New Atlantis

“ The present age has entered upon a new era; it has added a series of wonderful inventions to the Atlantean list; it has subjugated steam and electricity to the uses of man. And its work has but commenced: it will continue until it lifts man to a plane as much higher than the present as the present is above the barbaric condition; and in the future it will be said that between the birth of civilization in Atlantis and the new civilization there stretches a period of many thousands of years, during which mankind did not invent, but simply perpetuated. ”

“ Paul's, Ascension, Tristan d'Acunba—are still above the ocean level; while the great body of Atlantis lies a few hundred fathoms beneath the sea. In these "connecting ridges" we see the pathway which once extended between the New World and the Old, and by means of which the plants and animals of one continent travelled to the other; and by the same avenues black men found their way, as we will show hereafter, from Africa to America, and red men from America to Africa. ”

“ The essays are best known, but the New Atlantis is the book that you will best like to read, for it is something of a story, and of it I will tell you a little in the next chapter.
Chapter LIII BACON—THE HAPPY ISLAND ATLANTIS was a fabled island of the Greeks which lay somewhere in the Western Sea. That island, it was pretended, sank beneath the waves and was lost, and Bacon makes believe that he finds another island something like it in the Pacific Ocean and calls it the New Atlantis. Here, as in More's Utopia, the people living under just and wise laws, are happy and good. ”

“ Others, embarrassed by the difficulty of transporting inhabitants of the tropics across the Arctic regions,{226} revived the old story of Plato’s Atlantis, that huge island, now submerged, which might have stretched from the shores of Africa to the eastern borders of the new continent; [352] while they saw vestiges of a similar convulsion of nature in the green islands{227} sprinkled over the Pacific, once the mountain summits of a vast continent, now buried beneath the waters. ”

“ The deep-sea soundings taken in the Atlantic under the auspices of the governments of the United States, England, and Germany resulted in discoveries which gave a new impetus to the Atlantis theory. It was shown that, starting from the Arctic plateau, a ridge runs down the middle of the Atlantic, broadening toward the Azores, and contracting again as it trends toward the northeast coast of South America. The depth over the ridge is less than 1,000 fathoms, while the valleys on either side average 3,000 ”

“ A member of the Challenger staff, in a lecture delivered in London, soon after the termination of the expedition, gave it as his opinion that the great submarine plateau is the remains of "the lost Atlantis."
CHAPTER VI. THE TESTIMONY OF THE FLORA AND FAUNA. Proofs are abundant that there must have been at one time uninterrupted land communication between Europe and America. In the words of a writer upon this subject,
"When the animals and plants of the Old and New World are compared, one cannot but be struck with their identity ”

“ Even Lyell confessed a temptation to accept the theory of an Atlantis island in the northern Atlantic, though he could not see in the Atlantic islands trace of a mid-Atlantic bridge. [419] About the middle of this century scholars in several departments of learning, accepting the evidences of resemblances between the product of the old and new world, were induced to turn gladly to such a connection as would have been offered by Atlantis ”

“ Donnelly, and shown to be reconcilable with this theory, and through it with each other. Numerous remarkable features of community in the civilizations of the Old World and the New—seeming evidences of former intercourse between the two continents, which seem to be constantly increasing—and many now hard problems in anthropology would no longer be difficult to account for, but would appear quite natural if we were allowed to suppose that men have radiated in all directions from a primary home in Atlantis. ”

“ If we look at the map, we see that the continent of America does "surround" the ocean in a great half-circle. Could Plato have guessed all this? If there had been no Atlantis, and no series of voyages from it that revealed the half-circle of the continent from Newfoundland to Cape St. Roche, how could Plato have guessed it? And how could he have known that the Mediterranean was only a harbor compared with the magnitude of the great ocean surrounding Atlantis? ”

“ It is the pioneer's last view out over the oceans that encircle the known world. Henceforward man's effort will be to restore to earth on this favored soil the glories of the buried continent, and to substitute for Atlantis lost, Atlantis Arisen. ”

“ As will be seen from the second map the catastrophe of 800,000 years ago caused very great changes in the land distribution of the globe. The great continent is now shorn of its northern regions, and its remaining portion has been still further rent. The now growing American continent is separated by a chasm from its parent continent of Atlantis, and this no longer comprises any of the lands now existing, but occupies the bulk of the Atlantic basin from about 50° north to a few degrees south of the equator. ”

“ They could not fly over from Europe, nor could they now cross Behring Strait, with the Arctic climate there existing. Imaginative persons have supposed a submerged Atlantic Continent, which bridged the chasm in a remote geological period. The myth of the Atlantis has been recently furbished up under the facts supplied by the deep-sea soundings of the English steamer Challenger, and the discovery of a plateau at the bottom of the ocean, between North America and Europe. But, if it ever existed, it probably did so at a time before the ancestors of our present moths came into being. ”

“ In fact, kindred races, with the same arts, and speaking the same tongue in an early age of the world, separated in Atlantis and went east and west—the one to repeat the civilization of the mother-country along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, which, like a great river, may be said to flow out from the Black Sea, with the Nile as one of its tributaries, and along the shores of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf; while the other emigration advanced up the Amazon, and created mighty nations upon its head-waters in the valleys of the Andes and on the shores of the Pacific. ”

“ It is not fabulous; and the land it refers to is not Europe, Asia, Africa, or Australia—but Atlantis. No other land is known to history or tradition that was overthrown in a great catastrophe by the agency of water ”

“ We find just such a civilization as was necessary, according to Plato, and under just such a climate, in Atlantis and nowhere else. We have found it reaching, by its contiguous islands, within one hundred and fifty miles of the coast of Europe on the one side, and almost touching the West India Islands on the other, while, by its connecting ridges, it bound together Brazil and Africa. ”

“ In other words, the Atlanteans were the first known navigators. Like all navigators, they must have planted colonies at a distance. The Bretons, in our opinion, sprung from one of them."
Neptune was Poseidon, according to Plato, founder of Atlantis.
I could multiply proofs of the close relationship between the people of the Bronze Age of Europe and the ancient inhabitants of Northern Africa, which should be read remembering that "connecting ridge" which, according to the deep-sea soundings, united Africa and Atlantis. ”

“ With a good harbor, it is now reduced to an unimportant pueblo named Acla." (Baldwin's "Ancient America," p. 179.)
Plato tells us that Atlantis and the Atlantic Ocean were named after Atlas, the eldest son of Poseidon, the founder of the kingdom.
3. Upon that part of the African continent nearest to the site of Atlantis we find a chain of mountains, known from the most ancient times as the Atlas Mountains. Whence this name Atlas, if it be not from the name of the great king of Atlantis? And if this be not its origin, how comes it that we find it in the most north-western corner of Africa? ”

“ We find the barbarians of the coast of the Mediterranean regarding the civilized people of Atlantis with awe and wonder: "Their physical strength was extraordinary, the earth shaking sometimes under their tread. ”

“ Midsummer was upon this Atlantis, upon the islands attendant that served as stepping-stones to the continents beyond. Under the soft sensuousness, the morn was taking richer glow, the streams brightening to gold, the gardens and vineyards glorifying in green; whilst hill and mountain grew alluring in shadow and color, the palaces lustrous in their tri-tinted stones, and the temples’ syenite a gleaming red that rivaled the flashing orichalcum studding domes and pinnacles. The great island was a gorgeous mosaic: and its setting, sapphire, that royal stone emblematic of calm and truth ”

“ If it be true that the first branch originating from Atlantis was the Turanian, which includes the Chinese and Japanese, then we have derived from Atlantis all the building and metal-working races of men who have proved themselves capable of civilization; and we may, therefore, divide mankind into two great classes: those capable of civilization, derived from Atlantis, and those essentially and at all times barbarian, who hold no blood relationship with the people of Atlantis. ”

“ When the barriers of Atlantis sunk sufficiently to permit the natural expansion of the heated water of the tropics to the north, the ice and snow which covered Europe gradually disappeared; the Gulf Stream flowed around Atlantis, and it still retains the circular motion first imparted to it by the presence of that island. ”

“ The advocates of a real Atlantis try to pile up proofs of a great land mass existing at some time in the Atlantic Ocean, a logical proceeding so far as it goes but one that falls short of its mark, for the land may have ascended and descended again ages before the reputed Atlantis period. It is of no avail to demonstrate its presence in the Miocene, Pliocene, or Pleistocene epoch, or, indeed, at any time prior to the development of a well organized civilization among men, or, as Plato apparently reasons, between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago. ”

“ Plato tells us that the destruction of Atlantis filled the sea with mud, and interfered with navigation. For thousands of years the ancients believed the Atlantic Ocean to be "a muddy, shallow, dark, and misty sea, Mare tenebrosum." ”

“ In connection with all this we must not forget that Plato described Atlantis as "that sacred island lying beneath the sun." Everywhere in the ancient world we find the minds of men looking to the west for the land of the dead. ”

“ The fact that domestic cattle and the great cereals, wheat, oats, barley, and rye, are found in Europe and not in America, would imply that after the population moved to Atlantis from America civilization was developed in Atlantis, and that in the later ages communication was closer and more constant between Atlantis and Europe than between Atlantis and America. ”

“ Without going into the question of the different rotations which this earth performs, or the varying degrees of eccentricity of its orbit, a combination of which is sometimes held to be the cause of the glacial epochs, it is a fact—and one already recognized by some astronomers—that a minor glacial epoch occurs about every 30,000 years. But in addition to these there were two occasions in the history of Atlantis when the ice-belt desolated not merely the northern regions, but, invading the bulk of the continent, forced all life to migrate to equatorial lands. ”

“ These facts would seem to show that the great fires which destroyed Atlantis are still smouldering in the depths of the ocean; that the vast oscillations which carried Plato's continent beneath the sea may again bring it, with all its buried treasures, to the light; and that even the wild imagination of Jules Verne, when he described Captain Nemo, in his diving-armor, looking down upon the temples and towers of the lost island, lit by the fires of submarine volcanoes, had some ground-work of possibility to build upon. ”

“ Greek tradition located the island in which Olympus was situated "in the far west," "in the ocean beyond Africa," "on the western boundary of the known world," "where the sun shone when it had ceased to shine on Greece," and where the mighty Atlas "held up the heavens." And Plato tells us that the land where Poseidon and Atlas ruled was Atlantis.
"The Garden of the Hesperides" (another name for the dwelling-place of the gods) "was situated at the extreme limit of Africa. Atlas was said to have surrounded it on every side with high mountains." ”

“ And, instead of a rainfall of forty days and forty nights, as represented in the Bible, here we see "in a single day ... even the mountains sunk into the water;" not only the land on which the people dwelt who were turned into fish, but the very mountains of that land sunk into the water. Does not this describe the fate of Atlantis? In the Chaldean legend "the great goddess Ishtar wailed like a child," saying, "I am the mother who gave birth to men, and, like to the race of fishes, they are filling the sea." ”

“ To such a people, the memories of Punic exploration or Phœnician enterprise, or the vague legends of an Atlantis beyond the engirdling ocean, were equally unavailing. The narrow sea between Gaul and Britain was barrier enough to daunt the boldest of them from willingly encountering the dangers of an expedition to what seemed to them literally another world. ”