Sun-worship was the primitive religion of the red men of America.  It was found among all the tribes. (Dorman, “Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 338.) The Chichimecs called the sun their father.  The Comanches have a similar belief.

But, compared with such ancient nations as the Egyptians and Babylonians, the Greeks were children.  A priest of Sais said to Solon,

“You Greeks are novices in knowledge of antiquity.  You are ignorant of what passed either here or among yourselves in days of old.  The history of eight thousand years is deposited in our sacred books; but I can ascend to a much higher antiquity, and tell you what our fathers have done for nine thousand years; I mean their institutions, their laws, and their most brilliant achievements.”

The Greeks, too young to have shared in the religion of Atlantis, but preserving some memory of that great country and its history, proceeded to convert its kings into gods, and to depict Atlantis itself as the heaven of the human race.  Thus we find a great solar or nature worship in the elder nations, while Greece has nothing but an incongruous jumble of gods and goddesses, who are born and eat and drink and make love and ravish and steal and die; and who are worshipped as immortal in presence of the very monuments that testify to their death.

“These deities, to whom the affairs of the world were in trusted, were, it is believed, immortal, though not eternal in their existence.  In Crete there was even a story of the death of Zeus, his tomb being pointed out.” (Murray’s “Mythology,” p. 2.)

The history of Atlantis is the key of the Greek mythology.  There can be no question that these gods of Greece were human beings.  The tendency to attach divine attributes to great earthly rulers is one deeply implanted in human nature.  The savages who killed Captain Cook firmly believed that he was immortal, that he was yet alive, and would return to punish them.  The highly civilized Romans made gods out of their dead emperors.  Dr. Livingstone mentions that on one occasion, after talking to a Bushman for some time about the Deity, he found that the savage thought he was speaking of Sekomi, the principal chief of the district.

We find the barbarians of the coast of the Mediterranean regarding the civilized people of Atlantis with awe and wonder:  “Their physical strength was extraordinary, the earth shaking sometimes under their tread.  Whatever they did was done speedily.  They moved through space almost without the loss of a moment of time.”  This probably alluded to the rapid motion of their sailing-vessels.  “They were wise, and communicated their wisdom to men.”  That is to say, they civilized the people they came in contact with.  ’They had a strict sense of justice, and punished crime rigorously, and rewarded noble actions, though it is true they were less conspicuous for the latter.” (Murray’s “Mythology,” p. 4.) We should understand this to mean that where they colonized they established a government of law, as contradistinguished from the anarchy of barbarism.