MYTHICAL EMPIRE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17348, 13 May 1924, Page 11

MYTHICAL EMPIRE.

QUEST OF ATLANTIS REVIVED. (Paris Correspondent ** New Tork Herald.”) The recent discovery of a jetty four centuries old off the port of Boulogne after it had been submerged and ior.Rott6n since the beginning of the eighteenth century has revived interest in the theory of some scientists that the mythical empire of Atlantis actually existed. The question was restored to popular discussion by Benoit'6 “ Atlan tide ” and moving picture plays founded on that author’s ideas have concurred in locating the mysterious continent beneath the sands of Sahara, which they would hare concealed that legendary city which cradled the human race and which is supposed to have evolve 1 a civilisation super, perhaps, to that which exists to-day. But the theory of an empire sud - denly covered up by sand and granite mountains is not as acceptable to French scientists as that a great tidal wave, attended by some internal terrestrial catastrophe, precipated the surface of the earth miles below tbo level of the sen. Exactly such s die turbance occurred at Boulogne in 1545, before the French could complete the jetty which had been started by the English, but in that instance the jetty sank only fifty fathoms. BELIEVES ATLANTIS IN ATLANTIC. Ths French author Roger Devigne has been among the most earnest believers in the theory that Atlantis was lost in the Atlantic, and that at ono time its most lofy peaks were the An tilles, the Azores, the Canaries and the Caribbees, while the Gulf Stream then flowing over what is now the dry land of Africa and Europe, laved its shores and made them fertile and agreeable, enticing a steady influx of mankind from the glacial regions of the north. According to M. Devigne. Tut-ankh-Amen himself was a descendant, on. the maternal side, of the princes of Atlantis. and the revelations in the Valle. y of the Kings at Luxor in recent years a»-e only the relics of a. traditional architecture. burial customs and an innate sense of artistic values bequeathed to the Pharaohs by their lost ancestors. { TRACED IN BOTH CONTINENTS. 1 "These rites can be traced across the territories of Lybia, primitive Egypt and the Mediterranean empires, just as they ar* found m Peru and Mexico,” says M. Devigne. in support of his contention that the continent of Atlantis extended beyond the confines ct the ocean. “By the monuments in all these lands we find that the people were powerful, well versed in the metallurgical arts and the sciences, and had astronomical calendars differing but little from those which men of science refer to to-day for accuracy in their calculations.” Devigne leans to the theory that the aborigines of Atlantis were the redskins of America, with a subordinate race of brownskins towards the south, whose traits and faefal characteristics may be found to-day in the borderlands (, f Atlantis. 3000 miles east, in equatorial Africa. Just how long ago these men lived. Devigne does not say, but re places the extinction of the Atlantides as a powerful race at only a few generations before the conquest of Pal estine and the surrounding country by the Israelites. But it looks as though the mystery of the ancient world will have to remain a secret, at least till another ter restrial upheaval causes the volcanoes of the Azores and other Atlantic islands to disgorge better evidence of what really happened.