Discoidal Stones, Illinois
Copper Spear-Head, Lake Superior
Bronze Hatchets, Switzerland
The same design is also found in ancient rock etchings of the Zuñis of New Mexico, of which the cut on p. 265 is an illustration.
We also find this figure repeated upon vase from a Mississippi Valley mound, which we give elsewhere. (See p. 260.)
It is found upon many of the monuments of Central America. In the Treasure House of Atreus, at Mycenæ, Greece, a fragment of a pillar was found which is literally covered with this double spiral design. (See “Rosengarten’s Architectural Styles,” p. 59.)
This Treasure House of Atreus is one of the oldest buildings in Greece.
We find the double-spiral figure upon a shell ornament found on the breast of a skeleton, in a carefully constructed stone coffin, in a mound near Nashville, Tennessee.
Lenormant remarks (“Anc. Civil.,” vol. ii., p. 158) that the bronze implements found in Egypt, near Memphis, had been buried for six thousand years; and that at that time, as the Egyptians had a horror of the sea, some commercial nation must have brought the tin, of which the bronze was in part composed, from India, the Caucasus, or Spain, the nearest points to Egypt in which tin is found.
Heer has shown that the civilized plants of the lake dwellings are not of Asiatic, but of African, and, to a great extent, of Egyptian origin. Their stone axes are made largely of jade or nephrite, “a mineral which, strange to say, geologists have not found in place on the continent of Europe.” (Foster’s “Prehistoric Races,” p. 44.)
Compare this picture of a copper axe from a mound near Laporte, Indiana, with this representation of a copper axe of the Bronze Age, found near Waterford, Ireland. Professor Foster pronounces them almost identical.
Compare this specimen of pottery from the lake dwellings of Switzerland with the following specimen from San José, Mexico. Professor Foster calls attention to the striking resemblance in the designs of these two widely separated works of art, one belonging to the Bronze Age of Europe, the other to the Copper Age of America.
+——————————————————-+————————————————-+ | FRAGMENT OF POTTERY, LAKE | FRAGMENT OF POTTERY, SAN JOSÉ, | | NEUFCHATEL, SWITZERLAND. | MEXICO. | +——————————————————-+————————————————-+
These, then, in conclusion, are our reasons for believing that the Bronze Age of Europe has relation to Atlantis:
1. The admitted fact that it is anterior in time to the Iron Age relegates it to a great antiquity.
2. The fact that it is anterior in time to the Iron Age is conclusive that it is not due to any of the known European or Asiatic nations, all of which belong to the Iron Age.
3. The fact that there was in Europe, Asia, or Africa no copper or tin age prior to the Bronze Age, is conclusive testimony that the manufacture of bronze was an importation into those continents from some foreign country.
4. The fact that in America alone of all the world is found the Copper Age, which must necessarily have preceded the Bronze Age, teaches us to look to the westward of Europe and beyond the sea for that foreign country.
5. We find many similarities in forms of implements between the Bronze Age of Europe and the Copper Age of America.
6. if Plato told the truth, the Atlanteans were a great commercial nation, trading to America and Europe, and, at the same time, they possessed bronze, and were great workers in the other metals.
7. We shall see hereafter that the mythological traditions of Greece referred to a Bronze Age which preceded an Iron Age, and placed this in the land of the gods, which was an island in the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules; and this land was, as we shall see, clearly Atlantis.
8. As we find but a small development of the Bronze Age in America, it is reasonable to suppose that there must have been some intermediate station between America and Europe, where, during a long period of time, the Bronze Age was developed out of the Copper Age, and immense quantities of bronze implements were manufactured and carried to Europe.