The claim immediately reminded me of very similar arguments made by Ignatius Donnelly in Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882). Plato says that in Atlantis there was "a great and wonderful empire," which "aggressed wantonly against the whole of Europe and Asia," thus testifying to the extent of its dominion. It not only subjugated Africa as far as Egypt, and Europe as far as Italy, but it ruled "as well over parts of the continent," to wit, "the opposite continent" of America, "which surrounded the true ocean." Those parts of America over which it ruled were, as we will show hereafter, Central America, Peru, and the Valley of the Mississippi, occupied by the "Mound Builders." It is astonishing that the above paragraph could equally have come from Donnelly’s Atlantis or Hancock’s America Before. The only real way to tell the difference is that Donnelly, being a Victorian, imagined Atlantis engaging in direct colonial rule. Hancock, in a postcolonial world, sees a more diffuse cultural imperialism, something like the impact of Hollywood movies on the Third World. But Donnelly provides the template in more ways than this. Let’s try to identify which passages belong to Donnelly and which to Hancock in the list below: 1. The grave-cists made of stone of the American mounds are exactly like the stone chests, or kistvaen for the dead, found in the British mounds. Tumuli have been found in Yorkshire enclosing wooden coffins, precisely as in the mounds of the Mississippi Valley. The articles associated with the dead are the same in both continents: arms, trinkets, food, clothes, and funeral urns. The odd-numbered passages belong to Donnelly and the even-numbered ones to Hancock. Except for some quaint turns of phrase and some outdated terminology, Donnelly’s passages could slide into America Before unnoticed. I was struck by the “stunningly similar” arguments and evidence, even at more than 135 years’ remove.
5 Comments
William Fitzgerald
4/4/2019 08:38:19 am
"[T]here is nothing new under the sun." Holds true yet again; might even be true for any cultural similarities between isolated groups.
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Scott Hamilton
4/4/2019 09:39:14 am
I got interested in Donnelly's reference to a manatee carving found in Ohio. It looks like the claim comes from Squire and Davis' 1848 book Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, but the effigy S&D identify as a "manatee" clearly isn't. The carving kind of tapers off so it doesn't appear to have hind legs, but it has ears and fingers on its front legs so it's obviously a beaver or an otter.
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Shane Sullivan
4/4/2019 02:26:31 pm
I thought no. 4 must be Hancock since I imagine Donnelly would have said "Chippewa" instead of "Ojibwe", and I had 5 as Donnelly since even "in the direction of Atlantis" is way more geographic specificity than Hancock usually offers. The rest confounded me.
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4/19/2019 12:36:00 am
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7/29/2019 04:08:23 pm
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