Atlantis : the antediluvian world eBook

Ignatius Donnelly
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 497 pages of information about Atlantis .

Atlantis : the antediluvian world eBook

Ignatius Donnelly
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 497 pages of information about Atlantis .

7.  How comes it that all the civilizations of the Old World radiate from the shores of the Mediterranean?  The Mediterranean is a cul de sac, with Atlantis opposite its mouth.  Every civilization on its shores possesses traditions that point to Atlantis.  We hear of no civilization coming to the Mediterranean from Asia, Africa, or Europe—­from north, south, or west; but north, south, east, and west we find civilization radiating from the Mediterranean to other lands.  We see the Aryans descending upon Hindostan from the direction of the Mediterranean; and we find the Chinese borrowing inventions from Hindostan, and claiming descent from a region not far from the Mediterranean.

The Mediterranean has been the centre of the modern world, because it lay in the path of the extension of an older civilization, whose ships colonized its shores, as they did also the shores .of America.  Plato says, “the nations are gathered around the shores of the Mediterranean like frogs around a marsh.”

Dr. McCausland says: 

“The obvious conclusion from these facts is, that at some time previous to these migrations a people speaking a language of a superior and complicated structure broke up their society, and, under some strong impulse, poured out in different directions, and gradually established themselves in all the lands now inhabited by the Caucasian race.  Their territories extend from the Atlantic to the Ganges, and from Iceland to Ceylon, and are bordered on the north and east by the Asiatic Mongols, and on the south by the negro tribes of Central Africa.  They present all the appearances of a later race, expanding itself between and into the territories of two pre-existing neighboring races, and forcibly appropriating the room required for its increasing population.”  (McCausland’s “Adam and the Adamites,” p. 280.)

Modern civilization is Atlantean.  Without the thousands of years of development which were had in Atlantis modern civilization could not have existed.  The inventive faculty of the present age is taking up the great delegated work of creation where Atlantis left it thousands of years ago.

8.  How are we to explain the existence of the Semitic race in Europe without Atlantis?  It is an intrusive race; a race colonized on sea-coasts.  Where are its Old World affinities?

9.  Why is it that the origin of wheat, barley, oats, maize, and rye—­the essential plants of civilization—­is totally lost in the mists of a vast antiquity?  We have in the Greek mythology legends of the introduction of most of these by Atlantean kings or gods into Europe; but no European nation claims to have discovered or developed them, and it has been impossible to trace them to their wild originals.  Out of the whole flora of the world mankind in the last seven thousand years has not developed a single food-plant to compare in importance to the human family with these.  If a wise and scientific nation should propose nowadays to add to this list, it would have to form great botanical gardens, and, by systematic and long-continued experiments, develop useful plants from the humble productions of the field and forest.  Was this done in the past on the island of Atlantis?

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Atlantis : the antediluvian world from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.