Atlantis: The Antedeluvian WorldDonnelly, Ignatius
History
Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Deluge; Ethnology
Mannfactures.--The American nations manufactured woollen and cotton
goods; they made pottery as beautiful as the wares of Egypt; they
manufactured glass; they engraved gems and precious stones. The
Peruvians had such immense numbers of vessels and ornaments of gold that
the Inca paid with them a ransom for himself to Pizarro of the value of
fifteen million dollars.
Music.--It has been pointed out that there is great resemblance between
the five-toned music of the Highland Scotch and that of the Chinese and
other Eastern nations. ("Anthropology," p. 292.)
Weapons.--The weapons of the New World were identically the same as
those of the Old World; they consisted of bows and arrows, spears,
darts, short swords, battle-axes, and slings; and both peoples used
shields or bucklers, and casques of wood or hide covered with metal. If
these weapons had been derived from separate sources of invention, one
country or the other would have possessed implements not known to the
other, like the blow-pipe, the boomerang, etc. Absolute identity in so
many weapons strongly argues identity of origin.
Religion.--The religion of the Atlanteans, as Plato tells us, was pure
and simple; they made no regular sacrifices but fruits and flowers; they
worshipped the sun.
In Peru a single deity was worshipped, and the sun, his most glorious
work, was honored as his representative. Quetzalcoatl, the founder of
the Aztecs, condemned all sacrifice but that of fruits and flowers. The
first religion of Egypt was pure and simple; its sacrifices were fruits
and flowers; temples were erected to the sun, Ra, throughout Egypt. In
Peru the great festival of the sun was called Ra-mi. The Phoenicians
worshipped Baal and Moloch; the one represented the beneficent, and the
other the injurious powers of the sun.
Religious Beliefs.--The Guanches of the Canary Islands, who were
probably a fragment of the old Atlantean population, believed in the
immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, and preserved
their dead as mummies. The Egyptians believed in the immortality of the
soul and the resurrection of the body, and preserved the bodies of the
dead by embalming them. The Peruvians believed in the immortality of the
soul and the resurrection of the body, and they too preserved the bodies
of their dead by embalming them. "A few mummies in remarkable
preservation have been found among the Chinooks and Flatheads."
(Schoolcraft, vol. v., p. 693.) The embalmment of the body was also
practised in Central America and among the Aztecs. The Aztecs, like the
Egyptians, mummified their dead by taking out the bowels and replacing
them with aromatic substances. (Dorman, "Origin Prim. Superst.," p.
173.) The bodies of the kings of the Virginia Indians were preserved by
embalming. (Beverly, p. 47.)
Here are different races, separated by immense distances of land and
ocean, uniting in the same beliefs, and in the same practical and
logical application of those beliefs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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