Music.—­It has been pointed out that there is great resemblance between the five-toned music of the Highland Scotch and that of the Chinese and other Eastern nations. ("Anthropology,” p. 292.)

Weapons.—­The weapons of the New World were identically the same as those of the Old World; they consisted of bows and arrows, spears, darts, short swords, battle-axes, and slings; and both peoples used shields or bucklers, and casques of wood or hide covered with metal.  If these weapons had been derived from separate sources of invention, one country or the other would have possessed implements not known to the other, like the blow-pipe, the boomerang, etc.  Absolute identity in so many weapons strongly argues identity of origin.

Religion.—­The religion of the Atlanteans, as Plato tells us, was pure and simple; they made no regular sacrifices but fruits and flowers; they worshipped the sun.

In Peru a single deity was worshipped, and the sun, his most glorious work, was honored as his representative.  Quetzalcoatl, the founder of the Aztecs, condemned all sacrifice but that of fruits and flowers.  The first religion of Egypt was pure and simple; its sacrifices were fruits and flowers; temples were erected to the sun, Ra, throughout Egypt.  In Peru the great festival of the sun was called Ra-mi.  The Phoenicians worshipped Baal and Moloch; the one represented the beneficent, and the other the injurious powers of the sun.

Religious Beliefs.—­The Guanches of the Canary Islands, who were probably a fragment of the old Atlantean population, believed in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, and preserved their dead as mummies.  The Egyptians believed in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, and preserved the bodies of the dead by embalming them.  The Peruvians believed in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, and they too preserved the bodies of their dead by embalming them.  “A few mummies in remarkable preservation have been found among the Chinooks and Flatheads.”  (Schoolcraft, vol. v., p. 693.) The embalmment of the body was also practised in Central America and among the Aztecs.  The Aztecs, like the Egyptians, mummified their dead by taking out the bowels and replacing them with aromatic substances. (Dorman, “Origin Prim.  Superst.,” p. 173.) The bodies of the kings of the Virginia Indians were preserved by embalming. (Beverly, p. 47.)

Here are different races, separated by immense distances of land and ocean, uniting in the same beliefs, and in the same practical and logical application of those beliefs.

The use of confession and penance was known in the religious ceremonies of some of the American nations.  Baptism was a religious ceremony with them, and the bodies of the dead were sprinkled with water.

Vestal virgins were found in organized communities on both sides of the Atlantic; they were in each case pledged to celibacy, and devoted to death if they violated their vows.  In both hemispheres the recreant were destroyed by being buried alive.  The Peruvians, Mexicans, Central Americans, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Hebrews each had a powerful hereditary priesthood.