Land without chimneys; or, the byways of Mexico

by Alfred Oscar Coffin

Theopompus who wrote in the fourth century B. C. tells substantially the same story, which was given by Silenus to the ancient King Midas, recorded by Aristotle.[B] The Gauls possessed traditions on the subject, which were collected by the Roman historian Timagenes, who lived in the first century, B. C. This record states that three distinct people dwelt in Gaul (France). 1, The Aborigines; 2, The invaders from a distant island, (Atlantis); 8, The Aryan Gauls. Marcellus also, in a book on the Ethiopians speaks of several islands lying on the Atlantic ocean near Europe, which we may undoubtedly identify as the Canaries; but he adds: “The inhabitants of these islands preserve the memory of a much greater island, Atlantis, which had for a long time exercised dominion over the smaller ones.”

Now, all these writers most positively state that an island did exist west of Africa, and was destroyed by a cataclysm. This island could not have been very far from the shores of America, for the tribes of Central America, in Mexico, in Venezuela and in British and Dutch Guiana, distinctly describe these cataclysms, one by water, one by fire and a third by winds.

Catlin, in his “Lifted and Subsided Rocks in America,” describes the traditions of such a cataclysm. The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, in his “Quatre Lettres sur La Mexique,” and his “Sources de l’Histoire Primitive du Mexique,” has translated the “Teo Amoxtli,” which is the Toltecan mythological history of the cataclysm of the Antilles. Catlin found the tradition of such a cataclysm among the Indians of North America. The Indians farther south state that the water was seen coming in waves like mountains from the east, and of the tens of thousands who ran for the high ground of the west, only one man, by one authority, and two by another, and seven by another, succeeded in reaching high ground, and from them sprang the present race of Indians. The tribes near the coast distinctly describe three cataclysms, water, fire, and winds, while those inland were sensible only of the flood of waters which ran to the base of the mountains.[C]

“From amidst the thunder and flames which came out of the sea, whilst mountains were sinking and rising, the terror-stricken inhabitants sought every expedient of safety. Some fled to the mountains, and some launched their rafts and canoes upon the turbulent waters, trusting that a favorable current might land them upon a hospitable shore, and thus in the elemental strife the ancient civilized people became widely dispersed.”[D]

“The festival of$1‘Izcalli’ was instituted to commemorate this terrible calamity, in which princes and people humbled themselves before the Divinity and besought Him not to renew the frightful convulsions.”

It is claimed that by this catastrophe, an area larger than the Kingdom of France became engulfed, including the Lesser Antilles, the extensive banks at their eastern base, which at that date were vast fertile plains, the peninsula of Yucatan, Honduras and Guatemala and the great estuaries of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. With the peninsula of Yucatan went down the splendid cities of Palenque, whose sites are now in the ocean bed as well as the bones of the inhabitants, and the continent has since risen sufficiently to restore the sites of a number of the ancient cities, but the people were blotted from the face of the earth. There is nothing more remarkable than the truthfulness of the traditions of North American Indians. For hundreds of years tradition has said that the Enchanted Mesa in New Mexico had been once inhabited, and during the present year, an expedition from the Smithsonian Institution explored the Mesa and verified the tradition.

In proof of the Cataclysm and submergence of Central America, our modern geographies tell us that Old Guatemala was destroyed by a water volcano in the sixteenth century, and again in the eighteenth by an earthquake. The sea shells on both sides the Isthmus of Panama are alike, and according to the law of the geographical distribution of animals, this could only have come about by the Isthmus having at one time been submerged, and remaining so long enough for the intermingling of species and being raised again, and the fossils on both sides support the hypothesis. The situation of Atlantis, west of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean, would be so near to Central America that any disturbance, like the one described by Plato, would be compelled to affect Central America in the manner described by the traditions of the natives.

The nearest lands west of Africa, where Plato locates Atlantis, are the Canary Islands, the nearest being fifty miles from Africa, and the whole group extending three hundred miles, and are separated from the mainland by a channel more than five thousand feet deep. Of all the oceanic islands (not continental) discovered by Europeans, the Canaries alone were inhabited, Here they found the Guanches, now extinct, who at the time of their discovery were not aware that a continent existed in their neighborhood, for, on being asked by the missionaries how they came to this archipelago, they answered: “God placed us on these islands, and then forsook and forgot us.”

Now who were the Guanches? Their islands had never been connected with Africa, because the channel between them is a mile deep, and Wallace in his “Island Life” has proved that any island surrounded by water more than five thousand feet deep is of volcanic origin. If craniometry is a reliable science the Guanches were not savages, but superior to the Egyptians. According to Prof. Flower’s measurements, the skull of the English of low grade contains one thousand five hundred and forty-two cubic centimeters, the Guanches one thousand four hundred and ninety-eight, Japanese one thousand four hundred and eighty-six, Chinese one thousand four hundred and twenty-four, Italians one thousand four hundred and seventy-five, and the ancient Egyptians one thousand four hundred and sixty-four. That the remnant of a race found in mid-ocean should have a better developed brain than many continental nations, is significant, and if the Guanches were a part of the inhabitants of Atlantis, we can easily understand their ability to make war and subdue their neighbors as related by Plato.

The late Sir Anders Retzius, of Stockholm, the learned authority on craniometry says: “The Dolichocephali of America are nearly related to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and to the Atlantic population of Africa,—Moors, Turaricks, Copts, etc.—and the same kind of skull is found in the Canary Islands in front of the African Coast, and on the Islands in the Caribbean Sea on the opposite coast which faces Africa. The color of the skin in the population on both sides of the Atlantic is reddish brown, resembling tanned leather; the hair is the same; the features of the face and the build of the frame as I am led to believe, presenting the same analogy.”[E]