The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West Part 1

The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West.

by Robert E. Anderson.

INTRODUCTION

Throughout all the periods of European history, ancient or modern, no age has been more remarkable for events of first-rate importance than the latter half of the fifteenth century. The rise of the New Learning, the "discovery of the world and of man," the displacement of many outworn beliefs, these with other factors produced an awakening that startled kings and nations. Then felt they like Balboa, when

with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

It was at this historical juncture that the "middle ages" came to an end, and modern Europe had its beginning. (See Chapter II.)

Why was Europe so long in discovering the vast Continent which all the time lay beyond the Western Ocean? Simply because every skipper and every "Board of Admiralty" believed that this world on which we live and move is flat and level. They did not at all realize the fact that it is _ball_-shaped; and that when a ball is very large (say, as large as a balloon), then any small portion of the surface must appear flat and level to a fly or "mite" traveling in that vicinity. Homer believed that our world is a flat and level plain, with a great river, Ocea.n.u.s, flowing round it; and for many ages that seemed a very natural and sufficient theory. The Pythagoreans, it is true, argued that our earth must be spherical, but why? Oh, said they, because in geometry the sphere is the "most perfect" of all solid figures. Aristotle, being scientific, gave better reasons for believing that the earth is spherical or ball-shaped. He said the shadow of the earth is always round like the shadow of a ball; and the shadow of the earth can be seen during any eclipse of the moon; therefore, all who see that shadow on the moon's disk know, or ought to know, that the earth is ball-shaped.

Another reason given by Aristotle is that the alt.i.tude of any star above the horizon changes when the observer travels north or south. For example, if at London a star appears to be 40 above the northern horizon, and at York the same star at the same instant appears 42-1/2, it is evident that 2-1/2 is the difference (increase) of alt.i.tude at York compared with London. Such an observation shows that the road from London to York is not over a flat, level plane, but over the curved surface of a sphere, the arc of a circle, in fact.

Herodotus, the father of history, was a good geographer and an experienced traveler, yet his only conception of the world was as a flat, wide-extending surface. In Egypt he was told how Pharaoh Necho had sent a crew of Phenicians to explore the coast of Africa by setting out from the Red Sea, and how they sailed south till they had _the sun on their right hand_. "Absurd!" says Herodotus, in his nave manner, "this story I can not believe." In Egypt, as in Greece or Europe generally, the sun rises on the left hand, and at noon casts a shadow pointing north; whereas in South Africa the sun at noon casts a shadow pointing south, and sunrise is therefore on the _right hand_. The honest sailors had told the truth; they had merely "crossed the line," without knowing it. If Herodotus had known that the world was spherical or ball-shaped, he could easily have understood that by traveling due south the sun must at last appear at noon to the north instead of the south. A counterpart to the story of the Phenician sailors occurs in Pliny: he tells how some amba.s.sadors came to the Roman Emperor Claudius from an island in the south of Asia, and when in Italy were much astonished to see the sun at noon to the south, casting shadows to the north. They also wondered, he says, to see the Great Bear and other groups of stars which had never been visible in their native land (Nat. Hist., vi, 22).

That there were islands or even a continent in the Western Ocean was a tradition not infrequent in cla.s.sical and medieval times, as we shall presently see, but to place a continent in the Southern Ocean was a greater stretch of imagination. The great outstanding problem of the sources of the Nile probably suggested this Southern Continent to some.

Ptolemy, the great Egyptian geographer, even formed the conjecture that the Southern Continent was joined to Africa by a broad isthmus, as indicated in certain maps. Such a connection of the two continents would at once dispose of the story that the Phenician sailors had "doubled the Cape." In several maps after the time of Columbus, Australia is extended westward in order to pa.s.s muster for the Southern Continent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Imaginary Continent, south of Africa and Asia. [The cardinal points are shown by the four winds.] Beginning of the fifteenth century. The word Brumae = the winter solstices.]

It is with a Western Continent, however, that we are now mainly concerned. What lands were imagined by the ancients in the far West under the setting sun? The mighty ocean beyond Spain was to the Greeks and Latins a place of dread and mystery.

"Stout was his heart and girt with triple bra.s.s," says the Roman poet, "who first hazarded his weak vessel on the pitiless ocean."

Even the western parts of the Mediterranean were shrunk from, according to the Odyssey, without speaking of the horrors of the great ocean beyond. "Beyond Gades," i. e., scarcely outside of the Pillars of Hercules, the extreme limit of the ancient world, "no man," said Pindar, "however daring, could pa.s.s; only a G.o.d might voyage those waters!"

In spite of the dread which the ancient mariners felt for the great Western Ocean, their poets found it replete with charm and mystery. The imagination rested upon those golden sunsets, and the tales of marvel which, after long intervals, sea-borne sailors had told of distant lands in the West. The poets placed there the happy home destined for the souls of heroes. Thus (Odys. iv, 561):

No snow Is there, nor yet great storm nor any rain, But always ocean sendeth forth the breeze Of the shrill West, and bloweth cool on men.

So far Homer. His contemporary, Hesiod, thus describes the Elysian Fields as islands under the setting sun:

There on Earth's utmost limits Zeus a.s.signed A life, a seat, distinct from human kind, Beside the deepening whirlpools of the Main, In those blest Isles where Saturn holds his reign, Apart from Heaven's immortals calm they share, A rest unsullied by the clouds of care: And yearly thrice with sweet luxuriance crown'd Springs the ripe harvest from the teeming Ground.

The poet Pindar places in the same mysterious West "the castle of Chronos" (i. e., "Old Time"), "where o'er the Isles of the Blest ocean breezes blow, and flowers gleam with gold, some from the land on glistening trees, while others the water feeds; and with bracelets of these they entwine their hands, and make crowns for their heads."

_Vesper_, the star of evening, was called Hesperus by the Greeks; and hence the Hesperides, daughters of the Western Star, had the task of watching the golden apples planted by the G.o.ddess Hera in the garden of the G.o.ds, on the other side of the river Ocea.n.u.s. One of the labors of Hercules was to fetch three of those mystic apples for the king of Mycenae. The poet Euripides thus refers to the Gardens of the West, when the Chorus wish to fly "over the Adriatic wave":

Or to the famed Hesperian plains, Whose rich trees bloom with gold, To join the grief-attuned strains My winged progress hold; Beyond whose sh.o.r.es no pa.s.sage gave The Ruler of the purple wave.

Of all the lands imagined to lie in the Western Ocean by the Greeks, the most important was "Atlantis." Some have thought it may possibly have been a prehistoric discovery of America. In any case it has exercised the ingenuity of a good many modern scientists. The tale of Atlantis we owe to Plato himself, who perhaps learned it in Egypt, just as Herodotus picked up there the account of the circ.u.mnavigation of Africa by the Phenician mariners.

"When Solon was in Egypt," says Plato, "he had talk with an aged priest of Sais who said, 'You Greeks are all children: you know but of one deluge, whereas there have been many destructions of mankind both by flood and fire.'... In the distant Western Ocean lay a continent larger than Libya and Asia together."...

In this Atlantis there had grown up a mighty state whose kings were descended from Poseidon and had extended their sway over many islands and over a portion of the great continent; even Libya up to the gates of Egypt, and Europe as far as Tyrrhenia, submitted to their sway.... Afterward came a day and night of great floods and earthquakes; Atlantis disappeared, swallowed by the waves.

Geologists and geographers have seriously tried to find evidence of Atlantis having existed in the Atlantic, whether as a portion of the American continent, or as a huge island in the ocean which could have served as a stepping-stone between the Western World and the Eastern.

From a series of deep-sea soundings ordered by the British, American, and German Governments, it is now very well known that in the middle of the Atlantic basin there is a ridge, running north and south, whose depth is less than 1,000 fathoms, while the valleys east and west of it average 3,000 fathoms. At the Azores the North Atlantic ridge becomes broader. The theory is that a part of the ridge-plateau was the Atlantis of Plato that "disappeared swallowed by the waves." (Nature, xv, 158, 553, xxvii, 25; Science, June 29, 1883.)

Buffon, the naturalist, with reference to fauna and flora, dated the separation of the new and old world "from the catastrophe of Atlantis"

(Epoques, ix, 570); and Sir Charles Lyell confessed a temptation to "accept the theory of an Atlantis island in the northern Atlantic."

(Geology, p. 141.)

The following account "from an historian of the fourth century B. C." is another possible reference to a portion of America--from a translation "delivered in English," 1576.

Selenus told Midas that without this worlde there is a continent or percell of dry lande which in greatnesse (as hee reported) was unmeasureable; that it nourished and maintained, by the benifite of the greene meadowes and pasture plots, sundrye bigge and mighty beastes; that the men which inhabite the same climate exceede the stature of us twise, and yet the length of there life is not equale to ours.

The historian Plutarch, in his Morals, gives an account of Ogygia, with an illusion to a continent, possibly America:

An island, Ogygia, lies in the arms of the Ocean, about five days'

sail west from Britain.... The adjacent sea is termed the Saturnian, and the continent by which the great sea is circularly environed is distant from Ogygia about 5,000 stadia, but from the other islands not so far.... One of the men paid a visit to the great island, as they called Europe. From him the narrator learned many things about the state of men after death--the conclusion being that the souls of men arrive at the Moon, wherein lie the Elysian Fields of Homer.

The Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, has a similar account with curious details of an "island" which might very well have been part of a continent. Columbus believed to the last that Cuba was a continent.

In the ocean, at the distance of several days' sailing to the west, there lies an island watered by several navigable rivers. Its soil is fertile, hilly, and of great beauty.... There are country houses handsomely constructed, with summer-houses and flower-beds.

The hilly district is covered with dense woods and fruit-trees of every kind. The inhabitants spend much time in hunting and thus procure excellent food. They have naturally a good supply of fish, their sh.o.r.es being washed by the ocean.... In a word this island seems a happy home for G.o.ds rather than for men (v. 19).

Another Greek writer, Lucian, in one of his witty dialogues, refers to an island in the Atlantic, that lies eighty days' sail westward of the Pillars of Hercules--the extreme limit of the ancient world, as has already been seen. Readers of Henry Fielding and admirers of Squire Westers will remember how in the London of the eighteenth century the limits of Piccadilly westward was a tavern at Hyde Park corner called the _Hercules' Pillars_, on the site of the future Apsley House.[1]

Although neither Greek nor Roman navigators were likely to attempt a voyage into the ocean beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, yet a trading vessel from Carthage or Phenicia might easily have been driven by an easterly gale into, or even across, the Atlantic. Some involuntary discoveries were no doubt due to this chance, and the reports brought to Europe were probably the germs of such tales as the poets invented about the fair regions of the West. In Celtic literature, moreover, "Avalon"

was placed far under the setting sun beyond the ocean--Avalon or "Glas-Inis" being to the bards the Land of the Dead, marvelous and mysterious.

[Footnote 1: Tom Jones, xvi. chap. 2, 3, etc.]

In English literature of the middle ages there is a remarkable pa.s.sage relating to our present subject, which was written long before that rise of the New Learning mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. It is a statement made by Roger Bacon, the greatest of Oxonian scholars of the thirteenth century, who, long before the Renascence, did much to restore the study of science, especially in geography, chronology, and optics.

In his Opus Majus, the elder Bacon wrote:

More than the fourth part of the earth which we inhabit is still unknown to us.... It is evident therefore that between the extreme West and the confines of India, there must be a surface which comprises more than half the earth.

Though Roger Bacon, to use his own words, died "unheard, forgotten, buried," our recent historians place his name first in the great roll of modern science.

There now remains only one quotation to make from the ancients. We have been reserving it for two reasons--first, because it is a singularly happy antic.i.p.ation of the discovery of the New World, so happy that it became a favorite stanza with the discoverer himself. This we learn from the life of the "Great Admiral," written by his son Ferdinand.

Secondly, because it adorns our t.i.tle-page and has been characterized as "a lucky prophecy"--written in the first century A. D. The author, Seneca, was a dramatist as well as a philosopher, the lines occurring at the end of one of his choruses--Medea, 376. We may thus translate the prophetic stanza:

For at a distant date this ancient world Will westward stretch its bounds, and then disclose Beyond the Main a vast new Continent, With realms of wealth and might.

CHAPTER I

PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERIES OF AMERICA

1 _Norse Discovery._--By glancing at a map of the north Atlantic, the reader will at once see that the natural approach from Europe to the Western Continent was by Iceland and Greenland--especially in those early days when ocean navigation was unknown. Iceland is nearer to Greenland than to Norway; and Greenland is part of America. But in Iceland there were Celtic settlers in the early centuries; and even King Arthur, according to the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, sailed north to that "Ultima Thule." During the ninth century a Christian community had been established there under certain Irish monks. This early civilization, however, was destined to become presently extinct.