Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly (good books to read txt) 📖

how could Hannibal be in danger of starvation when he had two thousand oxen to spare for such an experiment? And why should the veteran Roman troops have been so terrified and panic-stricken by a lot of cattle with firebrands on their horns? At the battle of Lake Trasymene, between Hannibal and Flaminius, we have another curious piece of information which goes far to confirm the belief that Hannibal was familiar with the use of gunpowder. In the midst of the battle there was, say the Roman historians, an “earthquake;” the earth reeled under the feet of the soldiers, a tremendous crash was heard, a fog or smoke covered the scene, the earth broke open, and the rocks fell upon the beads of the Romans. This reads very much as if the Carthaginians had decoyed the Romans into a pass where they had already planted a mine, and had exploded it at the proper moment to throw them into a panic.

Earthquakes do not cast rocks up in the air to fall on men’s heads!

And that this is not all surmise is shown by the fact that a city of India, in the time of Alexander the Great, defended itself by the use of gunpowder: it was said to be a favorite of the gods, because thunder and lightning came from its walls to resist the attacks of its assailants.

As the Hebrews were a branch of the Phœnician race, it is not surprising that we find some things in their history which look very much like legends of gunpowder.

When Korah, Dathan, and Abiram led a rebellion against Moses, Moses separated the faithful from the unfaithful, and thereupon “the ground clave asunder that was under them: and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. . . . And there came out a fire from the Lord, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense. . . . But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the Lord.” (Numb. xvi., 31-41.) This looks very much as if Moses had blown up the rebels with gunpowder.

Roger Bacon, who himself rediscovered gunpowder, was of opinion that the event described in Judges vii., where Gideon captured the camp of the Midianites with the roar of trumpets, the crash caused by the breaking of innumerable pitchers, and the flash of a multitude of lanterns, had reference to the use of gunpowder; that the noise made by the breaking of the pitchers represented the detonation of an explosion, the flame of the lights the blaze, and the noise of the trumpets the thunder of the gunpowder. We can understand, in this wise, the results that followed; but we cannot otherwise understand how the breaking of pitchers, the flashing of lamps, and the clangor of trumpets would throw an army into panic, until “every man’s sword was set against his fellow, and the host fled to Beth-shittah;” and this, too, without any attack upon the part of the Israelites, for “they stood every man in his place around the camp; and all the host ran and cried and fled.”

If it was a miraculous interposition in behalf of the Jews, the Lord could have scared the Midianites out of their wits without the smashed pitchers and lanterns; and certain it is the pitchers, and lanterns would not have done the work with out a miraculous interposition.

Having traced the knowledge of gunpowder back to the most remote times, and to the different races which were descended from Atlantis, we are not surprised to find in the legends of Greek mythology events described which are only explicable by supposing that the Atlanteans possessed the secret of this powerful explosive.

A rebellion sprang tip in Atlantis (see Murray’s “Manual of Mythology,”

.30) against Zeus; it is known in mythology as the “War of the Titans:”

“The struggle lasted many years, all the might which the Olympians could bring to bear being useless, until, on the advice of Gæa, Zeus set free the Kyklopes and the Hekatoncheires” (that is, brought the ships into play), “of whom the former fashioned thunder-bolts for him, while the latter advanced on his side with force equal to the shock of an earthquake. The earth trembled down to lowest Tartarus as Zeus now appeared with his terrible weapon and new allies. Old Chaos thought his hour had come, as from a continuous blaze of thunder-bolts the earth took fire, and the waters seethed in the sea. The rebels were partly slain or consumed, and partly hurled into deep chasms, with rocks and hills reeling after them.”

Do not these words picture the explosion of a mine with a “force equal to the shock of an earthquake?”

We have already shown that the Kyklopes and Hekatoncheires were probably great war-ships, armed with some explosive material in the nature of gunpowder.

Zeus, the king of Atlantis, was known as “the thunderer,” and was represented armed with thunder-bolts.

Some ancient nation must, in the most remote ages, have invented gunpowder; and is it unreasonable to attribute it to that “great original race” rather than to any one people of their posterity, who seem to have borrowed all the other arts from them; and who, during many thousands of years, did not add a single new invention to the list they received from Atlantis?

Iron.—have seen that the Greek mythological legends asserted that before the submergence of the great race over whom their gods reigned there had been not only an Age of Bronze but an Age of Iron. This metal was known to the Egyptians in the earliest ages; fragments of iron have been found in the oldest pyramids. The Iron Age in Northern Europe far antedated intercourse with the Greeks or Romans. In the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, as I have shown, the remains of iron implements have been found. In the “Mercurio Peruano” (tom. i., p. 201, 1791) it is stated that “anciently the Peruvian sovereigns worked magnificent iron mines at Ancoriames, on the west shore of Lake Titicaca.” “It is remarkable,” says Molina, “that iron, which has been thought unknown to the ancient Americans, had particular names in some of their tongues.”

In official Peruvian it was called quillay, and in Chilian panilic. The Mound Builders fashioned implements out of meteoric iron. (Foster’s “Prehistoric Races,” p. 333.)

As we find this metal known to man in the earliest ages on both sides of the Atlantic, the presumption is very strong that it was borrowed by the nations, east and west, from Atlantis.

Paper.—The same argument holds good as to paper. The oldest Egyptian monuments contain pictures of the papyrus roll; while in Mexico, as I have shown, a beautiful paper was manufactured and formed into books shaped like our own. In Peru a paper was made of plantain leaves, and books were common in the earlier ages. Humboldt mentions books of hieroglyphical writings among the Panoes, which were “bundles of their paper resembling our volumes in quarto.”

Silk Manufacture.—The manufacture of a woven fabric of great beauty out of the delicate fibre of the egg-cocoon of a worm could only have originated among a people who had attained the highest degree of civilization; it implies the art of weaving by delicate instruments, a dense population, a patient, skilful, artistic people, a sense of the beautiful, and a wealthy and luxurious class to purchase such costly fabrics.

We trace it back to the most remote ages. In the introduction to the “History of Hindostan,” or rather of the Mohammedan Dynasties, by Mohammed Cassim, it is stated that in the year 3870 B.C. an Indian king sent various silk stuffs as a present to the King of Persia. The art of making silk was known in China more than two thousand six hundred years before the Christian era, at the time when we find them first possessed of civilization. The Phœnicians dealt in silks in the most remote past; they imported them from India and sold them along the shores of the Mediterranean. It is probable that the Egyptians understood and practised the art of manufacturing silk. It was woven in the island of Cos in the time of Aristotle. The “Babylonish garment” referred to in Joshua (chap. vii., 21), and for secreting which Achan lost his life, was probably a garment of silk; it was rated above silver and gold in value.

It is not a violent presumption to suppose that an art known to the Hindoos 3870 B.C., and to the Chinese and Phœnicians at the very beginning of their history—an art so curious, so extraordinary—may have dated back to Atlantean times.

Civil Government.—Mr. Baldwin shows (“Prehistoric Nations,” p. 114) that the Cushites, the successors of the Atlanteans, whose very ancient empire extended from Spain to Syria, were the first to establish independent municipal republics, with the right of the people to govern themselves; and that this system was perpetuated in the great Phœnician communities; in “the fierce democracies” of ancient Greece; in the “village republics” of the African Berbers and the Hindoos; in the “free cities” of the Middle Ages in Europe; and in the independent governments of the Basques, which continued down to our own day. The Cushite state was an aggregation of municipalities, each possessing the right of self-government, but subject within prescribed limits to a general authority; in other words, it was precisely the form of government possessed to-day by the United States. It is a surprising thought that the perfection of modern government may be another perpetuation of Atlantean civilization.

Agriculture.—The Greek traditions of “the golden apples of the Hesperides” and “the golden fleece” point to Atlantis. The allusions to the golden apples indicate that tradition regarded the “Islands of the Blessed” in the Atlantic Ocean as a place of orchards. And when we turn to Egypt we find that in the remotest times many of our modern garden and field plants were there cultivated. When the Israelites murmured in the wilderness against Moses, they cried out (Numb., chap. xi., 4, 5), “Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the Melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic.” The Egyptians also cultivated wheat, barley, oats, flax, hemp, etc. In fact, if we were to take away from civilized man the domestic animals, the cereals, and the field and garden vegetables possessed by the Egyptians at the very dawn of history, there would be very little left for the granaries or the tables of the world.

Astronomy.—The knowledge of the ancients as to astronomy was great and accurate. Callisthenes, who accompanied Alexander the Great to Babylon, sent to Aristotle a series of Chaldean astronomical observations which he found preserved there, recorded on tablets of baked clay, and extending back as far as 2234 B.C. Humboldt says, “The Chaldeans knew the mean motions of the moon with an exactness which induced the Greek astronomers to use their calculations for the foundation of a lunar theory.” The Chaldeans knew the true nature of comets, and could foretell their reappearance. “A lens of considerable power was found in the ruins of Babylon; it was an inch and a half in diameter and nine-tenths of an inch thick.” (Layard’s “Nineveh and Babylon,” pp.

16,17.) Nero used optical glasses when be watched the fights of the gladiators; they are supposed to have come from Egypt and the East.

Plutarch speaks of optical instruments used by Archimedes “to manifest to the eye the largeness of the sun.” “There are actual astronomical calculations in existence, with calendars formed upon them, which eminent astronomers of England and France admit to be genuine and true, and