Atlantis, the Antediluvian World

Part V. The Colonies of Atlantis

THE western shores of Atlantis were not far distant from the West India Islands; a people possessed of ships could readily pass from island to island until they reached the continent. Columbus found the natives making such voyages in open canoes. If, then, we will suppose that there was no original connection between the inhabitants of the main-land and of Atlantis, the commercial activity of the Atlanteans would soon reveal to them the shores of the Gulf. Commerce implies the plantation of colonies; the trading-post is always the nucleus of a settlement; we have seen this illustrated in modern times in the case of the English East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company. We can therefore readily believe that commercial intercourse between Atlantis and Yucatan, Honduras and Mexico, created colonies along the shores of the Gulf which gradually spread into the interior, and to the high table-lands of Mexico. And, accordingly, we find, as I have already shown, that all the traditions of Central America and Mexico point to some country in the East, and beyond the sea, as the source of their first civilized people; and this region, known among them as "Aztlan," lived in the memory of the people as a beautiful and happy land, where their ancestors had dwelt in peace for many generations.

Dr. Le Plongeon, who spent four years exploring Yucatan, says:

"One-third of this tongue (the Maya) is pure Greek. Who brought the dialect of Homer to America? Or who took to Greece that of the Mayas? Greek is the offspring of the Sanskrit. Is Maya? Or are they coeval? . . . The Maya is not devoid of words from the Assyrian."

That the population of Central America (and in this term I include Mexico) was at one time very dense, and had attained to a high degree of civilization, higher even than that of Europe in the time of Columbus, there can be no question; and it is also probable, as I have shown, that they originally belonged to the white race. Dêsirè Charnay, who is now exploring the ruins of Central America, says (North American Review, January, 1881, p. 48), "The Toltecs were fair, robust, and bearded. I have often seen Indians of pure blood with blue eyes." Quetzalcoatl was represented as large, "with a big head and a heavy beard." The same author speaks (page 44) of "the ocean of ruins all around, not inferior in size to those of Egypt" At Teotihuacan he measured one building two thousand feet wide on each side, and fifteen pyramids, each nearly as large in the base as Cheops. "The city is indeed of vast extent . . . the whole ground, over a space of five or six miles in diameter, is covered with heaps of ruins -- ruins which at first make no impression, so complete is their dilapidation." He asserts the great antiquity of these ruins, because be found the very highways of the ancient city to be composed of broken bricks and pottery, the débris left by earlier populations. "This continent," he says (page 43), "is the land of mysteries; we here enter an infinity whose limits we cannot estimate. . . . I shall soon have to quit work in this place. The long avenue on which it stands is lined with ruins of public buildings and palaces, forming continuous lines, as in the streets of modern cities. Still, all these edifices and halls were as nothing compared with the vast substructures which strengthened their foundations."