All were highly religious people, believing in one God and living accordingly. Religion was a way of life and the center of their activities. Cremation was in popular, common usage. All had Flood stories comparable to our own, and many had traditions of a strange, advanced people coming from the East. And legends, we will soon see, are much too lightly taken by modern scholars. Ancient peoples were not given to fiction, and their songs, stories, and ballads handed down from one generation to another were generally rooted in fact. Truth has a way of enduring; untruth lives a short life. To hastily discard these traditions as myths is a reflection of our own present day mentality and morality.
The readings explain many of the enigmas of these early peoples. The origin of the Incas was from both within and without the country. The mysterious inland movement of the modern Mayas was obviously due to the rising waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The Mound Builders, former Mayans, were the first to reach Central United States. Recent evidence indicates man lived there as long ago as 7000 B.C.; and the Norseman apparently explored as far as Montana, however unlikely that would appear at first sight.
Also common to these widely separated cultures, and thereby linking them together, was their socio-political system. Practically all were socialist, cooperative or communal societies. What was good for society, the community, came before what was good for the individual, thus leaving no room for self-aggrandizement and the private accumulation of unneeded wealth. There were then an equality and fraternity perhaps unmatched anywhere today.
The issue here, as deep in almost all human questions, is basically a spiritual problem. What does the present state of man dictate? What is he spiritually prepared for? Is he ready to place human rights above property rights? Does he prefer competition or does he prefer cooperation? Of the two, which is most conducive to spiritual growth? These are large questions and one can only philosophize on what man’s ultimate answers will be. They are discussed in later chapters.
But of one thing we can be certain; Karl Marx did not invent communism. He borrowed it, separated it from its spiritual source, and declared it to be economically motivated.
We will explore the Old Age up to the fringes of recorded American history, and we shall see how the Lemurian and Atlantean theory answers questions that otherwise remain largely unanswered. Indeed, there is far more evidence in favor of Atlantis than in man’s primary entrance from across the Bering Strait, of which there is almost none.
With the rapid advances in oceanography and other sciences and, more importantly, the inquisitiveness and open-mindedness of the younger generation of scholars, it behooves us to explore the latest evidence for the existence of Atlantis. For on that particular premise rests the burden of our entire concept of history.
Recent developments are causing the raising of some graying, scholarly eyebrows. In October 1968, an Associated Press story by Kenneth Whiting reported: “Evidence is mounting that Africa, South America, India, Australia, and Antarctica were a single great land mass millions of years ago and then drifted apart. Fossils which suggest that the southern hemisphere continents were once a solid mass are helping scientists unravel the geological jigsaw puzzle.”
Proponents of the continental drift theory hold that such a land mass broke up and its parts slowly shifted to their present locations. If true, then traces of life found on one would likely be found on the others, along with clues that they existed about the same time.
The routes of glaciers, dents in the earth’s crust, belts of minerals and fossils 200 million or more years old lend support to the theory. As glaciers ground over the land, they gouged out huge channels and left behind distinctive piles of rubble. Dr. A.R.I. Cruickshank, of Johannesburg, South Africa’s Witwaterstrand University, said, “From these glacial routes we can deduce the direction of the glacial movement. If we assume that the glaciers radiated from a common center, then the directions of glacial movements on the various continents, taken separately, do not make sense. But if you swing the continents together, you find a coherent pattern of glacial routes and a common direction in glaciation.”
The continents of Africa, South America, India, Australia do roughly fit together. And it all could have happened 200 million years ago. Extravagant as the idea is, the irony lies in the fact that world scientists accept it while pooh-poohing Atlantis, which is hardly more extravagant.
In a recent book, The Mystery of Atlantis, Charles Berlitz, grandson of the famous linguist and an archaeologist and pioneer skin diver, writes: “We can expect archaeological finds relating to the Atlantean culture complex to be discovered on the ocean floor, as, with new and ever more efficient equipment, searchers engage in a variety of underwater investigation. Now for the first time, in the long history of the search for Atlantis, we have the means to get to it and the ability to recognize it.”
A noted archaeologist, Dr. Manson Valentine, former professor of zoology at Yale, reported in 1968, 1969, and 1970 that he had made exciting discoveries of Mayan-like temples in Bahamian waters off the coast of Florida: a plaza and sloping walls with steps. The material is a kind of masonry and is definitely man-made. Dr. Valentine believes the pyramid-like structures might be part of Atlantis. They appear to be similar to Mayan temples he has examined in Yucatan Mexico.
The Bimini Islands, fifty miles off the east coast of Miami, were once part of the Atlantean island of Poseidia, say the readings. On June 28, 1940, the sleeping seer said, “And Poseidia will be among the first portions of Atlantis to rise again. Expect it in sixty-eight and sixty-nine (’68 and ’69). Not so far away.” (958-3L-1)
Other mysterious and apparently man-made structures have been sighted under the shallow waters of the Bahamas, Dr. Valentine says. One, a 100-foot pentagon, was found near the site of the temple-like building near Andros Island. He believes more structures will be discovered because large areas of sea bottom are being worn down by changing currents in the Bahamas.
“At least two more distinctive, quite discernible structures have been seen in recent weeks,” he said in the spring of 1969. The findings have been confirmed by photographs. The archaeologist and his colleagues applied for clearance from the Bahamian government to begin excavations at the first site near Andros Island. But North American Rockwell Corporation gained exclusive rights.
New finds are a circular structure near Abaco and the pentagon near Andros. “And there are other buildings out there,” he says: A pyramid, road, stone wheels, statuary.
Dr. Valentine, who brings impeccable scientific credentials to the venture, places credence in the lost continent theory of Atlantis. He believes the Bahamas finds may be man’s first conclusive evidence of a sunken civilization. Yet, confusing these discoveries is the fact that a sponge farm was built in one area in the 1920’s and later abandoned.
Other researchers have been working in the region of the Bimini Islands. Two of them, Robert Ferro and Michael Grumley, who have also worked with Dr. Valentine, reported their experiences in the recent volume, Atlantis, The Autobiography of a Search. “It was Wednesday, February 26 (1969), that we found what we found,” they write, “whether . . . sea wall or roadbed . . . whatever . . . it had been built by man, and not as an underwater structure . . . We had been pleased to stand and look down through twenty-five feet of bright clear water and see the monumentally unnatural evidence of a very ancient civilization.”
Underwater investigation revealed that the stones were aligned forming a wall, usually covered by tidal sands. It has been dated to around 10,000 B.C. by carbon-14 tests.
Another researcher, Count Pino Turolla, found the remains of 40 to 50 stone pillars in a circular formation, some standing, some toppled over. They vary from three to six feet in length and two to four feet in width, of white marble not naturally found in the area. He has photographs of his finds in Ferro’s and Grumley’s book.
Although as yet no irrefutable hard evidence of the existence of Atlantis has been brought to light, circumstantial evidence continues to accumulate, along with