RECENT CONFIRMATION OF H. P. BLAVATSKY'S TEACHINGS ABOUT ANCIENT CONTINENTS AND RACES: by H. T. Edge, B. A. (Cantab.)
THE London Times' South American Supplement (May 30) contains the first half of an article on the ancient people of Peru, in which the writer speaks of the gigantic works in masonry wrought by a people who lived there ages before the Incas. Being on the wrong side of the Andes for fertility, these people built the enormous irrigation systems which still exist; and the writer asks why they did not cross the Andes to the well-watered slopes and plains on the east. The extent to which they had explored their own country and its mountain heights proves that the other country should have been within their grasp. Yet they took all this trouble to make the western slopes fertile.
The answer given is—that in those days perhaps there was no land to the east of the Andes.
The writer then goes on to speak of the ancient continental distribution of land, of Atlantis, of the connexion between South America and Australasia, etc., in a way that is now growing familiar. People whose opinions are of weight are coming to see that the true explanation of the ancient American civilizations, as well as those of such isolated spots as Easter Island, with its marvelous statues, is to be sought along these lines. At the same time the subject has afforded a fertile field for cranks and others who pin their various fads or new gospels thereto. The latter, however, cannot last, but the truth is eternal. The myths will be exploded, but the actual facts as to past history will be proved.
In The Secret Doctrine H. P. Blavatsky sums up all the available speculation and information on the subject of these ancient continents and weaves it into consistency by applying to it the keys of the Wisdom-Religion. There is little doubt that her writings have contributed largely, in more or less direct ways, to many of the other published utterances on the question.
It is maintained, and with reason, by Theosophists, that the statements of H. P. Blavatsky refer to actual facts and must therefore one day be verified. The history of discovery and speculation since she wrote has already done much to confirm this conviction. But as her teachings with regard to the ancient continents are inseparably bound up with her statements as to the ancient races of mankind, and indeed with the Theosophical teachings in general, it follows that these also will be confirmed.
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The great importance of this enlarged knowledge about the human race and its history is that it so enlarges and ennobles our view of human life. Before the light of knowledge all narrow dogmas fade away. The errors of theology, the mistakes of scientific theory, our inadequate sociological ideas—all these must fade in the light which will be shed when the Theosophical teachings are more fully recognized. And all this remarkable progress in archaeology may be welcomed as one of the signs.
The publication to which reference has been made speaks of other countries of South America, but seems unable to do so without mentioning their antiquities. The Aztecs of Mexico, the Aymarás of Peru, come in for notice. The ancient people of Peru present analogies to the Egyptians, Babylonians, Indian peoples, Polynesians, and Malays, it is said; and some writers have theories about their connexion with Jews and Chinese. It is easy to see that speculation, left to itself, runs amuck among the theories.
The same writer, Comyns Beaumont, concludes his article on the ancient Peruvians in the issue for June 27, and says that:
Central America, as the "Enterprise" or "Easter Divide," a large submarine ridge, indicates, was connected to the Pacific Continent. On the other side Central America was connected in the East with the Mediterranean by another continental mass that spread across the Atlantic Ocean, and of which today the Antilles, Azores, Canaries, and the Atlas Mountains in Morocco are the existing remains. Peru also was a member of this vast continental system. Apart from the evidence of geological strata, confirmation of this is obtained from the study of sea fauna. The marine deposits of Peru, Chile, and Ecuador belong to the same genus as those of Central America, and to find the corresponding genus elsewhere one must search in the Mediterranean. Precisely, therefore, as Europe, Asia, and Africa possess a continuous land connexion, at the epoch when the Peruvians were in the forefront of civilization there existed a world which comprised the regions of the Mediterranean (then very different from nowadays), the lost Atlantic Continent, Central America, and Peru, and the lost Pacific Continent which embraced lands not only in the Pacific Ocean, but continued to where the Indian Ocean now washes the shores of Africa, India, and Mesopotamia.
Thus a step is made in the fulfilment of H. P. Blavatsky's prophecy that the present century would witness a recognition of many of the teachings she outlined in her writings.
But there is still much to be done. And not the least important point is to distinguish carefully between the "Sons of Light" and the "Sorcerers" among the mighty men of these perished lands. There was a true Wisdom and a false knowledge; and H. P. Blavatsky never fails to discriminate between those who preserved the light and those who fell into darkness. The Easter Island statues, for instance, she describes as resembling the sensual type of the Atlantean sorcerers rather than that of the "Buddhas" (so-called) of the Bamian colossi. The writer in the Times Supplement calls the Easter Island statues "Turanian," employing thereby such familiar classifications as he finds to hand; and in any case he distinguishes them from that higher type loosely designated by the term "Aryan." This "Turanian" type he finds also in Chaldaea, India, Central America, etc., and alludes to their habit of building pyramids.
Finally he shows how inadequate are the speculations of many anthropologists as to the antiquity of man. Human bones disintegrate after a comparatively short time; so that the few we find are such as have been accidentally preserved. And these ancient civilizations tend to disprove the conventional theories of human evolution—which theories, however, change from year to year.