Atlantis: The Antedeluvian WorldDonnelly, Ignatius
History
Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Deluge; Ethnology
3. Upon that part of the African continent nearest to the site of
Atlantis we find a chain of mountains, known from the most ancient times
as the Atlas Mountains. Whence this name Atlas, if it be not from the
name of the great king of Atlantis? And if this be not its origin, how
comes it that we find it in the most north-western corner of Africa? And
how does it happen that in the time of Herodotus there dwelt near this
mountain-chain a people called the Atlantes, probably a remnant of a
colony from Solon's island? How comes it that the people of the Barbary
States were known to the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians as the
"Atlantes," this name being especially applied to the inhabitants of
Fezzan and Bilma? Where did they get the name from? There is no
etymology for it east of the Atlantic Ocean. (Lenormants "Anc. Hist. of
the East," p. 253.)
Look at it! An "Atlas" mountain on the shore of Africa; an "Atlan" town
on the shore of America; the "Atlantes" living along the north and west
coast of Africa; an Aztec people from Aztlan, in Central America; an
ocean rolling between the two worlds called the "Atlantic;" a
mythological deity called "Atlas" holding the world on his shoulders;
and an immemorial tradition of an island of Atlantis. Can all these
things be the result of accident?
4. Plato says that there was a "passage west from Atlantis to the rest
of the islands, as well as from these islands to the whole opposite
continent that surrounds that real sea." He calls it a real sea, as
contradistinguished from the Mediterranean, which, as he says, is not a
real sea (or ocean) but a landlocked body of water, like a harbor.
Now, Plato might have created Atlantis out of his imagination; but how
could he have invented the islands beyond (the West India Islands), and
the whole continent (America) enclosing that real sea? If we look at the
map, we see that the continent of America does "surround" the ocean in a
great half-circle. Could Plato have guessed all this? If there had been
no Atlantis, and no series of voyages from it that revealed the
half-circle of the continent from Newfoundland to Cape St. Roche, how
could Plato have guessed it? And how could he have known that the
Mediterranean was only a harbor compared with the magnitude of the great
ocean surrounding Atlantis? Long sea-voyages were necessary to establish
that fact, and the Greeks, who kept close to the shores in their short
journeys, did not make such voyages.
5. How can we, without Atlantis, explain the presence of the Basques in
Europe, who have no lingual affinities with any other race on the
continent of Europe, but whose language is similar to the languages of
America?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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