five dwell on the soil of Europe, and the other two are intrusive races in Asia from the direction of Europe.  The Aryans in Europe have dwelt there apparently since the close of the Stone Age, if not before it, while the movements of the Aryans in Asia are within the Historical Period, and they appear as intrusive stocks, forming a high caste amid a vast population of a different race.  The Vedas are supposed to date back to 2000 B.C., while there is every reason to believe that the Celt inhabited Western Europe 5000 B.C.  If the Aryan race had originated in the heart of Asia, why would not its ramifications have extended into Siberia, China, and Japan, and all over Asia?  And if the Aryans moved at a comparatively recent date into Europe from Bactria, where are the populations that then inhabited Europe—­the men of the ages of stone and bronze?  We should expect to find the western coasts of Europe filled with them, just as the eastern coasts of Asia and India are filled with Turanian populations.  On the contrary, we know that the Aryans descended upon India from the Punjab, which lies to the north-west of that region; and that their traditions represent that they came there from the west, to wit, from the direction of Europe and Atlantis.

CHAPTER XI.

Atlantis reconstructed.

The farther we go back in time toward the era of Atlantis, the more the evidences multiply that we are approaching the presence of a great, wise, civilized race.  For instance, we find the Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Israelites, from the earliest ages, refusing to eat the flesh of swine.  The Western nations departed from this rule, and in these modern days we are beginning to realize the dangers of this article of food, on account of the trichina contained in it; and when we turn to the Talmud, we are told that it was forbidden to the Jews, “because of a small insect which infests it.”

The Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, and others of the ancient races, practised circumcision.  It was probably resorted to in Atlantean days, and imposed as a religious duty, to arrest one of the most dreadful scourges of the human race-a scourge which continued to decimate the people of America, arrested their growth, and paralyzed their civilization.  Circumcision stamped out the disease in Atlantis; we read of one Atlantean king, the Greek god Ouranos, who, in a time of plague, compelled his whole army and the armies of his allies to undergo the rite.  The colonies that went out to Europe carried the practice but not the disease out of which it originated with them; and it was not until Columbus reopened communication with the infected people of the West India Islands that the scourge crossed the Atlantic and “turned Europe,” as one has expressed it, “into a charnal-house.”

Life-insurance statistics show, nowadays, that the average life and health of the Hebrew is much greater than that of other men; and he owes this to the retention of practices and beliefs imposed ten thousand years ago by the great, wise race of Atlantis.