Antediluvian world

by Ignatius Donnelly

  This is the Greek story of Elysion; these are the Elysian Fields of the Egyptians; these are the Gardens of the Hesperides; this is the region in the West to which the peasant of Brittany looks from the shores of Cape Raz; this is Atlantis.

  The starving child seeks to reach this blessed land in a boat and is drowned.

  “High on the cliffs the light-house keeper Caught the sound of a piercing scream; Low in her hut the lonely widow Moaned in the maze of a troubled dream; “And saw in her sleep a seaman ghostly, With sea-weeds clinging in his hair, Into her room, all wet and dripping, A drowned boy on his bosom bear. “Over Death Sea on a bridge of silver The child to his Father’s arms had passed! Heaven was nearer than Tir-na-n’oge, And the golden city was reached at last.”

  CHAPTER VIII.

  THE OLDEST SON OF NOAH.

  That eminent authority, Dr. Max Mueller, says, in his “Lectures on the Science of Religion,”

  “If we confine ourselves to the Asiatic continent, with its important peninsula of Europe, we find that in the vast desert of drifting human speech three, and only three, oases have been formed in which, before the beginning of all history, language became permanent and traditional—assumed, in fact, a new character, a character totally different from the original character of the floating and constantly varying speech of human beings. These three oases of language are known by the name of Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic. In these three centres, more particularly in the Aryan and Semitic, language ceased to be natural; its growth was arrested, and it became permanent, solid, petrified, or, if you like, historical speech. I have always maintained that this centralization and traditional conservation of language could only have been the result of religious and political influences, and I now mean to show that we really have clear evidence of three independent settlements of religion—the Turanian, the Aryan, and the Semitic—concomitantly with the three great settlements of language.”

  There can be no doubt that the Aryan and another branch, which Mueller calls Semitic, but which may more properly be called Hamitic, radiated from Noah; it is a question yet to be decided whether the Turanian or Mongolian is also a branch of the Noachic or Atlantean stock.

  To quote again from Max Mueller:

  “If it can only be proved that the religions of the Aryan nations are united by the same bonds of a real relationship which have enabled us to treat their languages as so many varieties of the same type—and so also of the Semitic—the field thus opened is vast enough, and its careful clearing, and cultivation will occupy several generations of scholars.

  And this original relationship, I believe, can be proved. Names of the principal deities, words also expressive of the most essential elements of religion, such as prayer, sacrifice, altar, spirit, law, and faith, have been preserved among the Aryan and among the Semitic nations, and these relics admit of one explanation only. After that, a comparative study of the Turanian religions may be approached with better hope of success; for that there was not only a primitive Aryan and a primitive Semitic religion, but likewise a primitive Turanian religion, before each of these primeval races was broken up and became separated in language, worship and national sentiment, admits, I believe, of little doubt. . . . There was a period during which the ancestors of the Semitic family had not yet been divided, whether in language or in religion. That period transcends the recollection of every one of the Semitic races, in the same way as neither Hindoos, Greeks, nor Romans have any recollection of the time when they spoke a common language, and worshipped their Father in heaven by a name that was as yet neither Sanscrit, nor Greek, nor Latin. But I do not hesitate to call this Prehistoric Period historical in the best sense of the word. It was a real period, because, unless it was real, all the realities of the Semitic languages and the Semitic religions, such as we find them after their separation, would be unintelligible. Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic point to a common source as much as Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin; and unless we can bring ourselves to doubt that the Hindoos, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutons derived the worship of their principal deity from their common Aryan sanctuary, we shall not be able to deny that there was likewise a primitive religion of the whole Semitic race, and that El, the Strong One in heaven, was invoked by the ancestors of all the Semitic races before there were Babylonians in Babylon, Phoenicians in Sidon and Tyrus—before there were Jews in Mesopotamia or Jerusalem.

  The evidence of the Semitic is the same as that of the Aryan languages: the conclusion cannot be different….

  “These three classes of religion are not to be mistaken-as little as the three classes of language, the Turanian, the Semitic, and the Aryan.

  They mark three events in the most ancient history of the world, events which have determined the whole fate of the human race, and of which we ourselves still feel the consequences in our language, in our thoughts, and in our religion.”

  We have seen that all the evidence points to the fact that this original seat of the Phoenician-Hebrew family was in Atlantis.

  The great god of the so-called Semites was El, the Strong One, from whose name comes the Biblical names Beth-el, the house of God; Ha-el, the strong one; El-ohim, the gods; El-oah, God; and from the same name is derived the Arabian name of God, Al-lah.

  Another evidence of the connection between the Greeks, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Atlanteans is shown in the name of Adonis.

  The Greeks tell us that Adonis was the lover of Aphrodite, or Venus, who was the offspring of Uranus—”she came out of the sea;” Uranus was the father of Chronos, and the grandfather of Poseidon, king of Atlantis.

  Now We find Adonai in the Old Testament used exclusively as the name of Jehovah, while among the Phoenicians Adonai was the supreme deity. In both cases the root Ad is probably a reminiscence of Ad-lantis.

  There seem to exist similar connections between the Egyptian and the Turanian mythology. The great god of Egypt was Neph or Num; the chief god of the Samoyedes is Num; and Max Mueller established an identity between the Num of the Samoyedes and the god Yum-ala of the Finns, and probably with the name of the god Nam of the Thibetians.

  That mysterious people, the Etruscans, who inhabited part of Italy, and whose bronze implements agreed exactly in style and workmanship with those which we think were derived from Atlantis, were, it is now claimed, a branch of the Turanian family.

  “At a recent meeting of the English Philological Society great interest was excited by a paper on Etruscan Numerals, by the Rev. Isaac Taylor.

  He stated that the long-sought key to the Etruscan language had at last been discovered. Two dice had been found in a tomb, with their six faces marked with words instead of pips. He showed that these words were identical with the first six digits in the Altaic branch of the Turanian family of speech. Guided by this clew, it was easy to prove that the grammar and vocabulary of the 3000 Etruscan inscriptions were also Altaic. The words denoting kindred, the pronouns, the conjugations, and the declensions, corresponded closely to those of the Tartar tribes of Siberia. The Etruscan mythology proved to be essentially the same as that of the Kalevala, the great Finnic epic.”

  According to Lenormant (“Ancient History of the East,” vol. i., p. 62; vol. ii., p. 23), the early contests between the Aryans and the Turanians are represented in the Iranian traditions as “contests between hostile brothers . . . the Ugro-Finnish races must, according to all appearances, be looked upon as a branch, earlier detached than the others from the Japhetic stem.”

  If it be true that the first branch originating from Atlantis was the Turanian, which includes the Chinese and Japanese, then we have derived from Atlantis all the building and metalworking races of men who have proved themselves capable of civilization; and we may, therefore, divide mankind into two great classes: those capable of civilization, derived from Atlantis, and those essentially and at all times barbarian, who hold no blood relationship with the people of Atlantis.

  Humboldt is sure “that some connection existed between ancient Ethiopia and
the elevated plain of Central Asia.” There were invasions which reached from the shores of Arabia into China. “An Arabian sovereign, Schamar-Iarasch (Abou Karib), is described by Hamza, Nuwayri, and others as a powerful ruler and conqueror, who carried his arms successfully far into Central Asia; he occupied Samarcand and invaded China. He erected an edifice at Samarcand, bearing an inscription, in Himyarite or Cushite characters, ‘In the name of God, Schamar-Iarasch has erected this edifice to the sun, his Lord.” (Baldwin’s “Prehistoric Nations,” p.

  110.) These invasions must have been prior to 1518 B.C.

  Charles Walcott Brooks read a paper before the California Academy of Sciences, in which he says:

  “According to Chinese annals, Tai-Ko-Fokee, the great stranger king, ruled the kingdom of China. In pictures he is represented with two small horns, like those associated with the representations of Moses. He and his successor are said to have introduced into China ‘picture-writing,’

  like that in use in Central America at the time of the Spanish conquest.

  He taught the motions of the heavenly bodies, and divided time into years and months; he also introduced many other useful arts and sciences.

  “Now, there has been found at Copan, in Central America, a figure strikingly like the Chinese symbol of Fokee, with his two horns; and, in like manner, there is a close resemblance between the Central American and the Chinese figures representing earth and heaven. Either one people learned from the other, or both acquired these forms from a common source. Many physico-geographical facts favor the hypothesis that they were derived in very remote ages from America, and that from China they passed to Egypt. Chinese records say that the progenitors of the Chinese race came from across the sea.”

  The two small horns of Tai-Ko-Fokee and Moses are probably a reminiscence of Baal. We find the horns of Baal represented in the remains of the Bronze Age of Europe. Bel sometimes wore a tiara with his bull’s horns; the tiara was the crown subsequently worn by the Persian kings, and it became, in time, the symbol of Papal authority. The Atlanteans having domesticated cattle, and discovered their vast importance to humanity, associated the bull and cow with religious ideas, as revealed in the oldest hymns of the Aryans and the cow-headed idols of Troy, a representation of one of which is shown on the preceding page. Upon the head of their great god Baal they placed the horns of the bull; and these have descended in popular imagination to the spirit of evil of our day. Burns says: “O thou! whatever title suit thee, Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie.”

  “Clootie” is derived from the cleft hoof of a cow; while the Scotch name for a bull is Bill, a corruption, probably, of Bel. Less than two hundred years ago it was customary to sacrifice a bull on the 25th of August to the “God Mowrie” and “his devilans” on the island of Inis Maree, Scotland. (“The Past in the Present,” p. 165.) The trident of Poseidon has degenerated into the pitchfork of Beelzebub!

  And when we cross the Atlantic, we find in America the horns of Baal reappearing in a singular manner. The first cut on page 429 represents an idol of the Moquis of New Mexico: the head is very bull-like. In the next figure we have a representation of the war-god of the Dakotas, with something like a trident in his hand; while the next illustration is taken from Zarate’s “Peru,” and depicts “the god of a degrading worship.” He is very much like the traditional conception of the European devil-horns, pointed ears, wings, and poker. Compare this last figure, from Peru, with the representation on page 430 of a Greek siren, one of those cruel monsters who, according to Grecian mythology, sat in the midst of bones and blood, tempting men to ruin by their sweet music.

  Here we have the same bird-like legs and claws as in the Peruvian demon.

  Heeren shows that a great overland commerce extended in ancient times between the Black Sea and “Great Mongolia;” he mentions a “Temple of the Sun,” and a great caravansary in the desert of Gobi. Arminius Vambery, in his “Travels in Central Asia,” describes very important ruins near the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, at a place called Gomueshtepe; and connected with these are the remains of a great wall which he followed “ten geographical miles.” He found a vast aqueduct one hundred and fifty miles long, extending to the Persian mountains. He reports abundant ruins in all that country, extending even to China.

  The early history of China indicates contact with a superior race.

  “Fuh-hi, who is regarded as a demi-god, founded the Chinese Empire 2852

  B.C. He introduced cattle, taught the people how to raise them, and taught the art of writing.” (“American Cyclopaedia,” art. China.) He might have invented his alphabet, but he did not invent the cattle; he must have got them from some nation who, during many centuries of civilization, had domesticated them; and from what nation was he more likely to have obtained them than from the Atlanteans, whose colonies we have seen reached his borders, and whose armies invaded his territory!

  “He instituted the ceremony of marriage.” (Ibid.) This also was an importation from a civilized land. “His successor, Shin-nung, during a reign of one hundred and forty years, introduced agriculture and medical science. The next emperor, Hwang-ti, is believed to have invented weapons, wagons, ships, clocks, and musical instruments, and to have introduced coins, weights, and measures.” (Ibid.) As these various inventions in all other countries have been the result of slow development, running through many centuries, or are borrowed from some other more civilized people, it is certain that no emperor of China ever invented them all during a period of one hundred and sixty-four years.

  These, then, were also importations from the West. In fact, the Chinese themselves claim to have invaded China in the early days from the north-west; and their first location is placed by Winchell near Lake Balkat, a short distance east of the Caspian, where we have already seen Aryan Atlantean colonies planted at an early day. “The third successor of Fuh-hi, Ti-ku, established schools, and was the first to practise polygamy. In 2357 his son Yau ascended the throne, and it is from his reign that the regular historical records begin. A great flood, which occurred in his reign, has been considered synchronous and identical with the Noachic Deluge, and to Yau is attributed the merit of having successfully battled against the waters.”

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

  Sir William Jones says:

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

  376.)

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

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

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

  ----------+----------+

  | English. | Chinese. | Chaldee. |

  ----------+----------+ | To shine | Mut | Mul. |

  ----------+----------+ | To die | Mut | Mit. |

  ----------+----------+ | Book | King | Kin. |

  ----------+----------+ | Cloth | Sik | Sik. |

  ----------+----------+ | Right hand | Dzek | Zag. |

  ----------+----------+ | Hero | Tan | Dun. |

  ----------+----------+ | Earth | Kien-kai | Kiengi. |

  ----------+----------+ | Cow | Lub | Lu, lup. |

  ----------+----------+ | Brick | Ku | Ku. |

  ----------+----------+

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

  and embraced, according to Plato, “parts of the continent of America.”