Antediluvian world

by Ignatius Donnelly

  “When we first look at Quichua, with its multitude of words, beginning with hu, and its great preponderance of q’s, it seems almost as odd as Mexican. But many of these forms are due to a scanty alphabet, and really express familiar sounds; and many, again, result from the casual spelling of the Spaniards. We must now examine some of the-forms which Aryan roots are supposed to take in Quichua. In the first place, Quichua abhors the shock of two consonants. Thus, a word like ple’w in Greek would be unpleasant to the Peruvian’s ear, and he says pillui, ‘I sail.’

  The plu, again, in pluma, a feather, is said to be found in pillu, ‘to fly.’ Quichua has no v, any more than Greek has, and just as the Greeks had to spell Roman words beginning with V with Ou, like Valerius—Ou?ale’rios—so, where Sanscrit has v, Quichua has sometimes hu. Here is a list of words in hu:

  ----------------------------+ |

  QUICHUA

  . |

  SANSCRIT

  . |

  ----------------------------+ | Huakia, to call. | Vacc, to speak. |

  ----------------------------+ | Huasi, a house. | Vas, to inhabit. |

  ----------------------------+ | Huayra, air, au?’ra. | Va, to breathe. |

  ----------------------------+ | Huasa, the back. | Vas, to be able (pouvoir). |

  ----------------------------+

  “There is a Sanscrit root, kr, to act, to do: this root is found In more than three hundred names of peoples and places in Southern America. Thus there are the Caribs, whose name may have the same origin as that of our old friends the Carians, and mean the Braves, and their land the home of the Braves, like Kaleva-la, in Finnish. The same root gives kara, the hand, the Greek xei’r, and kkalli, brave, which a person of fancy may connect with kalo’s. Again, Quichua has an ‘alpha privative’—thus A-stani means ‘I change a thing’s place;’ for ni or mi is the first person singular, and, added to the root of a verb, is the sign of the first person of the present indicative. For instance, can means being, and Can-mi, or Cani, is, ‘I am.’ In the same way Munanmi, or Munani, is ‘I love,’ and Apanmi, or Apani, ‘I carry.’ So Lord Strangford was wrong when he supposed that the last verb in mi lived with the last patriot in Lithuania. Peru has stores of a grammatical form which has happily perished in Europe. It is impossible to do more than refer to the supposed Aryan roots contained in the glossary, but it may be noticed that the future of the Quichuan verb is formed in s-I love, Munani; I shall love, Munasa—and that the affixes denoting cases in the noun are curiously like the Greek prepositions.”

  The resemblance between the Quichua and Mandan words for I or me—mi—will here be observed.

  Very recently Dr. Rudolf Falb has announced (Neue Freie Presse, of Vienna) that he has discovered that the relation of the Quichua and Aimara languages to the Aryan and Semitic tongues is very close; that, in fact, they “exhibit the most astounding affinities with the Semitic tongue, and particularly the Arabic”, in which tongue Dr. Falb has been skilled from his boyhood. Following, up the lines of this discovery, Dr.

  Falb has found (1) a connecting link with the Aryan roots, and (2) has ultimately arrived face to face with the surprising revelation that “the Semitic roots are universally Aryan.” The common stems of all the variants are found in their purest condition in Quichua and Aimara, from which fact Dr. Falb derives the conclusion that the high plains of Peru and Bolivia must be regarded as the point of exit of the present human race.

  [Since the above was written I have received a letter from Dr. Falb, dated Leipsic, April 5th, 1881. Scholars will be glad to learn that Dr.

  Falb’s great work on the relationship of the Aryan and Semitic languages to the Quichua and Aimara tongues will be published in a year or two; the manuscript contains over two thousand pages, and Dr. Falb has devoted to it ten years of study. A work from such a source, upon so curious and important a subject, will be looked for with great interest.]

  But it is impossible that the Quichuas and Aimaras could have passed across the wide Atlantic to Europe if there had been no stepping-stone in the shape of Atlantis with its bridge-like ridges connecting the two continents.

  It is, however, more reasonable to suppose that the Quichuas and Aimaras were a race of emigrants from Plato’s island than to think that Atlantis was populated from South America. The very traditions to which we have referred as existing among the Peruvians, that the civilized race were white and bearded, and that they entered or invaded the country, would show that civilization did not originate in Peru, but was a transplantation from abroad, and only in the direction of Atlantis can we look for a white and bearded race.

  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.

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE AFRICAN COLONIES.

  Africa, like Europe and America, evidences a commingling of different stocks: the blacks are not all black, nor all woolly-haired; the Africans pass through all shades, from that of a light Berber, no darker than the Spaniard, to the deep black of the Iolofs, between Senegal and Gambia.

  The traces of red men or copper-colored races are found in many parts of the continent. Prichard divides the true negroes into four classes; his second class is thus described:

  “2. Other tribes have forms and features like the European; their complexion is black, or a deep olive, or a copper color approaching to black, while their hair, though often crisp and frizzled, is not in the least woolly. Such are the Bishari and Danekil and Hazorta, and the darkest of the Abyssinians.

  “The complexion and hair of the Abyssinians vary very much, their complexion ranging from almost white to dark brown or black, and their hair from straight to crisp, frizzled, and almost woolly.” (Nott and Gliddon, “Types of Mankind,” p. 194.)

  “Some of the Nubians are copper-colored or black, with a tinge of red.”

  (Ibid., p. 198.)

  Speaking of the Barbary States, these authors further say (Ibid., p.

  204):

  “On the northern coast of Africa, between the Mediterranean and the Great Desert, including Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Benzazi, there is a continuous system of highlands, which have been included under the general term Atlas—anciently Atlantis, now the Barbary States. . . . Throughout Barbary we encounter a peculiar group of races, subdivided into many tribes of various shades, now spread over a vast area, but which formerly had its principal and perhaps aboriginal abode along the mountain slopes of Atlas. . . . The real name of the Berbers is Mazirgh, with the article prefixed or suffixed—T-amazirgh or Amazirgh-T—meaning free, dominant, or ‘noble race.’ . . . We have every reason to believe the Berbers existed in the remotest times, with all their essential moral and physical peculiarities. . . . They existed in the time of Menes in the same condition in which they were discovered by Phoenician navigators previously to the foundation of Carthage. They are an indomitable, nomadic people, who, since the introduction of camels, have penetrated in considerable numbers into the Desert, and even as far as Nigritia. . . . Some of these clans are white, others black, with woolly hair.”

  Speaking of the Barbary Moors, Prichard says: “Their figure and stature are nearly the same as those of the southern Europeans, and their complexion, if darker, is only so in proportion to the higher temperature of the country. It displays great varieties.”

  Jackson says:

  “The men of Temsena and Showiah are of a strong, robust make, and of a copper color; the women are beautiful. The women of Fez are fair as the Europeans, but hair and eyes always dark. The women of Mequinas
are very beautiful, and have the red-and-white complexion of English women.”

  Spix and Martins, the German travellers, depict the Moors as follows: “A high forehead, an oval countenance, large, speaking, black eyes, shaded by arched and strong eyebrows, a thin, rather long, but not too pointed nose, rather broad lips, meeting in an acute angle, brownish-yellow complexion, thick, smooth, and black hair, and a stature greater than the middle height.”

  Hodgson states:

  “The Tuarycks are a white people, of the Berber race; the Mozabiaks are a remarkably white people, and mixed with the Bedouin Arabs. The Wadreagans and Wurgelans are of a dark bronze, with woolly hair.”

  The Foolahs, Fulbe (sing. Pullo), Fellani, or Fellatah, are a people of West and Central Africa. It is the opinion of modern travellers that the Foolahs are destined to become the dominant people of Negro-land. In language, appearance, and history they present striking differences from the neighboring tribes, to whom they are superior in intelligence, but inferior, according to Garth, in physical development. Golbery describes them as “robust and courageous, of a reddish-black color, with regular features, hair longer and less woolly than that of the common negroes, and high mental capacity.” Dr. Barth found great local differences in their physical characteristics, as Bowen describes the Foolahs of Bomba as being some black, some almost white, and many of a mulatto color, varying from dark to very bright. Their features and skulls were cast in the European mould. They have a tradition that their ancestors were whites, and certain tribes call themselves white men. They came from Timbuctoo, which lies to the north of their present location.

  The Nubians and Foolahs are classed as Mediterraneans. They are not black, but yellowish-brown, or red-brown. The hair is not woolly but curly, and sometimes quite straight; it is either dark-brown or black, with a fuller growth of beard than the negroes. The oval face gives them a Mediterranean type. Their noses are prominent, their lips not puffy, and their languages have no connection with the tongues of the negroes proper. (“American Cyclopaedia,” art. Ethnology, p. 759.) “The Cromlechs (dolmens) of Algeria” was the subject of an address made by General Faidherbe at the Brussels International Congress. He considers these structures to be simply sepulchral monuments, and, after examining five or six thousand of them, maintains that the dolmens of Africa and of Europe were all constructed by the same race, during their emigration from the shores of the Baltic to the southern coast of the Mediterranean. The author does not, however, attempt to explain the existence of these monuments in other countries—Hindostan, for instance, and America. “In Africa,” he says, “cromlechs are called tombs of the idolaters”—the idolaters being neither Romans, nor Christians, nor Phoenicians, but some antique race. He regards the Berbers as the descendants of the primitive dolmen-builders. Certain Egyptian monuments tell of invasions of Lower Egypt one thousand five hundred years before our era by blond tribes from the West. The bones found in the cromlechs are those of a large and dolichocephalous race. General Faidherbe gives the average stature (including the women) at 1.65 or 1.74 metre, while the average stature of French carabineers is only 1.65 metre. He did not find a single brachycephalous skull. The profiles indicated great intelligence. The Egyptian documents already referred to call the invaders Tamahu, which must have come from the invaders’ own language, as it is not Egyptian. The Tuaregs of the present day may be regarded as the best representatives of the Tamahus. They are of lofty stature, have blue eyes, and cling to the custom of bearing long swords, to be wielded by both hands. In Soudan, on the banks of the Niger, dwells a negro tribe ruled by a royal family (Masas), who are of rather fair complexion, and claim descent from white men. Masas is perhaps the same as Mashash, which occurs in the Egyptian documents applied to the Tamahus. The Masas wear the hair in the same fashion as the Tamahus, and General Faidherbe is inclined to think that they too are the descendants of the dolmen-builders.

  These people, according to my theory, were colonists from Atlantis—colonists of three different races—white, yellow, and sunburnt or red.

  CHAPTER VII.

  THE IRISH COLONIES FROM ATLANTIS.

  We have seen that beyond question Spain and France owed a great part of their population to Atlantis. Let us turn now to Ireland.

  We would naturally expect, in view of the geographical position of the country, to find Ireland colonized at an early day by the overflowing population of Atlantis. And, in fact, the Irish annals tell us that their island was settled prior to the Flood. In their oldest legends an account is given of three Spanish fishermen who were driven by contrary winds on the coast of Ireland before the Deluge. After these came the Formorians, who were led into the country prior to the Deluge by the Lady Banbha, or Kesair; her maiden name was h’Erni, or Berba; she was accompanied by fifty maidens and three men—Bith, Ladhra, and Fintain.

  Ladhra was their conductor, who was the first buried in Hibernia. That ancient book, the “Cin of Drom-Snechta,” is quoted in the “Book of Ballymote” as authority for this legend.

  The Irish annals speak of the Formorians as a warlike race, who, according to the “Annals of Clonmacnois,” “were a sept descended from Cham, the son of Noeh, and lived by pyracie and spoile of other nations, and were in those days very troublesome to the whole world.”

  Were not these the inhabitants of Atlantis, who, according to Plato, carried their arms to Egypt and Athens, and whose subsequent destruction has been attributed to divine vengeance invoked by their arrogance and oppressions?

  The Formorians were from Atlantis. They were called Fomhoraicc, F’omoraig Afraic, and Formoragh, which has been rendered into English as Formorians. They possessed ships, and the uniform representation is that they came, as the name F’omoraig Afraic indicated, from Africa. But in that day Africa did not mean the continent of Africa, as we now understand it. Major Wilford, in the eighth volume of the “Asiatic Researches,” has pointed out that Africa comes from Apar, Aphar, Apara, or Aparica, terms used to signify “the West,” just as we now speak of the Asiatic world as “the East.” When, therefore, the Formorians claimed to come from Africa, they simply meant that they came from the West—in other words, from Atlantis—for there was no other country except America west of them.

  They possessed Ireland from so early a period that by some of the historians they are spoken of as the aborigines of the country.

  The first invasion of Ireland, subsequent to the coming of the Formorians, was led by a chief called Partholan: his people are known in the Irish annals as “Partholan’s people.” They were also probably Atlanteans. They were from Spain. A British prince, Gulguntius, or Gurmund, encountered off the Hebrides a fleet of thirty ships, filled with men and women, led by one Partholyan, who told him they were from Spain, and seeking some place to colonize. The British prince directed him to Ireland. (“De Antiq. et Orig. Cantab.”) Spain in that day was the land of the Iberians, the Basques; that is to say, the Atlanteans.

  The Formorians defeated Partholan’s people, killed Partholan, and drove the invaders out of the country.

  The Formorians were a civilized race; they had “a fleet of sixty ships and a strong army.”

  The next invader of their dominions was Neimhidh; he captured one of their fortifications, but it was retaken by the Formorians under “Morc.”

  Neimhidh was driven out of the country, and the Atlanteans continued in undisturbed possession of the island for four hundred years more. Then came the Fir-Bolgs. They conquered the whole island, and divided it into five provinces. They held possession of the country for only thirty-seven years, when they were overthrown by the Tuatha-de-Dananns, a people more advanced in civilization; so much so that when their king, Nuadha, lost his hand in battle, “Creidne, the artificer,” we are told, “put a silver hand upon him, the fingers of which were capable of motion.” This great race ruled the country for one hundred and ninety-seven years: they were overthrown by an immigration from Spain, probably of Basques, or Iberians, or Atlanteans, “the
sons of Milidh,”

  or Milesius, who “possessed a large fleet and a strong army.” This last invasion took place about the year 1700 B.C.; so that the invasion of Neimhidh must have occurred about the year 2334 B.C.; while we will have to assign a still earlier date for the coming of Partholan’s people, and an earlier still for the occupation of the country by the Formorians from the West.

  In the Irish historic tales called “Catha; or Battles,” as given by the learned O’Curry, a record is preserved of a real battle which was fought between the Tuatha-de-Dananns and the Fir Bolgs, from which it appears that these two races spoke the same language, and that they were intimately connected with the Formorians. As the armies drew near together the Fir-Bolgs sent out Breas, one of their great chiefs, to reconnoitre the camp of the strangers; the Tuatha-de-Dananns appointed one of their champions, named Sreng, to meet the emissary of the enemy; the two warriors met and talked to one another over the tops of their shields, and each was delighted to find that the other spoke the same language. A battle followed, in which Nunda, king of the Fir-Bolgs, was slain; Breas succeeded him; he encountered the hostility of the bards, and was compelled to resign the crown. He went to the court of his father-in-law, Elathe, a Formorian sea-king or pirate; not being well received, he repaired to the camp of Balor of the Evil Eye, a Formorian chief. The Formorian head-quarters seem to have been in the Hebrides.