“It appears most evident to me,” says Humboldt, “that the monuments, methods of computing time, systems of cosmogony, and many myths of America, offer striking analogies with the ideas of Eastern Asia—­analogies which indicate an ancient communication, and are not simply the result of that uniform condition in which all nations are found in the dawn of civilization.” ("Exam.  Crit.,” tom. ii., p. 68.)

“In the ruined cities of Cambodia, which lies farther to the east of Burmah, recent research has discovered teocallis like those in Mexico, and the remains of temples of the same type and pattern as those of Yucatan.  And when we reach the sea we encounter at Suku, in Java, a teocalli which is absolutely identical with that of Tehuantepec.  Mr. Ferguson said, ’as we advance eastward from the valley of the Euphrates, at every step we meet with forms of art becoming more and more like those of Central America.’” ("Builders of Babel,” p. 88.)

Prescott says: 

The coincidences are sufficiently strong to authorize a belief that the civilization of Anahuac was in some degree influenced by that of Eastern Asia; and, secondly, that the discrepancies are such as to carry back the communication to a very remote period.” ("Mexico,” vol. iii., p. 418.)

“All appearances,” continues Lenormant ("Ancient History of the East,” vol. i., p. 64), “would lead us to regard the Turanian race as the first branch of the family of Japheth which went forth into the world; and by that premature separation, by an isolated and antagonistic existence, took, or rather preserved, a completely distinct physiognomy. . . .  It is a type of the white race imperfectly developed.”

We may regard this yellow race as the first and oldest wave from Atlantis, and, therefore, reaching farthest away from the common source; then came the Hamitic race; then the Japhetic.

CHAPTER IX.

The antiquity of some of our great inventions.

It may seem like a flight of the imagination to suppose that the mariner’s compass was known to the inhabitants of Atlantis.  And yet, if my readers are satisfied that the Atlantean, were a highly civilized maritime people, carrying on commerce with regions as far apart as Peru and Syria, we must conclude that they possessed some means of tracing their course in the great seas they traversed; and accordingly, when we proceed to investigate this subject, we find that as 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 simply borrowed from the older nations.  This was the case with the mariner’s compass.  It was believed for many years that it was first invented by an Italian named Amalfi, A.D. 1302.  In that interesting work, Goodrich’s “Life of Columbus,” we find a curious history of the magnetic compass prior to that time, from which we collate the following points: