Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World

ion to suppose that the mariner's compass

far back as we may go in the study of the ancient races of the world, we find them possessed of a knowledge of the virtues of the magnetic stone, and in the habit of utilizing it. The people of Europe, rising a few centuries since out of a state of semi-barbarism, have been in the habit of claiming the invention of many things which they simpl

Hebrew prayers as Kalamitah, the same name given it by the Greeks, from the reed upon which the compass floated. The Phoenicians were familiar with the use of the magnet. At the prow of their vessels stood the figure of a woman (Astarte) holding a cross in one hand and pointing the way with the other; the cross represented the compass, which was a magnetized needle, floating in water crosswise upon a piece of reed or wood. The cross be

e opposite continent that surrounds the sea;" the Phoenicians, as their successors and descendants, and colonized on the shores of the Mediterranean, inherited their civilization and their maritime habits, and with these that invention without which their great voyages were impossible. From them the magnet passed to the Hindoos, and from them to the Chinese, who certainly

used by the navigators of the

E MAGN

evil genius, but also a son of Rhea, the earth goddess. Do we find in this curious designation of iron and loadstone as "bones of the descendants of the earth," an explanation of that otherwise inexplicable Greek legend about Deucalion "thro

g upon the subject of

e Golden Fleece of Argos, in the oracular needle which Nero worshipped, and in everything else. Yet undoubtedly there are some curious facts connected with the matter. Osonius says that Gama and the Portuguese got the compass from some pirates at the Cape of Good Hope, A.D. 1260. M. Fauchet, the French antiquarian, finds it plainly alluded to in some old poem of Brittany belonging to the year A.D. 1180. Paulo Venetus brought it in the thirteenth century from China, where it was regarded as oracular. Genebrand says Melvius, a Neapolitan, brought

an. And this may be the explanation of the recurrence of a cup in many antique paintings and statues. Hercules is often represented with a cup in his hand; w

rope to sail to the island of Erythea in the Atlantic, in the remote west, we are told, in Greek mythology (Murray, p. 257), that he borrowed "the cup" of Helios, in (with) which "he was accustomed to sail

COINS

a vessel in which to hold the water where the needle floated, and h

and the tree of life or knowledge, with the serpent twined around it, which appears in Genesis; and in the c

M CENTRA

the use of the compass in the centre of one of the sides, the figures on the same side representing a kneeling, bearded, turbaned man between two fierce heads, perhaps of crocodiles, which appear to defend the entrance to a mounta

ised B?tulia, contriving stones that moved as having life, which were supposed to fall from heaven." These stones w

ht 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 hel

e cardinal points of the compass; so did the Egyptians, the Mexicans, and the Mo

e of the mountain on which the human race took refuge from the Deluge... the primitive geographic point for the countries which were the c

not by any means in a rude

makes Menelaus circumnavigate Africa more than 500 years before

the Great is a represe

and some other peopl

e ships are propelled

bus,"

e about 300 feet long to 50 wide and 30 high; these were precisely t

; it contained galleries, gardens, stables, fish-ponds, mills, baths, a temple of Venus, and an engine to throw stones three hundred pounds i

s consisted of four h

ia she was opposed by

ole 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 fo

rant 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

ander the Great, defended itself by the use of gunpowder: it was said to be a favorite of the g

t is not surprising that we find some things in their

outh, 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

if Moses had blown up th

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

Midianites out of their wits without the smashed pitchers and lanterns; and certain it is

re descended from Atlantis, we are not surprised to find in the legends of Greek mythology events described

"Mannal of Mythology," p. 30) against Zeus; it i

r 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 thou

losion of a mine with a "force equ

ncheires were probably great war-ships, armed with

own as "the thunderer," and was re

"great original race" rather than to any one people of their posterity, who seem to have borrowed all the other arts from

ern 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

th sides of the Atlantic, the presumption is very strong that

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

iginated among a people who had attained the highest degree of civilization; it implies the art of weaving by delicate instruments, a dense

hina more than two thousand six hundred years before the Christian era, at the time when we find them first possessed of civilization. The Phoenicians 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 Egyptia

70 B.C., and to the Chinese and Phoenicians at the very beginning of their his

great Phoenician 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 municipa

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 garli

e 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 origina

s to the origin of all the principal inventions which have raised man from a sava

eway legends, and follo

, we make a table

--+ | The manufacture of bricks | Atlantean | Autochthon and 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

at 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