"Over against Africa lies a great island in the vast ocean, many days sail from Libya westward. The soil is very fruitful. It is diversified with mountains and pleasant vales, and the towns are adorned with stately buildings." After describing the gardens, orchards, and fountains, he tells how this pleasant country was discovered. He says, the Phoenicians, having built Gades (Cadiz) in Spain, sailed along the western coast of Africa. A Phoenician ship, voyaging down south, was "on a sudden driven by a furious storm far into the main ocean, and, after they had lain under this tempest many days, they at last arrived at this island." There is a similar statement in a work attributed to Aristotle, in which the discovery is ascribed to Carthaginians, who were Phoenicians.
According to Strabo, the art of night sailing was taught in Ancient Tyre; and the Arabians and Chinese certainly used the mariner's compass before it was brought from China to Venice by Marco Polo in 1260.
After doubling the Cape of Good Hope, and while continuing his voyage to India, Vasco de Gama found the Arabians on the coast of the Indian Ocean using the mariner's compass, and vessels equal in quality to his own.
The world has always been prone to underrate the achievements of the ancients, especially with reference to their maritime skill, but many concede that the Phoenicians were exceptional. Their known enterprise, and this ancient knowledge of America, so variously expressed, strongly encourage the hypothesis that the people called Phoenicians came to this continent, established colonies in the region where ruined cities are found, and filled it with civilization.
It is also claimed that symbolic devices similar to those of the Phoenicians are found in the ruins of Mexico and Central America, and that old traditions of the natives described the first civilizers as "bearded white men who came from the East in ships." It will be remembered that this same tradition was communicated to Cortez by Montezuma. Therefore it is urged that the people described in the native books and traditions as "Colhuas" must have been Phoenicians.
If correct, this theory would be certain of demonstration for they were preeminently a people of letters and monuments. The Phoenician alphabet is said to be the parent of all the alphabets of Europe except the Turkish. If they were responsible for this civilization they must have left some trace of their language. But none has been found. Nor can any similarity be traced in the ruins of Copan and Palanque with other ruins known to have been erected by the Phoenicians. Therefore we can not reasonably suppose this American civilization originated by people of the Phoenician race, whatever may be thought of the evidence of their acquaintance with this continent.
The most strenuous advocate of the theory that America, was first peopled from the sunken continent of Atlantis, was Brasseur de Bourbourg. He studied the monuments, writings and traditions left by this civilization more than any other man; and actually learned to decipher some of the Central American writings.
His Atlantic theory of the old American civilization is that it was originated on a portion of this continent which is now under waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It supposes the continent extended, anciently, from New Granada, Central America and Mexico, in a long, irregular peninsula, so far across the Atlantic that the Canary, Madeira, and Azores, or Western Islands, may be remains of this portion of it. In other words, it was not a large island or continent, as the ancients claimed, but a large peninsula joined on to the main land at Central America.
High mountains stood where we now find the West India Islands. Beyond these, toward Africa and Europe, was a great extent of fertile and beautiful land, and here arose the first civilization of mankind, which flourished many ages, until at length this extended portion of the continent was engulfed by a tremendous convulsion of nature, or by a succession of such convulsions, which made the ruin complete. After the cataclysm, a part of the Atlantic people who escaped destruction settled in Central America, where, perhaps, their civilization had been previously introduced. The reasons urged in support of this hypothesis make it seem possible, if not probable, to imaginative minds. Even men like Humboldt have recognized in the original legend the possible vestige of a widely spread tradition of earliest times. From this standpoint only can it be seriously considered.
Plutarch, in his life of Solon, mentions the fact that while that sage was in Egypt "he conferred with the priests of Psenophis, Sonchis, Heliopolis and Sais, and learned from them the story of Atlantis." Brasseur de Bourbourg cites Cousin's translation of Plato's record of this story, to strengthen his position, as follows: