A: Aalu to Aztlan 49
Donnelly’s use of comparative mythologies to argue on behalf of Atlantis-
as-fact is encyclopedic, persuasive, and still represents a veritable gold mine of
information for researchers. His geology and oceanography were far ahead of his
time, while his conclusions were largely borne out by advances made during the
second half of the 20th century in the general acceptance of seafloor spreading
and plate tectonics. Atlantis: The Antediluvian World has been unfairly condemned
for its relatively few failings, mostly by Establishment dogmatists and cultural
isolationists to whom any serious suggestion of Atlantis is the worst heresy. But no
scholarly position has been able to remain unscathed after 100 years of scientific
progress, and, for the most part, Donnelly’s work has stood the test of time. In the
first 10 years after its publication, the book went through 24 editions, making it an
extraordinary best-seller, even by modern standards. It has since been translated
into dozens of languages, has sold millions of copies around the world, and is still
in print—all of which qualifies the book as a classic, just as vigorously condemned
and championed today as it was more than a century ago.
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World poses 13 fundamental positions, which formed
the basis of Atlantology. These predicate that:
Atlantis was a large island that lay just outside the Strait of Gibraltar in the
Atlantic Ocean.
Plato’s account of Atlantis is factual.
Atlantis was the site where mankind arose from barbarism to civilization.
Donnelly was the first to state this view, which, although not mentioned in Plato’s
Dialogues, is suggested by the weight of supportive evidence found in the traditions
of peoples residing within the former Atlantean sphere of influence.
The power of Atlantis stretched from Pacific coastal Peru and Yucatan in
the west to Africa, Europe, and Asia Minor in the east.
Atlantis represented “a universal memory of a great land, where early
mankind dwelt for ages in peace and happiness”—the original Garden of Eden.
The Greek, Phoenician, Hindu, and Scandinavian deities represented a
confused recollection in myth of the kings, queens, and heroes of Atlantis.
Although important Atlantean themes interpenetrate both Western and
Eastern mythologies, as he successfully demonstrated, Donnelly overstated that
relationship by reducing all the ancient divinities to merely mythic shadows of
mundane mortals.
The solar cults of ancient Egypt and Peru derived from the original
religion of Atlantis.
Egypt, whose civilization was a reproduction of Atlantis, was also the oldest
Atlantean colony.
Early Dynastic Egypt was a synthesis of indigenous Nilotic cultures and
Atlantean culture-bearers who arrived at the Nile Delta during the close of the
fourth millennium B.C. The hybrid civilization that emerged was never a “colony”
of Atlantis, although Donnelly was right in detecting numerous aspects of Atlantean
culture among the Egyptians.