A reference to the early inhabitants of our own islands may appropriately be made here, for it was in the early Akkadian days, about 100,000 years ago, that the colony of Initiates who founded Stonehenge landed on these shores—"these shores" being, of course, the shores of the Scandinavian part of the continent of Europe, as shown in [Map No. 3.] The initiated priests and their followers appear to have belonged to a very early strain of the Akkadian race—they were taller, fairer, and longer headed than the aborigines of the country, who were a very mixed race, but mostly degenerate remnants of the Rmoahals. As readers of the Transaction of the London Lodge on the "Pyramids and Stonehenge," will know, the rude simplicity of Stonehenge was intended as a protest against the extravagant ornament and over-decoration of the existing temples in Atlantis, where the debased worship of their own images was being carried on by the inhabitants.
The Mongolians, as we have seen, never had any touch with the mother-continent. Born on the wide plains of Tartary, their emigrations for long found ample scope within those regions; but more than once tribes of Mongol descent have overflowed from northern Asia to America, across Behring's Straits, and the last of such emigrations—that of the Kitans, some 1,300 years ago—has left traces which some western savants have been able to follow. The presence of Mongolian blood in some tribes of North American Indians has also been recognized by various writers on ethnology. The Hungarians and Malays are both known to be offshoots of this race, ennobled in the one case by a strain of Aryan blood, degraded in the other by mixture with the effete Lemurians. But the interesting fact about the Mongolians is that its last family race is still in full force—it has not in fact yet reached its zenith—and the Japanese nation has still got history to give to the world.
Arts and Sciences.—It must primarily be recognized that our own Aryan race has naturally achieved far greater results in almost every direction than did the Atlanteans, but even where they failed to reach our level, the records of what they accomplished are of interest as representing the high water mark which their tide of civilization reached. On the other hand, the character of the scientific achievements in which they did outstrip us are of so dazzling a nature, that bewilderment at such unequal development is apt to be the feeling left.
The arts and sciences, as practised by the first two races, were, of course, crude in the extreme, but we do not propose to follow the progress achieved by each sub-race separately. The history of the Atlantean, as of the Aryan race, was interspersed with periods of progress and of decay. Eras of culture were followed by times of lawlessness, during which all artistic and scientific development was lost, these again being succeeded by civilizations reaching to still higher levels. It must naturally be with the periods of culture that the following remarks will deal, chief among which stands out the great Toltec era.
Architecture and sculpture, painting and music were all practised in Atlantis. The music even at the best of times was crude, and the instruments of the most primitive type. All the Atlantean races were fond of colour, and brilliant hues decorated both the insides and the outsides of their houses, but painting as a fine art was never well established, though in the later days some kind of drawing and painting was taught in the schools. Sculpture on the other hand, which was also taught in the schools, was widely practised, and reached great excellence. As we shall see later on under the head of "Religion" it became customary for every man who could afford it to place in one of the temples an image of himself. These were sometimes carved in wood or in hard black stone like basalt, but among the wealthy it became the fashion to have their statues cast in one of the precious metals, aurichalcum, gold or silver. A very fair resemblance of the individual usually resulted, while in some cases a striking likeness was achieved.
Architecture, however, was naturally the most widely practised of these arts. Their buildings were massive structures of gigantic proportions. The dwelling houses in the cities were not, as ours are, closely crowded together in streets. Like their country houses some stood in their own garden grounds, others were separated by plots of common land, but all were isolated structures. In the case of houses of any importance four blocks of building surrounded a central courtyard, in the centre of which generally stood one of the fountains whose number in the "City of the Golden Gates" gained for it the second appellation of the "City of Waters." There was no exhibition of goods for sale as in modern streets. All transactions of buying and selling took place privately, except at stated times, when large public fairs were held in the open spaces of the cities. But the characteristic feature of the Toltec house was the tower that rose from one of its corners or from the centre of one of the blocks. A spiral staircase built outside led to the upper stories, and a pointed dome terminated the tower—this upper portion being very commonly used as an observatory. As already stated the houses were decorated with bright colours. Some were ornamented with carvings, others with frescoes or painted patterns. The window-spaces were-filled with some manufactured article similar to, but less transparent than, glass. The interiors were not furnished with the elaborate detail of our modern dwellings, but the life was highly civilized of its kind.
The temples were huge halls resembling more than anything else the gigantic piles of Egypt, but built on a still more stupendous scale. The pillars supporting the roof were generally square, seldom circular. In the days of the decadence the aisles were surrounded with innumerable chapels in which were enshrined the statues of the more important inhabitants. These side shrines indeed were occasionally of such considerable size as to admit a whole retinue of priests whom some specially great man might have in his service for the ceremonial worship of his image. Like the private houses the temples too were never complete without the dome-capped towers, which of course were of corresponding size and magnificence. These were used for astronomical observations and for sun-worship.
The precious metals were largely used in the adornment of the temples, the interiors being often not merely inlaid but plated with gold. Gold and silver were highly valued, but as we shall see later on when the subject of the currency is dealt with, the uses to which they were put were entirely artistic and had nothing to do with coinage, while the great quantities that were then produced by the chemists—or as we should now-a-days call them alchemists—may be said to have taken them out of the category of the precious metals. This power of transmutation of metals was not universal, but it was so widely possessed that enormous quantities were made. In fact the production of the wished-for metals may be regarded as one of the industrial enterprises of those days by which these alchemists gained their living. Gold was admired even more than silver, and was consequently produced in much greater quantity.
Education.—A few words on the subject of language will fitly prelude a consideration of the training in the schools and colleges of Atlantis. During the first map period Toltec was the universal language, not only throughout the continent but in the western islands and that part of the eastern continent which recognized the emperor's rule. Remains of the Rmoahal and Tlavatli speech survived it is true in out-of-the-way parts, just as the Keltic and Cymric speech survives to-day among us in Ireland and Wales. The Tlavatli tongue was the basis used by the Turanians, who introduced such modifications that an entirely different language was in time produced; while the Semites and Akkadians, adopting a Toltec ground-work, modified it in their respective ways, and so produced two divergent varieties. Thus in the later days of Poseidonis there were several entirely different languages—all however belonging to the agglutinative type—for it was not till Fifth Race days that the descendants of the Semites and Akkadians developed inflectional speech. All through the ages, however, the Toltec language fairly maintained its purity, and the same tongue that was spoken in Atlantis in the days of its splendour was used, with but slight alterations, thousands of years later in Mexico and Peru.
The schools and colleges of Atlantis in the great Toltec days, as well as in subsequent eras of culture, were all endowed by the State. Though every child was required to pass through the primary schools, the subsequent training differed very widely. The primary schools formed a sort of winnowing ground. Those who showed real aptitude for study were, along with the children of the dominant classes who naturally had greater abilities, drafted into the higher schools at about the age of twelve. Reading and writing, which were regarded as mere preliminaries, had already been taught them in the primary schools.