Martin I. Townsend

“ It may be asked what we are to say in regard to the storied Atlantis, and especially, what shall we say to the fancies of Ignatius Donnelly, who has written such a beautiful romance in regard to that island supposed by him to have existed, and have [31] been the actual birthplace of man. Our reply is that Central America was the only true Atlantis; and that Atlantis sunk in the ocean only when its discoverers became weakened in the face of the barbarous people who surrounded them and lost their supremacy in the commercial world among the nations. ”

“ These western settlers must have been entirely ignorant of Egyptian hieroglyphics, for the figures upon their walls show the invention of a system of hieroglyphics more complicated than anywhere else discovered, and which no Champollion has yet been able to translate. The human mind was not dormant here but its discoveries are utterly lost to mankind. It will be asked what has become of this Central American population who wrought the works in question? ”

“ Thus we have seen that the prehistoric people who built the structures in Central America and Mexico, which have in these later days filled the civilized world with wonder and admiration, were constructed by a people whose knowledge of science and the arts had reached the same point of advancement as had been reached upon the banks of the Nile, and in the cities of Phœnicia, for at least a thousand years before the Christian era. ”

“ But very early in the history of the world, and as students of history believe, earlier than the call of Abraham, the interests of mankind had called into existence along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea an active and intelligent population which had engaged in commerce as a means of subsistence, and were carrying it on with such success as was possible in the then condition of the world of mankind. ”

“ But the Incas were very few in number, and came to Peru with mechanical knowledge and the knowledge of pottery far in advance of that possessed by the settlers in Central America, and their works initiated for the purpose of improving water courses and constructing roads were far more beneficial to mankind than the temples erected to Baal in Central America, although the Incas, though more intelligent than the settlers in Central America, were not yet emancipated from belief in that heathen god. ”

“ The wealth and luxury of Tyre was eternally injurious to the Jewish people from the time of their return from Egypt to Canaan to the carrying away of Israel to Babylon in the later days. The Jewish husbandman, dazzled by the luxuries of Tyre and Sidon, was affected as those in more moderate circumstances are in later days, by the manners and customs of their rich neighbors, and were building groves in high places under which to worship, as did the priests of Baal in Palestine, and under the oaks in the northwest of Europe, where they acquired the name of Druids. ”

“ Up to that period every people, as a rule, carefully guarded all knowledge of their own wealth, and of their own acts and possessions from the rest of mankind, instead of making public expositions to attract the attention of the outside world to their useful achievements, and they sometimes passed laws for inflicting the severest punishments upon citizens who should reveal to the outside world the locations, nature, or extent, or value of their possessions. ”

“ Would it be the strangest thing that ever happened if these “yalgam,” “almug,” or “algum” trees, so beautiful as to be unequalled by anything known in Palestine, and for that reason set up as ornaments in God’s house, should turn out in the day when all things become known to be rosewood and mahogany from the west coast of Central America, taken on board by Solomon’s servants on their return from Parvaim or Peru and the old mines of Potosi, where they had gone for the gold which filled the coffers of Solomon. It may be said that such would be a long voyage ”

“ No people existed then upon this continent capable of doing the work which so astonished the world.
Thinking men and dreaming men have, from the earliest of these discoveries, been busying themselves to find out when, and by what people, these early monuments to human efforts were constructed. ”

“ Her sailors passed beyond the Pillars of Hercules and passed up the northwest coast of France and established their religion, the worship of Baal, or the sun, among the simple people of Bretagne so firmly and universally that at this day at Carnac, in the Morbihan, there stand more Phœnician funereal monuments of unknown antiquity than can be found together in any form of religion in any other portion of the world’s surface. They discovered tin in the Scilly Islands, off the coast of Cornwall, and wrought those mines for centuries. ”

“ In this cemetery at Tiahuanuco, one will find a hundred structures so like the round towers upon the south coast of Ireland as strongly to awaken one’s attention. So that, Manco Capac and his descendants were not only sun worshipers but very strongly imbued with the ideas which originated in the eastern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean sea. ”

“ Greece, afterwards so celebrated for science, art and philosophy, was at the day of which Homer sung, a mere association of savage groups, engaged in wars instead of seeking commercial profits in distributing the products of civilized life among the nations of mankind. ”

“ The globe itself has become loosened, and has dropped from its place upon the front of the temple but still rests upon the ground before it, while the wing to which it was attached remains in place upon the temple as perfect as when it was first wrought. ”

“ They visited the Azore Islands, west of Gibraltar, out in the Atlantic ocean, and as we learn by Chateaubriand’s Outretombe, Phœnician coin in the last century was found scattered in the soil of these Islands. A man who carries his eyes about him will rarely enter a large Irish assembly, or an assembly of Canadian Frenchmen whose blood comes principally from Bretagne, without noticing here and there a swarthy complexion surrounding intensely bright flashing eyes which speak of Spain and Carthage and the blood of warmer climes. ”

“ Modern scholars, looking at the matter casually, have allowed themselves to conclude that, because these discoveries were made at a very early period in the history of the world, by a people who were unable to build their ships according to the rules of modern science, and were compeled to navigate stormy oceans without the aid of steam, and probably without the aid of the mariner’s compass, could never have navigated wide seas and stormy oceans. ”

“ The people who did this work are absolutely extinct. Many have supposed that in the population of Central America there is still a remainder of the blood of the people who once dwelt there, thus rendering the local inhabitants in some degree superior to the aboriginal Indians of that country. Not so in Peru. It is only from the structures which we find and the conditions which attend them that, any evidence is found that there ever was in Peru, any people superior to the dull Indians of the mountains. ”

“ But if for a moment superstition lost its terrors, this little flock of more intelligent incomers were powerless to resist the avenging hands of the million aboriginal barbarians. But we are not engaged in discussing the mode in which this people became extinct, but choose to confine ourselves to the questions, who were they, and where did they come from? ”

“ The traditions of the country speak of one Manco Capac appearing in the country at some indefinite period, and that he and his family descendants were rulers for a long course of time, ruling and controling the business and social life of the population of Peru. ”

“ In our view, the people who erected those structures possessed a knowledge and civilization far in advance of the population that surrounded them, and that the surrounding populations to a great degree imitated their examples and adopted their religion. ”

“ There are all over this land of Peru remains not of palaces and temples, but of roads and water- [24] courses showing a mechanical skill such as perhaps cannot be found in any part of the earth elsewhere as existing as early as these must have been constructed. ”

“ From the authorities we have quoted we think there can be no doubt but that here and there a learned man among the Greek scholars had come to believe that some eastern navigator had discovered a western world exceedingly productive and beautiful, and that a population of eastern origin had sprung up and existed in the lands so discovered. ”

“ Centrally over the gateway upon this monolith is a well carved figure of the sun, and upon the right hand and the left hand and below, are sculptured some fifty figures of beings with human bodies, and the wings of angels as imagined and represented in western Asia and in Europe. Half of the angels have human bodies, angel wings and the heads of hawks. ”

“ Upon the plain about these structures are a number of smaller pyramids not necessary to be described.—The sides of all the pyramids here constructed correspond with the cardinal points of the compas. The pyramids that we have referred to are all patterned after those constructed upon the banks of the Nile, and are all found about the west border of Yucatan, about the north border of Guatamala and south of the centre of the great Republic of Mexico. ”