It may be asked: 

“What relation, in order of time, do you suppose the Drift Age to hold to the Deluge of Noah and Deucalion? "

The latter was infinitely later.  The geologists, as I have shown, suppose the Drift to have come upon the earth—­basing their calculations upon the recession of the

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Falls of Niagara—­about thirty thousand years ago.  We have seen that this would nearly accord with the time given in Job, when he speaks of the position of certain constellations.  The Deluge of Noah probably occurred somewhere from eight to eleven thousand years ago.  Hence, about twenty thousand years probably intervened between the Drift and the Deluge.  These were the “myriads of years” referred to by Plato, during which mankind dwelt on the great plain of Atlantis.

And this order of events agrees with all the legends.

In the Bible a long interval elapsed between the fall of man, or his expulsion from paradise, and the Deluge of Noah; and during this period mankind rose to civilization; became workers in the metals, musicians, and the builders of cities.

In the Egyptian history, as preserved by Plato, the Deluge of Deucalion, which many things prove to have been identical with the Deluge of Noah, was the last of a series of great catastrophes.

In the Celtic legends the great Deluge of Ogyges preceded the last deluge.

In the American legends, mankind have been many times destroyed, and as often renewed.

But it may be asked: 

“Are you right in supposing that man first rose to civilization in a great Atlantic island?

We can conceive, as I have shown, mankind at some central point, like the Atlantic island, building up anew, after the Drift Age, the shattered fragments of pre-glacial civilization, and hence becoming to the post-glacial ancient world the center and apparent fountain of all cultivation.  But in view of the curious discoveries made, as I have shown, in the glacial clays of the United

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States, further investigations may prove that it was on the North American Continent civilization was first born, and that it was thence moved eastward over the bridge-like ridges to Atlantis.

And it is, in this connection, remarkable that the Bible tells us (Genesis, chap. ii, v. 8): 

“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man that he had formed.”

He had first (v. 7) “formed man of the dust of the ground,” and then he moves him eastward to Eden, to the garden.

And, as I have shown, when the fall of man came, when the Drift destroyed the lovely Tertiary conditions, man was again moved eastward; he was driven out of Eden, and the cherubims guarded the eastern extremity of the garden, to prevent man’s return from (we will say) the shores of Atlantis.  In other words, the present habitat of men is, as I have shown, according to the Bible, east of their former dwelling-place.