For years I have been endeavoring to persuade people of the need for
the exploration in the Caribbean area, as it has always seemed to me that if we
could manage to establish a partial bridge over the gap separating the
beginnings of culture in central America in the BC 300 and the establishment of
the Maya Calendar some 8,500 years earlier, we should have gone a long way
towards producing concrete evidence of the existence of Atlantean
Culture which in its death throes gave birth to several flourishing cultures
including those which existed in Mexico until the arrival of the Spaniards. The
problem is rendered more interesting by the fact that many nations of the Old
World managed to reach America
in the distant past and of them the great majority landed in the Caribbean area. The traces of their passage are usually
confided geographical names, occasionally artifacts, plus memories of myth and
legend. Since the end of the second world war there has been a quickening of
interest in the possibilities of the Caribbean and the news that Dr. valentine
of Miami is to undertake fresh research work this year has impelled me to dig
in my records and see exactly what has occurred in the last twenty years and to
take note of anything which might facilitate current research. The key factor
is the realization that the Maya who arrived on the mainland complete with a
knowledge of writing, of mathematics, of astronomy, of architecture, of
medicine, and with a calendrical system which was
more accurate than that used in Europe until the 18th century. The
usual assumption that they had picked up in a hundred years or less the
knowledge which it took the western world two thousand or more years to acquire
seems to me to be unrelated either to historical precedent or to common sense. The
Cause
To start the ball rolling I propose to quote the two most disputed
statements as to the Caribbean aspect of the
catastrophe, those of Le Plongeon and Paul Schliemann . Le Plongeon’s
translation from the Troano Codex, now in Madrid,
which is given below contains what may be the first use of the term
"Mu", since the hypothetical continent of Lemuria
was concieved by the Sclater
Brothers in 1889, although Blavatskaya wrote of Lemuria in her "Secret Doctrine" about the same
time, the abbreviation was that of Le Plongeon,
although it may have occurred in the process of translation. "In the year Okan, on 11 Mulac, in the month Zac, there occurred terrific
earthquakes which continued without interruption until 13 Chuen.
The country of the Hills of Mud, TheLand of Mu,
was sacrificed. Being twice upheaved it disappeared
during the night, being continually shaken by fires of the under earth. Being
confined these caused the land to sink and to rise several times and in various
places. At least the surface gave way, and then ten countries were torn asunder
and were scattered. They sank with their 64 million of inhabitants eight
thousand years before this book was written."
Le Plongeon and his wife Alice spent their
lives investigating the antiquities of Mexico and although many of their
readings are disputed, in the absence of any satisfactory alternative, there
can be no possible doubt about their integrity and sincerity. His translation
bears a considerable likeness to that of Brasseur de Bourbours many years earlier. Paul Schliemann flashed into
the sky like a meteor in 1912 with his story of the loss of Atlantis, which was
to have been followed by an extensive thesis on that subject. Unfortunately
young Schliemann became involved with the preparations for the First World War
in which he was to die in the service of the Fatherland. His widow later
married a certain Tsaldaris, later to become Premier
of Greece
and a very well known statesman. In spite of many efforts I have never managed
to extract any documentation from this source, although I understand that all
Schliemann’s papers are still in the bank vault in Athens. Practically everybody who was concerned
with the publication of the story in the Hearst Press,
is now dead and the prospects of finding out what actually happened are
depressingly small. Here is his account of the Atlantis disaster which has been
quoted, usually erroneously, by many enthusiasts since his publication.
"When the star Bal fell on the place
where there is now only sea and sky, the Seven Cities with their Golden
Gates and their TransparentTemples quivered and shook
like the leaves of a tree in a storm. And, behold,
a flood of fire and smoke arose from the palaces. Agony and the cries of the
multitude filled the air. And the wise Mu, the hieratic of Ra-Mu, arose and
said to them: "Did I not predict all this?" And the women and the men
in their precious stones and shinning garments lamented: "Mu, save us’.
And Mu replied: ‘You shall die together with your slaves and your riches,
and from your ashes shall arise new nations. If they
forget that they are superior not because of what they put on but of what they
put out, the same lot will befall them’. Flame and Smoke choked the words
of Mu. The land and its inhabitants were torn to pieces and swallowed by the
depths within a few moments."
There is also a similar story of a cosmic disaster in the Book of ChilamBalam a translation of which
is given below:
"During the eighth Ahau the Katouns and the Ahaus were
changed." This occurred after the destruction of the Itzae
Culture by the nahoah invaders and the subsequent
marked changes made in the religious and astronomical codes. It was then that
the sun worship which had reigned from time immemorial began to be taken over
by a lunar cult. (Probably as the result of some cosmic
catastrophe.)
"During one of the cycles of the Maya Calendar the Red spirit of
the earth came out to attack the Thirteen Gods who watched over the Maya
peoples but the unexpected occurred. The cosmic group of the Nine Gods attacked
the Thirteen gods and defeated them. There were
frightful rains, cinders dropped from the air, the earth quaked, the rocks
split, the trees were struck down. The Great Serpent,
symbol of life and light for the Maya vanished from the sky. The Men perished
in great numbers and their souls rose to the thirteenth Heaven to rejoin the
gods. The earth was flooded and the sky fell on the earth. The Bacabs destroyed all." Dr. N. Th. Zhirov
quotes the German writer Otto Muck saying that the Atlantis disaster happened
following the plunge of ‘Planetoid A’ into the sea near Charleston the
resulting earth tremors causing the so called Carolina Bays. The theories of
Muck appear to have been founded on those of F. A. Moulton and W. Schriever in 1932, and of W.
F. Prouty 1952. Muck considered that the planetoid
struck at speeds of 20 klm per second, and that the
event occurred on the 5th June 8,489 BC. The date does not
correspond with that of Professor Filippoff the
French astronomer who fixed it at 7,256 BC, being the time when the
Vernal Equinox passed near Epsilon Canceri.Hinzpeter gives the same date as Muck and mentions Robert Henseling found that the Chinese Annals gave a similar
date. Professor M. Kamienski of Cracow gives a
date wither of BC 9546 or BC 9540, and considers that the main cause was the
falling off of a portion of halley’s Comet into the
Gulf of Mexico. Professor N. Boneff of Sofia, puts the cause as being an asteroid, presumably in the
same region. Allan H. Kelso de Montogny considers
that the Little Antilles are the Eastern Arc
of the impact crater. Alexis Tolstoi, the Russian
author, gives a graphic picture of the disaster. Unfortunately his book has not
been translated into English. "The earth shook, and suddenly, with
gigantic wave coming from the Boreal regions, the Ocean rose, with a sky
colored ash gray, and swept the surface of the continent. But, nevertheless,
sheltered by the cyclopean walls of the capital city, at the summit of a step
pyramid embellished with golden plates, the Mazaritic
War Lords of Atlantis, took off across the advancing ocean, through the cinders
and the flaming fires towards safety, while behind them, after three sharp
shocks had been felt, the City of the Golden Gates sank beneath the
waves." The Russian poet George V. Golokhvastoff
in his "Fall of Atlantis" a work on the scale of Verdegauer’s
‘Atlantida", gave a vivid description of the
disaster and the causes leading to it.. Thanks to Mr.
H. Eichner of Los Angeles
I have a magnificent set of illustrations to this work done by Andrew Avinoff of Pittsburg
in 1944. Of the actual book itself I have no trace, it
was probably published in Paris
between the two wars. Hugh Soar produced a map showing 78 of the more important
disaster myths of the worlds. Of these less than ten were in the Caribbean, including floods both hot and cold, fire myths,
an Ark myth,
and a tower myth. All the above stories indicate that at some time there was a
great cosmic disaster which effected the Caribbean area. Whether it was a giant meteor, an
asteroid, a portion of a comet, the capture of a moon as visualized by Hoerbiger, or even an errant star as assumed by Winans, the result would have been much the same.The extract from the Book of ChilamBalam gives a hint that the disaster may have taken
place in the previous Maya Calendar round to that which began in8500 BC or so. In that case the discrepancy in
the dates would be quite in order".
