the white man landed there, but bore the same name . . . [An ethnologist] listed forty-nine such parallels between Oceania and South America. Recently, scholars have added still more to them. But how was one to explain these phenomena?”
Deuel quickly discards the diffusion theory—the sunken continent of Lemuria, wayward Hebrews and Egyptians—as “unscientific and fantastic.” He relates at length Thor Heyerdal’s Kon Tiki trip from Peru to Polynesian islands. Yet he states, “Just as Peruvians landed on Pacific isles, Polynesians may well have reached the American coast on several occasions.” Their similarities are far too close “to have been independently evolved in the New World,” he concedes.
Exactly what happened, how and why and when, science does not know. Yet the architectural monuments of the Mound Builders, Mayas and Incas demonstrate a relationship and important and unique changes of rather sudden occurrence. Their earthen mounds and stone pyramids are basically similar in design, relating to the pyramids of Egypt across thousands of miles of what is now ocean. Atlanteans, the Cayce files make clear, migrated to that country as well as to the Americas. This correlation of cultures so far removed from each other has long puzzled scholars. It has even raised the question, “Was there at one time a land bridge between Yucatan and Egypt?”
There are intriguing place names to be found in Central America—Azatlan, for instance. And there are such cities as Choi-ula, Calua-can, Zuivan, Colima, Zalisco. Across the ocean in Asian Minor there are similarly Chol, Colua, Zuivana, Cholima, and Zalissa. All this and more point to a common source.
There are also numerous traits that are common to most of the cultures we will discuss. All rather quickly evolved to an agricultural economy, rather than remaining primitive hunters or herdsmen. The sun, their symbol of creative energy, played a significant part in their worship, although the conclusion that the people were in fact sun-worshippers appears to be overdrawn. They were lovers of nature because they lived so close to it and knew they were dependent upon it. The American Indians, for example, recognized that it, like themselves, was the creation of a Supreme Being.
All were highly religious people, believing in one God and living accordingly. Religion was a way of life and the center of their activities. Cremation was in popular, common usage. All had Flood stories comparable to our own, and many had traditions of a strange, advanced people coming from the East. And legends, we will soon see, are much too lightly taken by modern scholars. Ancient peoples were not given to fiction, and their songs, stories, and ballads handed down from one generation to another were generally rooted in fact. Truth has a way of enduring; untruth lives a short life. To hastily discard these traditions as myths is a reflection of our own present day mentality and morality.
The readings explain many of the enigmas of these early peoples. The origin of the Incas was from both within and without the country. The mysterious inland movement of the modern Mayas was obviously due to the rising waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The Mound Builders, former Mayans, were the first to reach Central United States. Recent evidence indicates man lived there as long ago as 7000 B.C.; and the Norseman apparently explored as far as Montana, however unlikely that would appear at first sight.
Also common to these widely separated cultures, and thereby linking them together, was their socio-political system. Practically all were socialist, cooperative or communal societies. What was good for society, the community, came before what was good for the individual, thus leaving no room for self-aggrandizement and the private accumulation of unneeded wealth. There were then an equality and fraternity perhaps unmatched anywhere today.
The issue here, as deep in almost all human questions, is basically a spiritual problem. What does the present state of man dictate? What is he spiritually prepared for? Is he ready to place human rights above property rights? Does he prefer competition or does he prefer cooperation? Of the two, which is most conducive to spiritual growth? These are large questions and one can only philosophize on what man’s ultimate answers will be. They are discussed in later chapters.
But of one thing we can be certain; Karl Marx did not invent communism. He borrowed it, separated it from its spiritual source, and declared it to be economically motivated.
We will explore the Old Age up to the fringes of recorded American history, and we shall see how the Lemurian and Atlantean theory answers questions that otherwise remain largely unanswered. Indeed, there is far more evidence in favor of Atlantis than in man’s primary entrance from across the Bering Strait, of which there is almost none.
With the rapid advances in oceanography and other sciences and, more importantly, the inquisitiveness and open-mindedness of the younger generation of scholars, it behooves us to explore the latest evidence for the existence of Atlantis. For on that particular premise rests the burden of our entire concept of history.
Recent developments are causing the raising of some graying, scholarly eyebrows. In October 1968, an Associated Press story by Kenneth Whiting reported: “Evidence is mounting that Africa, South America, India, Australia, and Antarctica were a single great land mass millions of years ago and then drifted apart. Fossils which suggest that the southern hemisphere continents were once a solid mass are helping scientists unravel the geological jigsaw puzzle.”
Proponents of the continental drift theory hold that such a land mass broke up and its parts slowly shifted to their present locations. If true, then traces of life found on one would likely be found on the others, along with clues that they existed about the same time.
The routes of glaciers, dents in the earth’s crust, belts of minerals and fossils 200 million or more years old lend support to the theory. As glaciers ground over the land, they gouged out huge channels and left behind distinctive piles of rubble. Dr. A.R.I. Cruickshank, of Johannesburg, South Africa’s Witwaterstrand University, said, “From these glacial routes we can deduce the direction of the glacial movement. If we assume that the glaciers radiated from a common center, then the directions of glacial movements on the various continents, taken separately, do not make sense. But if you swing the continents together, you find a coherent pattern of glacial routes and a common direction in glaciation.”
The continents of Africa, South America, India, Australia do roughly fit together. And it all could have happened 200 million years ago. Extravagant as the idea is, the irony lies in the fact that world scientists accept it while pooh-poohing Atlantis, which is hardly more extravagant.
In a recent book, The Mystery of Atlantis, Charles Berlitz, grandson of the famous linguist and an archaeologist and pioneer skin diver, writes: “We can expect archaeological finds relating to the Atlantean culture complex to be discovered on the ocean floor, as, with new and ever more efficient equipment, searchers engage in a variety of underwater investigation. Now for the first time, in the long history of the search for Atlantis, we have the means to get to it and the ability to recognize it.”
A noted archaeologist, Dr. Manson Valentine, former professor of zoology at Yale, reported in 1968, 1969, and 1970 that he had made exciting discoveries of Mayan-like temples in Bahamian waters off the coast of Florida: a plaza and sloping walls with steps. The material is a kind of masonry and is definitely man-made. Dr. Valentine believes the pyramid-like structures might be part of Atlantis. They appear to be similar to Mayan temples he has examined in Yucatan Mexico.
The Bimini Islands, fifty miles off the east coast of Miami, were once part of the Atlantean island of Poseidia, say the readings. On June 28, 1940, the sleeping seer said, “And Poseidia will be among the first portions of Atlantis to rise again. Expect it in sixty-eight and sixty-nine (’68 and ’69). Not so far away.” (958-3L-1)
Other mysterious and apparently man-made structures have been sighted under the shallow waters of the Bahamas, Dr. Valentine says. One, a 100-foot pentagon, was found near the site of the temple-like building near Andros Island. He believes more structures will be discovered
