Atlantean Central American Colonies
Since the western shores of Atlantis were so close to the American continent, there would have been little difficulty for people in ships to “island-hop” between the two. When Columbus arrived in that region, he found that the local natives made such journeys quite easily in open canoes. It is highly probable that after the first discovery of their proximity with each other, there would very soon have been a thriving trading of goods between the Mesoamericans and Atlanteans much like that which occurred between natives of a newly discovered land and the Hudson Bay Company in Canada or the British East India Company in the Far East.
As Donnelly says, (and I trust that the reader will understand if I edit some of his rather long-winded verbage in the interests of brevity): “We can therefore readily believe that trade between Atlantis and Yucatan, Honduras and Mexico, created colonies along the shores of the Gulf, that gradually spread inland to the high tablelands of Mexico. Thus we find that all the traditions of Central America and Mexico point to some country in the east, beyond the sea, as the source of their first civilized people; and this region, known among them as “Aztlan”, lived in the memory of the people as a beautiful, happy land, where their ancestors had dwelt in peace for many generations.”
Le Plongeon, who spent four years exploring Yucatan, says. (and again, I will try to abbreviate): “A third of the Maya tongue is pure Greek. Who brought the dialect of Homer to America? Or who took that of the Maya to Greece? Greek is the offspring of Sanskrit. Is Maya? The Maya is not devoid of words from the Assyrian.”
There can be no question that the population of Central America (including Mexico) was at one time very dense, and had attained to a high degree of civilization; higher even than that of Europe in the time of Columbus.
And it is also probable that they originally belonged to the white race. Dêsiré Charnay, who explored the ruins of Central America, says: “The Toltecs were fair, robust and bearded. I have often seen Indians of pure blood with blue eyes” Quetzelcoatl was represented as large,“with a big head and a heavy beard”. The same author speaks of “the oceans of ruins all around, not inferior in size to those of Egypt." At Teotihuacan he measured one building at two thousand feet wide on each side, and fifteen pyramids, each as large in the base as that of Cheops at Giza.
“The city is indeed of vast extent…the whole ground, over a space of five or six miles in diameter, is covered with heaps of ruins…ruins which at first make no impression, so complete is their dilapidation.” He asserts the great antiquity of these ruins, because he found the very highways of the ancient city to be composed of broken bricks and pottery, the debris left by earlier populations.
“This continent” he says, “is the land of mysteries; we here enter an infinity whose limits we cannot estimate…I shall soon have to quit working in this place. The long avenue on which it stands is lined with ruins of public buildings and palaces, forming continuous lines, as in the strees of modern cities. Still, all these edifices and halls were as nothing compared with the vast substructures which strengthen their foundations. We find the strongest resemblances to the work of the ancient European races: the masonry is similar; the cement is the same; the sculptures are alike; both peoples used the arch; in both continents we find bricks, glassware, and even porcelain with blue figures on a white ground. Also there is bronze composed of the same elements of copper and tin in like proportions, coins made of copper, round and T-shaped, and even metallic candlesticks.”
Dêsiré Charnay believed he had found in the ruins of Tula, the bones of swine, sheep, oxen, and horses, in a fossil state, indicative of an immense antiquity. The Toltecs possessed a pure and simple religion, like that described of Atlantis by Plato, with the same sacrifices of fruits and flowers. They were farmers; they raised and wove cotton; they cultivated fruits; they cut and engraved precious stones; among their carvings have been found representations of elephants and lions, both animals unknown in America. The forms of sculpture were the same as those of the ancient races of the Old World; they burned the bodies of their great men and enclosed the ashes in funeral urns; some of their dead were buried in a sitting position, others lying at full length, and many were embalmed like the Egyptian mummies.
The Mexican Colony
After this, Donnelly next turns his attention to ancient Mexico, telling us of their early government by an elective monarchy, and the structure of their society being based upon a five-teired system - the royal family; an aristocracy of wealthy nobles; a privileged priesthood, a judiciary; and a common peasant-class people. From his further remarks we read that it was essentially a feudal system, that issues like marriage and divorce were much the same as those of modern Christian societies, and that slavery was tolerated, but not to the degree of neglect and cruelty exhibited in the Old World.
Their religion was so much akin to Christianity, that priests who accompanied the first intrusions of the Spanish invaders, declared it to be a bogus imitation of Christianity given to them by Satan for the purpose of destroying their souls!
I will not delve further into the many refinements of ancient Mexican society, as the interested reader can check out all the details from Donnelly’s book.
As a final note on Mexico, let me add that much of their architecture compares quite closely with that of ancient Mycenae, as well as that of those other interesting people who appear to have stemmed from the same source as the Greeks, the ancient Etruscans of northern Italy. In concluding his comments on Mexico, Donnelly remarks that “Mexico, under European rule, or under her own leaders, has never again risen to her former standar of refinement, wealth, prosperity or civilization.”
The Egyptian Colony
Now let us move on to Donnelly’s views on the Egyptians as an Atlantean colony.
Although my own personal thoughts on the relationship between Egypt and Atlantis must obviously differ, since, in my own opinion, Egypt did not exist concurrently with Atlantis in its heyday, but followed afterwards. I will nevertheless pass on a general outline of Donnelly’s version of their connection and relationship. (Here I will again quote a shortened version of Donnelly’s text, edited purely for the sake of brevity.):
They claimed descent from “the 12 great gods”, which must have meant the 12 gods of Atlantis – Poseidon and Cleito and their ten sons.
According to Phoenician traditons, the Egyptians derived their civilization from them: and, as the Egyptians far antedated the rise of the Phoenician nation as such, this must have meant that they derived their civilization from that to which the Phoenicians owed their own origin. Phoenician legends show that Misor, from whom the Egyptians were (allegedly) descended, was the child of the Phoenician gods Amynus and Magus. Misor gave birth to Taaut, the god of letters and inventor of the alphabet, and Taaut became Thoth, god of history to the Egyptians. Sanchonathion tells us that Kronos (king of Atlantis) visited the south and gave all Egypt to the god Taaut as his kingdom. (“Misor” is probably the king “Mestor” named by Plato.)
According to the Bible, the Egyptians were descendants of Ham, one of the three sons of Noah, who escaped the Deluge – the destruction of Atlantis.
The great similarity between the Egyptian civilization and that of the American nations.
The fact that Egyptians claimed to be red men.
The pre-eminent religion of Egyt was sun-worship with Ra as their sun-god. Rama was the sun-god of the Hindus, Rana a god of the Toltecs, Raymi was the great festival of the sun in Peru, and Rayam, a god of Yemen. (And let us not forget that Ra-mu was the sun-god of Mu!).
The presence of pyramids in Egypt and America.
The Egyptians were the only people of antiquity who were well informed as to the history of Atlantis. They were never a maritime people, so they were unlikely to have sent ships to Atlantis. The Atlanteans must have brought that knowledge to them.
We find more proof of Egyptian descent from Atlantis in their belief in the “Underword”. This Land of the Dead was situated in the West – hence all tombs were placed whenever possible on the west bank of the Nile. The mourners’ constant cry was “To the West! To the West!” This “Underworld” was “beyond the water”hence funeral processions always crossing a body of water. “Where the tombs were in most cases, on the West bank of the Nile, the Nile was crossed; where they were on the eastern shore the procession passed over a sacred lake” (R.S. Poole) “In the procession was a sacred ark of the sun.”
All this is very plain: the underworld in the West, the land of the dead, was Atlantis, the drowned world, the world beneath the horizon, beneath the sea, to which the peasants of Brittany looked from Cape Raz, the most western cape projecting into the Atlantic. It was only to be reached from Egypt by crossing water, and it was associated with the ark, the emblem of Atlantis in all lands.
The soul of the dead man was supposed to journey to the underworld by a “water-progress”. His destination was the Elysian fields, where mighty corn grew, and where he was expected to cultivate the earth. They were the “Abode of the Blessed” to the Greeks, on an island in the remote west. The Egyptian belief referred to a real country. We must not forget that Plato described Atlantis as “that sacred island lying beneath the sun”.
Everywhere in the ancient world, we find men looking to the west as the land of the dead. How can we account for this? It was based on a universal tradition that under an immense ocean in the far west, there was an “underworld” comprising millions of the dead, a mighty race that had been suddenly swallowed up in the greatest catastrophe known since man had inhabited the globe.
There is no evidence that the civilization of Egypt was developed in Egypt itself; it must have been transported (or imported) from some other country. To use the worlds of a recent writer in “Blackwood”: “till lately it was believed that the use of papyrus was introduced about the time of Alexander the Great – then Lepsius found the hieroglyphic sign of the papyrus roll on monuments of the 12th Dynasty. Afterwards he found the same sign on monuments of the 4th Dynasty.... little doubt is entertained that writing was understood as early as the days of Menes, the protomonarch.
“The fruits of this investigation are truly marvellous. Instead of exhibiting the rise of any knowledge, they tend instead to prove that everything is referable to the very earliest dates. That as soon as men were planted on the banks of the Nile they were already the cleverest of men that ever lived, endowed with more knowledge than their successors for centuries and centuries could attain to… As yet we have not yet discovered any trace of the rude, savage Egypt, but have seen her in her very earliest manifestations already skilful, eruditeand strong. It is impossible to determine the order of her inventions. How they came by their knowledge is a matter for speculation; that they possessed it is a matter of fact!
“The explanation is simple: the waters of the Atlantic now flow over the country where all this magnificence and power were developed by slow stages from the rude beginnings of barbarism.
“And how mighty must have been the parent nation of which this Egypt was a colony! Egypt was the magnificent, the golden bridge, ten thousand years long, glorious with temples and pyramids, illuminated and illustrated by the most competent and continuous records of human history, along which the civilization of Atlantis, in a great procession of kings and priests, philosophers and astronomers, artists and artisans, streamed forward to Greece, to Rome, to Europe, to America. Look at the record of Egyptian greatness as preserved in her works: the pyramids, even in their ruins, are the marvel of mankind.
(Note: There is much more in praise of Egypt from Donnelly, in the same vein, but I must leave it for the reader to find for him or herself. The simple constraints of space forbid my inclusion of it all here! Therefore, let us close this section with a few final remarks as to their society.)
Egypt’s Social Advancement
“The state of society in early Egypt was very close to our modern civilization. Religion consisted in the worship then of one god and the practice of virtue; forty-two commandments prescribed the duties of men to themselves, their neighbors, their country and the Deity. A heaven awaited the good and a Hell the vicious; there was also a Judgment Day when the hearts of men would be weighed.
“Monogamy was the strict rule. Not even kings, in the early days were allowed to have more than one wife, and the wife’s status was as high in the early days of Egypt as it is today in the most civilized of nations of Europe or America.
“Slavery was permitted, but the slaves were treated with the greatest humanity. In the confessions, buried with the dead, the soul was made to declare that “I have not incriminated the slave to his master”. There was also a clause in the commandments “which protected the laboring man against the exaction of more than his day’s labor”. They were merciful to the captives made in war; no picture presents toture being inflicted upon them; while the representation of a sea-fightshows Egyptian sailors saving their drowning enemies. When we consider the high ideal of the Egyptians, as proved by their portrayals of a just life, the principles they laid down as the basis of ethics, the elevation of women among them, their humanity in war, we must admit that their moral place ranks very high among the nations of antiquity.
“Then look at the proficiency in art of these ancient people. They were the first mathematicians in the ancient world. The Greeks, whom we regard as the fathers of Mathematics, were simply pupils of Egypt. The Egyptians were the first land surveyors. They were the first astronomers, calculating eclipses and watching the periods of planets and constellations. They knew the rotundity of the earth – which it was supposed Columbus had discovered! They also knew the signs of the zodiac and were using them 1722 yers before Christ. They had clocks and dials for measuring time. They possessed gold and silver money.
“They were the first agriculturalists in the Old World raising all the cereals, cattle, horses, sheep, etcetera. They manufactured linen so fine a quality that, in the days of King Amasis (600 BC), one single thread of a garment was composed of 365 minor threads. They were great metal craftsmen and worked in gold, silver, copper, bronze, and also in iron, which they tempered to the hardness of steel. The Egyptians were also the first chemists. The very word “Chemistry” comes from “Khemi”, and “Khemi” means Egypt! They manufactured glass and all kinds of pottery; they made small boats out of earthenware, and they even made large seaworthy vessels out of papyrus reeds! Their dentists filled teeth with gold, and their farmers hatched out chickens using artificial heat. They were also the first musicians, possessing guitars, assorted pipes, cymbals, drums, lyres, harps and flutes.
Summation
With Donnelly, we have considered the high ideals of the Egyptians, as expressed by their illustrations of just and fulfilling lives, the high moral principles upon which they based their strict code of ethics, the raising to rightful status of women in their society, their self-evident humanity in war as is portrayed in their illustrations. The magnificence of their wonderful arts and crafts, especially in their wall-paintings, their carving of stone, their working of gold and their intricate fashioning of jewelry.
These still-tangible examples of all of these amazing skills stagger our belief that such an ancient nation could have attained to such a tremendously high standard. One has but to look upon their great architectural and building attainments, and contemplate their many other wondrously brilliant achievements in virtually every conceivable field of endeavor, to realize their true stature in the ancient world!
Modern man, faced with so many evidences of its cultural refinement, cannot help but admit that the moral and creatively civilized land of ancient Egypt must rank extremely high, if not in fact the highest among all the great nations of antiquity.
Other Atlantean Colonies.
Donnelly next touches upon the various other colonies of old Atlantis. Iberian (or Spanish), Peruvian, and African. I will not spend much time on these, since they are not nearly so relevant as Mesoamerica or Egypt.
With regard to Iberia; these people who are descended from the people of ancient pre-Roman Italy and Sardinia are today represented by the Basques. Donnelly describes them, (via the then 1881 “New American Cyclopaedia”) as being: “of middle size, compactly built, robust and agile, of a darker complexion than the Spaniards, with grey eyes and black hair. They are simple, proud, impetuous, merry, and hospitable. The women are beautiful, skilful in performing men’s work, and remarkable for their vivacity and grace. The Basques are much attached to dancing, and are very fond of the music of the bagpipe.”
The Atlantean Basques
To me, they at first sounded very much like the people who currently live in Andalusia, and whose women are famous for their Flamenco dancing. The same description could also be very easily fitted to the itinerant Gypsies who roam over most of Europe and Britain. However, neither is the case. The Andalusians carry much Berber or Moorish blood in their veins, whilst the Gypsies are, in fact, descended from the ancient inhabitants of Turkey.
The Basques are actually thought to be of some as yet unidentified and ancient European racial type, and appear to be concentrated in the region of the Spanish Pyrenees, though they come form both sides of the Spanish–French border countries. Their principal origin is thought to have been along the edge of the Bay of Biscay.
They are remarkably different in culture and language from either Spanish or French, their unique language being of no identifiable European root-tongue. They are renowned historically as being enterprising long-range seafarers, and it is also interesting to note that representatives of their particularly unique race are also found across the Atlantic, living in close communities in all parts of Central and South America! Some small groups are also located in the southwestern United States in Nevada and California.
It is also interesting to learn that their ancestors successfully repelled the Romans, the Visigoths, the Franks, the Normans and the Moors – which probably accounts for the still-intact bloodline of which they are inordinately proud.
I would venture to suggest that, in view of their great seafaring heritage, their ancient geographical location, and their having spread across to the New World, that this all points to their original homeland having been Atlantis! In fact, I believe that they are probably the only true blood-descendants of the ancient Atlanteans extant on the planet today, together, perhaps, with some of the descendants of the native inhabitants of the Azores and the Canaries.
The Basques have ferociously resisted all official attempts to integrate them into surrounding societies, and carefully avoid sullying their purity of line by intermarriage. They are currently waging an internescine guerilla struggle against both Spain and France in order to retain their unique status as non-Europeans. We can only trust, even if only from an historical point of view, that they retain their identity.
Bretons'>The Bretons
Apart from the Basques, the only other dwellers on the eastern Atlantic coast of Europe who may qualify as descendants of Atlanteans are the Bretons of Brittany, that protruding peninsula which juts westward into the Atlantic and forms the northern edge of the Bay of Biscay. These are largely descended from the ancient Amorcians. In my own opinion, the Bretons are, in fact, the same identical race as the ancient Britons who inhabited southwest England and Wales, and who proved to be such a thorn in the side of Julius Caesar during his invasion of England.
All are black-haired and brown-eyed and of short physical stature, and share many of the independent traits of the Basques in instinctive distrust of strangers and obstinacy of nature. These same traits are also found in the ancient Pictish people of northern Scotland – who are though to be Britons who were driven northwards by the advancing Roman Army. The Picts, like the Britons, were never conquered by the Romans, but retreated to mountain fastnesses from whence they could not be dislodged. They are reputed to have caused the total disappearance of at least two entire Roman legions that were sent after them! The legendary King Arthur and his famous army of “knights” are believed to have been either Welsh Britons or Scottish Picts.
Thus we have essentially two groups, the Basques and the Bretons/Britons in western Europe who are extremely likely to have been of direct Atlantean origin and members of her offshore colonies. Donnelly finds some possibly racial connection between both European groups and the Berbers of Algeria, in northwestern Africa. He quotes a Dr. Bodichon as saying that: “The Atlanteans were the first known navigators. Like all navigators, they must have planted colonies at a distance.” This could also account for the presence of Basques in the Americas, too!
I think that this is about as far as these people can be pursued in connection with Atlantis, so I will now move on to a part of the New World thus far not discussed. I refer to Peru, on the western coast of the Andes in South America.
The Peruvian Colony
Donnelly firmly avers that the Atlanteans, during their far-ranging expeditions into Brazil, must, at some time, have followed the Amazon and its tributaries through all its fever-ridden jungles and swamps, into the higher, fertile and heathy regions of Bolivia. From there they would have travelled much more easily across a beautiful and largely highland country until they reached the northern cordilleras of the Andes, and then followed them southward into Peru.
I agree with him in this belief. If the Spanish and Portugese were able to make such a journey millennia later, clad in hot and heavy armour, accompanied by horses, and bearing heavy baggage, I see no reason why the much more adventurous, experienced and hardy Atlanteans could not have done so, and probably with far greater ease. In any case, I suspect that for the Atlanteans, this would have been a one-way journey with the intention of colonizing new lands as they went.
Regarding Peru, let me again quote a few more paragraphs from Donnelly’s book:
“Here it would establish its outlying colonies at the terminus of its western line of advance, arrested only by the Pacific Ocean, precisely as we have seen it advancing up the Valley of the Mississippi and carrying on its mining operations on the shores of Lake superior; precisely as we have seen it going eastward up the Mediterranean, past the Dardanelles, and founding Aryan, Hamitic, and probably Turanian colonies on the far shores of the black Sea and on the Caspian.
“This is the universal empire over which the Hindu books tell us. Deva Nahusha was ruler; this was “the great and aggressive empire” to which Plato alludes; this was the mighty kingdom, embracing the whole of the then known world, from which the Greeks obtained their conception of the universal father of all men in King Zeus. And in this universal empire, Señor Lopez must find an explanation of the similarity which, as we shall show, exists between the speech of the south American Pacific coast on the one hand, and the speech of Gaul, Ireland, England, Italy, Greece, Bactria and Hindustan on the other.”
“Montesino tells us that at some time near the date of the Deluge, America was invaded by a people with four leaders, named Ayar-manco-topa, Ayar-chaki, Ayar-aucca and Ayar-uyssu. “Ayar” says Señor Lopez, “is the Sanskrit “Ajar”, or “ aje” and means “primitive chief”, and “Manco”, “chaki”, “aucca” and “uyssu”, mean respectively “believers”, “wanderers”, “soldiers” and “husbandmen”.
We have here a tradition of the castes like that preserved in the four tribal names of Athens. The laboring class (naturally in a new colony) obtainedthe supremacy, and its leader was named Pirhua-manco, Revealer of Pir or Light (pu~ur, Umbrian “pir”).
Do the laws which control the changes of language, by which a labial suceeds a labial, indicate that the Mero or Merou of Theopompus, the name of Atlantis, was carried by the colonists of Atlantis to South America (as the name of old York was translated in a later age to New York), and became in time Perou or Peru? Was not the Nubian “Island of Merou”, with its pyramids built by “red men” a similar transplantation? And when the Hindu priest points to his sacred emblem with five projecting points upon it, and tells us that they typify “Mero amd the four quarters of the world”, does he not refer to Atlantis and itsancient, universal empire?
“Manco”, in the names of the Peruvian colonists, it has been urged, was the same as Mannus, Manu, and the Santhal Maniko. It reminds us strongly of Menes, Minos, etc., who are found at the beginning of so many of the Old World traditions.
“The Quichuas – this invading people – were originally a fair-skinned race with blue eyes and light even auburn hair; they had regular features, large heads and large bodies. Their descendants are to this day an olive-skinned people, much lighter in color than the Indian tribes subjugated by them.”
I will avoid repeating all that Donnelly records regarding the Quichuas concerning their exraordinary skills and constructional achievements, including pyramids, or of their subsequent subjugation by the Incas after a long and bloody struggle, and a descent into barbarism and ravage. This is really history and can be read by anyone interested in their own turmoils in Donnelly’s book. Instead I will focus only upon what concerns our topic.
“At Cuelap, in northern Peru, remarkable ruins were found. They consist of a wall of wrought stones 3600 feet long, 560 broad and 150 high constituting a solid mass with a level summit. On this mass was another, 600 feet long, 500 broad, and 150 high, making an aggregate height of three hundred feet! Inside it were rooms and cells which were used as tombs. Very ancient ruins showing remains of large and remarkable edifices, were also found near Huamanga, and described by Cieca de Leon. The native traditions said that this city was built by bearded white men, who came there long before the times of the Incas, and established a settlement.
“The Peruvians made use of aqueducts, which they built with notable skill, using hewed stones and cement, and making them very substantial. One such aqueduct extended four hundred and fifty miles across sierras and rivers. Think of a stone aqueduct reaching from New York to North Carolina!
“Their public roads were no less remarkable, they were built of masonry. One ran along the mountains through the whole length of the empire, from Quito to Chile; another started from this at Cuzco, went down to the coast, and extended northward to the equator. These roads were twenty to twenty-five feet wide, were macadamized with puverized stone mixed wit lime and bitumenous cement, and were walled in by strong walls more than six feet thick! In many places they were cut for leagues through rock, great ravines were filled up with solid masonry; rivers were crossed by suspension bridges, used her long before their introduction into Europe! Along these great roads caravansaries were established for the accommodation of travellers.
As to the gold of the Peruvians. It can be estimated from the amount sent from Peru to Spain as “booty” in Spanish galleons over the course of 25 years, which amounted to more than 800 millions of dollars. (And that is at the value of the US dollar in Donnelly’s day, over 100 years ago! One can barely imagine how many $US billions this would equal in 2001!)
Donnelly then goes on to compare similarities between the civilizations of the Old and New Worlds, also applicable to these ancient Peruvians:
1. They worshipped the sun, the moon and the planets.
2. They believed in the immortality of the soul.
3. They believed in the resurrection of the body, and accordingly embalmed their dead.
4. Priests examined entrails of sacrificed animals and like the Roman, divined the future from their appearance.
5. They had an order of virgin nuns vowed to celibacy, the violation of which vow was punished in both Old and New continents, by their being immured or buried alive.
6. They divide the year into twelve months.
7. Their system of enumeration was by tens. People were divided into decades and hundreds like the Anglo-Saxons, and the whole nation into bodies of 500, 1,000 and 10,000 with a governor placed over each group
8. They possessed a caste-system; and the trade of father descended to son, as in India.
9. They had bards and minstrels, who sung at their great festivals.
10. Their weapons were the same as those of the Old World, made after the same pattern.
11. They drank toasts and invoked blessings.
12. They built triumphal arches for their returning heroes, and strewed the road before them with leaves and flowers, as did the Romans and others.
13. They used sedan-chairs for important personages.
14. They regarded agriculture as the primary interest of the empire, and held great fairs and festivals for the exchange of farmers’ products
15. The king opened the agricultural season in a great celebration, like the pharaohs of Egypt, by putting his hand to the plough and ploughing the first furrow.
16. They had an order of chivalry and knighthood, in which the knight knelt before the king to be knighted, and the attendant ceremony was as that of Middle Ages Europe.
17. There were many striking resemblances between the architecture of the Peruvians and that of several nations of the Old World, particularly like that of the Pelasgians of ancient Greece and northern Italy.
18. Their palace decorations were similar to those of many Old World palaces, especially those of ancient Egypt.
19. Their pottery closely resembled that of Egypt and Troy.
20. Their ancient language reflected many similarities to Aryan and Semitic tongues, and to the subsequent Greek and Sanscrit languages.
All of the foregoing similarities point inevitably to a direct link between both old and New world in ancient times; one which could only have been due to both fundamental cultures originating from a single central source – Atlantis!
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