by that eminent authority on
anthropology, M. de Quatrefages, as well as by Cuvier; the Rev. R. p.
Bellynck, S.J., admits that it has nothing expressly opposed to
orthodoxy.

Plato identifies "the great deluge of all" with the destruction of
Atlantis. The priest of Sais told Solon that before "the great deluge of
all" Athens possessed a noble race, who performed many noble deeds, the
last and greatest of which was resisting the attempts of Atlantis to
subjugate them; and after this came the destruction of Atlantis, and the
same great convulsion which overwhelmed that island destroyed a number
of the Greeks. So that the Egyptians, who possessed the memory of many
partial deluges, regarded this as "the great deluge of all."

CHAPTER II.

THE DELUGE OF THE BIBLE

We give first the Bible history of the Deluge, as found in Genesis
(chap. vi. to chap. viii.):

"And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the
earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the
daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all
which they chose.

"And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that
he also is flesh: yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.

"There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when
the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare
children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of
renown.

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man
whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and
the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I
have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

["These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in
his generations, and Noah walked with God. And Noah begat three sons,
Shem, Ham, and Japheth.]

"The earth also was corrupt before God; and the earth was filled with
violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt;
for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto
Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled
with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the
earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the
ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the
fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be
three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of
it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit
shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in
the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make
it. And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth,
to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven;
and everything that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I
establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy
sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of every living
thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to
keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after
their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of
the earth after his kind; two of every sort shall come unto thee, to
keep them alive. And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and
thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for
them.

"Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.

"And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark;
for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every
clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female:
and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of
fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed
alive upon the face of all the earth. For yet seven days, and I will
cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every
living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of
the earth.

"And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him. And Noah
was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.

"And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with
him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts,
and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that
creepeth upon the earth, there went in two and two unto Noah into the
ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

"And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were
upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second
month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the
fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were
opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In
the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons
of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them,
into the ark; they, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle
after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth
after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.
And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh,
wherein is the breath of life. And they that went in, went in male and
female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the Lord shut him in.

"And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased,
and bare up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth. And the
waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark
went Upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly
upon the earth; and all the high bills, that were under the whole
heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and
the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the
earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils
was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every
living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground,
both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the
heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained
alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed
upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.

"And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle
that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the
earth, and the waters assuaged. The fountains also of the deep and the
windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.
And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the
end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark
rested in the seventh mouth, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon
the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the
tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the mouth, were the
tops of the mountains seen.

"And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the
window of the ark which he had made: and he sent forth a raven, which
went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the
earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were
abated from off the face of the ground. But the dove found no rest for
the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark; for the
waters were on the face of the whole earth. Then he put forth his hand,
and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet
other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And
the dove came in to him in the evening, and, lo, in her mouth was an
olive leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from
off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days, and sent forth the
dove, which returned not again unto him any more.

"And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first
month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the
earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and,
behold, the face of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on the
seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.

"And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy
wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee. Bring forth with thee
every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and of
cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that
they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply
upon the earth.

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