THE LOST ATLANTIS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15175, 14 December 1912, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE LOST ATLANTIS.

AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGIST'S GREAT

DISCOVERIES.

i CIVILISATIONS SOURCE. Dr. Paul Schexehaxk, the distinguished grandson of the late Dr. Heinrich Schliemann, finder of ancient Troy, and one of the world's greatest archaeologist;;, has written in the New York American a remarkable narrative of the discovery of the lost Atlantis—the sonrco of all civilisation.

Atlantis is the legendary continent mentioned by Phi who, in one of his "conversations,'' told how the priests 'of the Egyptian Temple of Sais related to Solon, the" great : lawmaker,. the story of its de-i stinctito about 9000 years 0* * Atlantis, according to this story, .was the home of a great civilised race which had conquered and colonised the world. All civilisation had come from it.

What is known as the Dolphin Ridge, an enormous submarine plateau, stretching between 25 and 50 degrees north latitude and 20 and 50 degrees west longitude, is supposed to be its sunken remnants. The Azore Islands are believed to be the top of its lofty , mountains — that now remains above, water of tho lost continent.

If ; Dr. Paul Schliemann can prove his points, the greatest world mystery will nave been untangled, the history of our nice . must be reconstructed, and many enigmas will be' answered finally.

A t Great Atlantic Inland. According to Dr. Scbliemann's story, the lost Atlantis is supposed to have been a great island in frhd Atlantic opposite the Mediterranean; the remnant of a mighty continent which once reached from the west coast of Africa and Europs to the shores of Central America. The ancient world had a clear tradition of it.

It was utterly destroyed in ■ a day and a night by cataclysmic volcanic outbursts and sank beneath the sea with all except a few of - its ■ millions of inhabitants. It was the region where mankind first rose from barbarism to a civilisation more advanced than that of ours to-day.

It became in the course of hundreds of thousands of years a world-conquering nation. It colonised , Egypt, the west coast of Africa, and Europe,' Central' America, the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi Valley, the Pacific coast of South America, the Mediterranean,, the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Caspian. It was the cradle of , civilisation, and the civilisation of the ancient world and our civilisation to-day are direct shoots of the Atlantic culture.

The racial memory of Atlantis is found in the legends of the Garden of Eden of the Bible, the G-arden of the Hesperides of the Greeks, the Asgard of the Scandinavians, the Tir n'Og of the Celts, and in all.the legends of a mysterious land in which dwelt gods or god-Kke mortals. The stories of . the Deluge, versions of which are founds in the traditions of almost every ancient and modern race, are simply the memory of the stupendous catastrophe , which wiped out Atlantis, the tale ol which was carried by those who escaped to all the lost land's colonies — these represented all the civilisation of the world" at that time. Hot Mythology, but History. , In the same way the escape, of some of the Atlanteans over a narrow land bridge, which connected Atlantis with what is now Brittany, survives in the legends of the Rainbow Bridge Perilous with the razor edge which the Scandinavians believed was the only road to Asgard* the dwelling-plcae of the gods, in the famous Hell's Causeway of the religious books of the Middle Ages, and in similar legends of the Hindoos, the Mayans, and the Turanians. The gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks, the Phoenicians, Hindoos, and Scandinavians were simply the kings, oueens, and ■ heroes of Atlantic, and the acts .attributed to them in mythology are a confused recollection of real historical events. The religions of Egypt, Peru, and of the Mayans, the vanished Tace that built the buried cities of Central America, and upon the wrecks of whose civilisation the Aztecs built their empire, were the original religion of Atlantis. The oldest colony formed by Atlantis was Egypt, whose civilisation was a provincial reproduction of that of the mother country. The next oldest were those of Peru and Central America. The Phoenician alphabet,-'parent of all the European alphabets, was derived from an Atlantis alphabet, which was also conveyed from Atlantis to the Mayans. The symbols and hieroglyphics of both Egypt and Mayans came from the same source, and so is explained thensimilarity, too great to. bo accidental. Atlantis was the original site of the Indo-European family of nations, as well as the Semitic and possibly the Turanian. The Atlanteans had full knowledge of electricity, steam, and other natural forces. They were prodigious engineers, and the first workers of iron. They, used gold and silver and a vanished precious metal known as orichalcum in enormous quantities for .ornamentation..