{"id":2649,"date":"2010-06-03T08:42:02","date_gmt":"2010-06-03T08:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/atlantis-the-antediluvian-world\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T18:56:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:56:42","slug":"atlantis-the-antediluvian-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/atlantis-the-antediluvian-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Atlantis: The Antediluvian World"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/em><\/strong>tlantis:<\/em><\/strong> T<\/em><\/strong>he<\/em><\/strong> A<\/em><\/strong>ntediluvian<\/em><\/strong> W<\/em><\/strong>orld<\/em><\/strong> [<\/strong>021<\/strong><\/a>]<\/strong> by Ignatius Donnelly<\/a> was first published by Harper & Bros. of New York in 1882 \"\"<\/a>and is still in print today and continues to fire the imagination of many. Although it contains many assumptions, assertions and errors, it was a daring venture for its time, pulling together data from many disciplines to produce a coherent argument in favour of the reality of Atlantis.<\/p>\n

Donnelly offers his readers the following thirteen propositions at the beginning of his tome, giving the flavour of its contents:<\/p>\n

(1)\u00a0 That there once existed in the Atlantic Ocean<\/a>, opposite the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, a large island, which was the remnant of an Atlantic continent, and known to the ancient world as Atlantis.<\/p>\n

(2)\u00a0 That the description given by Plato is not, as has long been supposed, a fable, but veritable history.<\/p>\n

(3)\u00a0 That Atlantis was the region where man first rose from a state of barbarism to civilisation.<\/p>\n

(4)\u00a0 That it became, in the course of ages, a populous and mighty nation, from whose overflowings the shores of the Gulf of Mexico<\/a>, the Mississippi River, the Amazon, the Pacific coast of South America, the Mediterranean, the west coast of Europe and Africa, the Baltic, the Black Sea and the Caspian were populated by civilised nations.<\/p>\n

(5)\u00a0 That it was the true Antediluvian world; the Garden of Eden<\/a>; the Garden of Hesperides<\/a> \u2013 where the Atlantides<\/a> lived on the River Ocean in the West; the Elysian Fields situated by Homer<\/a> to the west of the Earth; the Gardens of Alcinous \u2013 grandson of Poseidon<\/a> and son of Nausithous, king of the Phaeacians<\/a> of the island of Scheria<\/a>; the Mesomphalous \u2013 or Navel of the Earth, a name given to the Temple at Delphi, which was situated in the crater of an extinct volcano; the Mount Olympus \u2013 of the Greeks; the Asgard \u2013 of the Eddas<\/em>; the focus of the traditions of the ancient nations; representing a universal memory of a great land, where early mankind dwelt for ages in peace and happiness.<\/p>\n

(6)\u00a0 That the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks, the Phoenicians<\/a>, the Hindus, and the Scandinavians were simply the kings, queens, and heroes of Atlantis; and the acts attributed to them in mythology, a confused recollection of real historical events.<\/p>\n

(7)\u00a0 That the mythologies of Egypt<\/a> and Peru<\/a> represented the original religion of Atlantis, which was sun-worship.<\/p>\n

(8)\u00a0 That the oldest colony founded by the Atlanteans was probably in Egypt, whose civilisation was a reproduction of that of the Atlantic island.<\/p>\n

(9)\u00a0 That the implements of the \u2018Bronze Age\u2019 of Europe were derived from Atlantis. The Atlanteans were also the first manufacturers of iron.<\/p>\n

(10)\u00a0 That the Phoenician alphabet, parent of all European alphabets, was derived from an Atlantis alphabet, which was also conveyed from Atlantis to the Maya<\/a> of Central America.<\/p>\n

(11)\u00a0 That Atlantis was the original seat of the Aryan or Indo-European family of nations, as well as of Semitic peoples, and possibly also of Turanian races (of central Asia).<\/p>\n

(12)\u00a0 That Atlantis perished in a terrible convulsion of nature, in which the whole island was submerged by the ocean, with nearly all of its inhabitants.<\/p>\n

(13)\u00a0 That a few persons escaped in ships and on rafts, and carried to the nations east and west tidings of the appalling catastrophe, which has survived to our own time in Flood and Deluge legends in the different nations of the Old and New Worlds.<\/p>\n

Although some of these propositions now appear rather dated and are in some instances factually incorrect, we must keep in mind that they were written over a century\u00a0ago. It is quite possible that without the impetus created by Donnelly\u2019s book, Atlantis would have remained a relatively obscure subject.<\/p>\n

The original text of A<\/em>tlantis<\/em> and that of Donnelly\u2019s sequel, R<\/em>agnarok<\/em>, are now available on a number of sites on the Internet(<\/sup>a<\/sup>)<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

In my view, although I say it with hindsight, all <\/em><\/strong>of Donnelly\u2019s propositions are flawed and unsupported by any realistic interpretation of what Plato wrote. If speculation were a taxable commodity in 1882, Donnelly would have been bankrupted.<\/p>\n

2014 saw the first translation of Donnelly\u2019s Atlantis <\/em>into Sinhalese by the Sri Lankan translator G.R.A. Perera<\/a>(b)<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

(<\/sup>a<\/sup>) <\/sup>Atlantis, the Antediluvian World Index (archive.org)<\/a><\/p>\n

(b)<\/sup> See: https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20140315072609\/https:\/\/www.sundayobserver.lk\/2014\/03\/09\/mon11.asp<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Atlantis: The Antediluvian World [021] by Ignatius Donnelly was first published by Harper & Bros. of New York in 1882 and is still in print today and continues to fire the imagination of many. Although it contains many assumptions, assertions and errors, it was a daring venture for its time, pulling together data from many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,125,105,3013,192,123,108,42,19,3908,90,280,1815,221],"class_list":["post-2649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-atlantic","tag-bronze-age","tag-egypt","tag-g-r-a-perara","tag-hesperides","tag-homer","tag-ignatius-donnelly","tag-mexico","tag-peru","tag-phaeacians","tag-phoenicians","tag-poseidon","tag-ragnarok","tag-scheria"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2649"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66622,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2649\/revisions\/66622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}