Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
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Ignatius Donnelly >> Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
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[1. "American Antiquarian," April, 1878, p. 36.]
{p. 354}
axe-kerf made by some civilized man who wielded a bronze or iron
weapon?
It is a curious fact that _burned_ logs have, in repeated instances,
been exhumed from great depths in the Drift clay.
While this work is going through the press, an article has appeared
in "Harper's Monthly Magazine," (September, 1882, p. 609,) entitled
"The Mississippi River Problem," written by David A. Curtis, in which
the author says:
"When La Salle found out how goodly a land it was, his report was the
warrant of eviction that drove out the red man to make place for the
white, as the mound-builders had made place for the Indian in what we
call the days of old. Yet it must have been only yesterday that the
mound-builders wrought in the valley, for in the few centuries that
have elapsed since then the surface of the ground has risen only a
few feet--not enough to bury their works out of sight. How long ago,
then, must it have been that the race lived there whose pavements and
cisterns of Roman brick now lie _seventy feet underground_?"
Mr. Curtis does not mean that the bricks found in this prehistoric
settlement had any historical connection with Rome, but simply that
they resemble Roman bricks. These remains, I learn, were discovered
in the vicinity of Memphis, Tennessee. The details have not yet, so
far as I am aware, been published.
Is it not more reasonable to suppose that civilized man existed on
the American Continent thirty thousand years ago, (the age fixed by
geologists for the coming of the Drift,) a comparatively short period
of time, and that his works were then covered by the Drift-_débris_,
than to believe that a race of human beings, far enough advanced in
civilization to manufacture bricks, and build pavements and cisterns,
dwelt in the Mississippi Valley, in a past so inconceivably remote
that the slow increase of the soil,
{p. 355}
by vegetable decay, has covered their works to the depth of _seventy
feet_?
I come now to the most singular and marvelous revelation of all:
Professor Alexander Winchell, in an interesting and recent work,[1]
says:
"I had in my possession for some time a copper relic resembling a
rude coin, which was taken from an artesian boring at the depth of
_one hundred and fourteen feet_, at Lawn Ridge, Marshall County,
Illinois.
"Mr. W. H. Wilmot, then of Lawn Ridge, furnished me, in a letter
dated December 4, 1871, the following statement of deposits pierced
in the boring:
Soil 3 feet.
Yellow clay 17 "
Blue clay 44 "
Dark vegetable matter 4 "
Hard purplish clay 18 "
Bright green clay 8 "
Mottled clay 18 "
Soil 2 "
Depth of coin 114 "
Yellow clay 1 "
Sand and clay.
Water, rising 60 feet.
"In a letter of the 27th of December, written from Chillicothe,
Illinois, he stated that the bore was four inches for eighty feet,
and three inches for the remainder of the depth. But before one
hundred feet had been reached the four-inch portion was 'so plastered
over as to be itself but three inches in diameter,' and hence the
'coin' could not have come from any depth less than _eighty feet_.
"'Three persons saw "the coin" at the same instant, and each claims
it.' This so-called coin was about the
[1. "Sparks from a Geologist's Hammer," p. 170.]
{p. 356}
thickness and size of a silver quarter of a dollar, and was of
_remarkably uniform thickness_. It was approximately round, and
_seemed to have been cut_. Its two faces bore marks as shown in the
figure, _but they were not stamped as with a die nor engraved_. They
looked as if _etched_
### ###
COPPER COIN, FOUND ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN FEET UNDER GROUND IN
ILLINOIS.
_with acid_. The character of the marks was partly unintelligible. On
each side, however, was a rude outline of a human figure. One of
these held in one hand an object resembling a child, while the other
was raised as if in the act of striking. The figure wore a
head-dress, apparently made of quills. _Around the border were
undecipherable hieroglyphics_. The figure on the opposite side
extended only to the waist, and had also one hand upraised. This was
furnished _with long tufts like mule's ears_. Around the border was
another circle of hieroglyphics. On this side also was a rude outline
of a quadruped. I exhibited this relic to the Geological Section of
the American Association, at its meeting at Buffalo in 1876. The
general impression seemed to be that its origin could not date from
the epoch of the stratum in which it is represented to have been
found. One person thought he could detect a rude representation of
the signs of the zodiac around the border. Another fancied he could
discover numerals, and even dates. No one could even offer any
explanation of the objects or the circumstances of its discovery. The
figures bear a close resemblance to rude drawings executed on
birch-bark and rock surfaces by the American Indians. _But by what
means were they etched_? And by what means was _the uniform thickness
of the copper produced_?
{p. 357}
This object was sent by the owner to the Smithsonian Institution for
examination, and Secretary Henry referred it to Mr. William E.
Dubois, who presented the result of his investigation to the American
Philosophical Society. _Mr. Dubois felt sure that the object had
passed through a rolling-mill, and he thought the cut edges gave
further evidence of the machine-shop_. 'All things considered,' he
said, 'I can not regard this Illinois piece as _ancient_ nor _old_
(observing the usual distinction), nor yet recent; because the tooth
of time is plainly visible.' He could suggest nothing to clear up the
mystery. Professor J. P. Lesley thought it might be an astrological
amulet. He detected upon it the signs of Pisces and Leo. He read the
date 1572. He said, 'The piece was placed there as a practical joke.'
He thought it might be Hispano-American or French-American in origin.
the suggestion of 'a practical joke' is itself something which must
be taken as a joke. No person in possession of this interesting
object would willingly part with it; least of all would he throw so
small an object into a hole where not one chance in a thousand
existed that it would ever be seen again by any person.
"If this object does not date from the age of the stratum from which
obtained, it can only be a relic of the sixteenth or seventeenth
century, buried beneath the alluvium deposited more recently by the
Illinois River. The country is a level prairie, and 'Peoria Lake' is
an expansion of the river ten miles long and a mile and a half broad.
It is certainly possible that in such a region deep alluvial deposits
may have formed since the visits of the French in the latter part of
the seventeenth century. _But it is not easy to admit an accumulation
of one hundred and fourteen or one hundred and twenty-feet_, since
such a depth extends too much below the surface of the river. In
Whiteside County, fifty miles northwest from Peoria County, about
1851, according to Mr. Moffat, _a large copper ring was found one
hundred and twenty feet beneath the surface_, as also something which
has been compared to a boat-hook. Several other objects have been
found at less depths, including _stone pipes and pottery, and a
spear-shaped hatchet_, MADE OF IRON. If these
{p. 358}
are not 'ancient,' their occurrence at depths of ten, forty, fifty,
and one hundred and twenty feet must be explained as I have suggested
in reference to the 'coin.' An instrument of iron is a strong
indication of the civilized origin of all."
This is indeed an extraordinary revelation. Here we have a copper
medal, very much like a coin, inscribed with alphabetical or
hieroglyphical signs, which, when placed under the microscope, in the
hands of a skeptical investigator, satisfies him that it is not
recent, and that it _passed through a rolling-mill and was cut by a
machine_.
If it is not recent, if the tooth of time is plainly seen on it, it
is not a modern fraud; if it is not a modern fraud, then it is really
the coin of some pre-Columbian people. The Indians possessed no
currency or alphabet, so that it dates back of the red-men. Nothing
similar has been found in the hundreds of American mounds that have
been opened, so that it dates back of the mound-builders.
It comes from a depth of _not less than eighty feet in glacial clay_,
therefore it is profoundly ancient.
It is engraved after a method _utterly unknown to any civilized
nation on earth, within the range of recorded history_. IT IS
ENGRAVED WITH ACID!
It belongs, therefore, to a civilization unlike any we know of. If it
had been derived from any other human civilization, the makers, at
the same time they borrowed the round, metallic form of the coin,
would have borrowed also the mold or the stamp. But they did not; and
yet they possessed a rolling-mill and a machine to cut out the coin.
What do we infer? That there is a relationship between our
civilization and this, but it is a relationship in which this
represents the parent; and the round metallic
{p. 359}
coins of historical antiquity were derived from it, but without the
art of engraving by the use of acid.
It does not stand alone, but at great depths in the same clay
_implements of copper and of_ IRON _are found_.
What does all this indicate?
That far below the present level of the State of Illinois, in the
depths of the glacial clays, about one hundred or one hundred and
twenty feet below the present surface of the land, there are found
the evidences of a high civilization. For a coin with an inscription
upon it implies a high civilization:--it implies an alphabet, a
literature, a government, commercial relations, organized society,
regulated agriculture, which could alone sustain all these; and some
implement like a plow, without which extensive agriculture is not
possible; and this in turn implies domesticated animals to draw the
plow. The presence of the coin, and of implements of copper and iron,
proves that mankind had passed far beyond the Stone Age. And these
views are confirmed by the pavements and cisterns of brick found
seventy feet below the surface in the lower Mississippi Valley.
There is a Pompeii, a Herculaneum, somewhere, underneath central and
northwestern Illinois or Tennessee, of the most marvelous character;
not of Egypt, Assyria, or the Roman Empire, things of yesterday, but
belonging to an inconceivable antiquity; to pre-glacial times; to a
period ages before the flood of Noah;--a civilization which was
drowned and deluged out of sight under the immeasurable clay-flood of
the comet.
Man crawled timidly backward into the history of the past over his
little limit of six thousand years; and at the farther end of his
tether he found the perfect civilization of early Egypt. He rises to
his feet and looks still backward, and the vista of history spreads
and
{p. 360}
spreads to antediluvian times. Here at last he thinks he has reached
the beginning of things: here man first domesticated the animals;
here he first worked in copper and iron; here he possessed for the
first time an alphabet, a government, commerce, and coinage. And, lo!
from the bottom of well-holes in Illinois, one hundred and fourteen
feet deep, the buckets of the artesian-well auger bring up copper
rings and iron hatchets and engraved coins--engraved by a means
unknown to historical mankind--and we stand face to face with a
civilization so old that man will not willingly dare to put it into
figures.
Here we are in the presence of that great, but possibly brutal and
sensual development of man's powers, "the sword-ages, the axe-ages,
the murder-ages of the Goths," of which God cleared the earth when he
buried the mastodon under the Drift for ever.
How petty, how almost insignificant, how school-boy-like are our
historians, with their little rolls of parchment under their arms,
containing their lists of English, Roman, Egyptian, and Assyrian
kings and queens, in the presence of such stupendous facts as these!
Good reader, your mind shrinks back from such conceptions, of course.
But can you escape the facts by shrinking back? Are they not there?
Are they not all of a piece--Job, Ovid, Rama, Ragnarok, Genesis, the
Aztec legends; the engraved ivory tablets of the caves, the pottery,
the carved figures of pre-glacial Europe; the pottery-strata of
Louisiana under the Drift; the copper and iron implements, the brick
pavements and cisterns, and this coin, dragged up from well-holes in
Illinois?
And what do they affirm?
That this catastrophe was indeed THE FALL OF MAN.
Think what a fall!
From comfort to misery; from plowed fields to the
{p. 361}
thistles and the stones; from sunny and glorious days in a stormless
land to the awful trials of the Drift Age; the rains, the cold, the
snow, the ice, the incessant tempests, the darkness, the poverty, the
coats of hides, the cave-life, the cannibalism, the Stone Age.
Here was a fall indeed.
There is nothing in antiquity that has not a meaning. The very fables
of the world's childhood should be sacred from our laughter.
Our theology, even where science has most ridiculed it, is based on a
great, a gigantic truth. Paradise, the summer land of fruits, the
serpent, the fire from heaven, the expulsion, the waving sword, the
"fall of man," the "darkness on the face of the deep," the age of
toil and sweat--all, all, are literal facts.
And could we but penetrate their meaning, the trees of life and
knowledge and the apples of paradise probably represent likewise
great and important facts or events in the history of our race.
And with what slow steps did mankind struggle upward! In some favored
geographical center they recovered the arts of metallurgy, the
domestication of animals, and the alphabet.
"All knowledge," says the Hindoo Krishna, "was originally bestowed on
mankind by God. They lost it. They recovered it as a recollection."
The poor barbarian Indians of America possess traditions of this
ancient civilization, traditions in forms as rude as their own
condition.
It was represented by the Great Hare, Manibozho, or Nanaboshu.
Do we not find his typical picture, with those great mule-tufts,
(referred to by Professor Winchell,) the hare-like ears, on this coin
of Illinois?
{p. 362}
Read what the Indians tell of this great being
"From the remotest wilds of the Northwest," says Dr. Brinton, "to the
coast of the Atlantic, from the southern boundaries of Carolina to
the cheerless swamps of Hudson's Bay, the Algonquins were never tired
of gathering around the winter fire and repeating the story of
Manibozho or Michabo, the _Great Hare_. With entire unanimity their
various branches, the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenni-Lenape of the
Delaware, the warlike hordes of New England, the Ottawas of the far
North, and the Western tribes, perhaps without exception, spoke of
this 'chimerical beast,' as one of the old missionaries calls it as
_their common ancestor_. The totem or clan which bore his name was
looked up to with peculiar respect. . . .
"What he really was we must seek in the accounts of older travelers,
in the invocations of the _jossakeeds_ or prophets, and in the part
assigned to him in the solemn mysteries of religion. In these we find
him portrayed as the patron and founder of the Meda worship, _the
inventor of picture-writing_, the father and guardian of their
nation, the ruler of the winds, even the maker and preserver of the
world and creator of the sun and moon. From a grain of sand brought
from the bottom of the primeval ocean, he fashioned the habitable
land, and set it floating on the waters till it grew to such a size
that a strong young wolf, running constantly, died of old age ere he
reached its limits. . . . He was the founder of the medicine-hunt. .
. . He himself was a _mighty hunter_ of old. . . . Attentively
watching the spider spread its web to trap unwary flies, _he devised
the art of knitting nets to catch fish_."[1]
This is a barbarian's recollection of a great primeval civilized race
who established religion, invented nets, and, as the other legends
concerning him show, first made the bow and arrow and worked in the
metals.
There is every reason to think the division of the people into
several classes, or families, who take the name of
[1. "Myths of the New World," p. 175.]
{p. 363}
some animal whose picture is their _totem_, dates back to the very
beginning of the human race. The animal fables, as I have suggested,
grew out of these animal _totems_; we find them everywhere among the
American tribes; and in some cases they are accompanied by mental and
physical traits which may be supposed to indicate that they
originated in primal race differences. This is the belief of Warren,
the native historian of the Ojibways. I am indebted to Hon. H. Al.
Rice, of St. Paul, for an opportunity to examine his valuable
manuscript history of that tribe of Indians.
The great _totem_ of the Algonquins is the Hare; he represents a
ruling class, and is associated with recollections of this Great
Hare, this demi-god, this man or race, who taught them all the arts
of life with which they are acquainted. Then there is a _turtle
totem_, associated with myths of the turtle or tortoise, which are
the images all over the world of an island.[1]
And when we cross the Atlantic we find[2] that the Arabs are divided
up in the same way into tribes bearing animal names.
"_Asad_, lion; 'a number of tribes.' _Aws_, wolf; 'a tribe of the
Ancar, or Defenders.' _Badau_, ibex; 'a tribe of the Kalb and
others.' _Tha'laba_, she-fox; 'a name of tribes.' _Garad_, locusts;
'a sub-tribe of the Azol.' _Thawr_, bull; 'a sub-tribe of Hamdan and
of Abel Manah.' _Gahah_, colt of an ass; 'a sub-tribe of the Arabs.'
_Hida'_, kite; 'a sub-tribe of Murad.'
"The origin of all names is referred, in the genealogical system of
the Arabs, to an ancestor who bore the tribal or gentile name. Thus
the _Kalb_ or dog-tribe consists of the Beni-Kalb--sons of Kalb (the
dog), who is in turn son of Wabra (the female rock-badger), son of
Tha'laba
[1. Tylor's "Early History of Mankind."
2. W. J. F. Maclennan, "Fortnightly Review," 1869 and 1870.]
{p. 364}
(the she-fox), great-grandson of Quoda'a, grandson of Saba', the
Sheba of Scripture. A single member of the tribe is Kalbi--a
Kalbite--_Caninus_."
"The same names which appear as _totem_ tribes reach through Edom,
Midian, and Moab, into the land of Canaan."[1]
Among the Jews there was the stock of the serpent, Nashon, to which
David belonged; and there is no doubt that they were once divided
into totemic families.
And in all this we see another proof of the race-identity of the
peoples on the opposite sides of the Atlantic.
Permit me to close this chapter with a suggestion:
Is there not energy enough among the archćologists of the United
States to make a thorough examination of some part of the deep clay
deposits of Central Illinois or of those wonderful remains referred
to by Mr. Curtis?
If one came and proved that at a given point he had found indications
of a coal-bed or a gold-mine, he would have no difficulty in
obtaining means enough to dig a shaft and excavate acres. Can not the
greed for information do one tenth as much as the greed for profit?
Who can tell what extraordinary revelations wait below the vast mass
of American glacial clay? For it must be remembered that the articles
already found have been discovered in the narrow holes bored or dug
for wells. How small is the area laid bare by such punctures in the
earth compared with the whole area of the country in which they are
sunk! How remarkable that _anything_ should have been found under
such circumstances! How probable, therefore, that the remains of man
are numerous at a certain depth!
Where a coin is found we might reasonably expect to
[1. W. J. F. Maclennan, "Fortnightly Review," 1869 and 1870.]
{p. 365}
find other works of copper, and all those things which would
accompany the civilization of a people working in the metals and
using a currency,--such as cities, houses, temples, etc. Of course,
such things might exist, and yet many shafts might be sunk without
coming upon any of them. But is not the attempt worth making?
{p. 366}
CHAPTER II.
THE SCENE OF MAN'S SURVIVAL
LET us pass to another speculation:
The reader is not constrained to accept my conclusions. They will, I
trust, provoke further discussion, which may tend to prove or
disprove them.
But I think I can see that many of these legends point to an island,
east of America and west of Europe, that is to say in the Atlantic
Ocean, as the scene where man, or at least our own portion of the
human race, including the white, yellow, and brown races, survived
the great cataclysm and renewed the civilization of the pro-glacial
age and that from this center, in the course of ages, they spread
east and west, until they reached the plains of Asia and the islands
of the Pacific.
The negro race, it seems probable, may have separated from our own
stock in pre-glacial times, and survived, in fragments, somewhere in
the land of torrid heats, probably in some region on which the Drift
did not fall.
We are told by Ovid that it was the tremendous heat of the comet-age
that baked the negro black; in this Ovid doubtless spoke the opinion
of antiquity. Whether or not that period of almost insufferable
temperature produced any effect upon the color of that race I shall
not undertake to say; nor shall I dare to assert that the white race
was bleached to its present complexion by the long absence of the sun
during the Age of Darkness.
{p. 367}
It is true Professor Hartt tells us[1] that there is a marked
difference in the complexion of the Botocudo Indians who have lived
in the forests of Brazil and those, of the same tribe, who have dwelt
on its open prairies; and that those who have resided for hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of years in the dense forests of that tropical
land are nearly white in complexion. If this be the case in a merely
leaf-covered tract, what must have been the effect upon a race
dwelling for a long time in the remote north, in the midst of a humid
atmosphere, enveloped in constant clouds, and much of the time in
almost total darkness?
There is no doubt that here and then were developed the rude,
powerful, terrible "ice-giants" of the legends, out of whose
ferocity, courage, vigor, and irresistible energy have been evolved
the dominant races of the west of Europe--the land-grasping,
conquering, colonizing races; the men of whom it was said by a Roman
poet, in the Viking Age: "The sea is their school of war and the
storm their friend they are sea-wolves that prey on the pillage of
the world."
They are now taking possession of the globe.
Great races are the weeded-out survivors of great sufferings.
What are the proofs of my proposition that man survived on an
Atlantic island?
In the first place we find Job referring to "the _island_ of the
innocent."
In chapter xxii, verse 29, Eliphaz, the Temanite, says
When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and
he shall save the humble person."
Where shall he save him? The next verse (30) seems to tell
[1. "The Geology of Brazil," p. 589.]
{p. 368}
"He shall deliver _the island of the innocent_: and _it is delivered_
by the pureness of thine [Job's] hands."
And, as I have shown, in Genesis it appears that, after the Age of
Darkness, God separated the floods which overwhelmed the earth and
made a firmament, a place of solidity, a refuge, (chap. i, vs. 6, 7,)
"in the midst of the waters." A firm place in the _midst_ of the
waters is necessarily an island.
And the location of this Eden was westward from. Europe, for we read,
(chap. iii, v. 24):
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