Atlantis, the Antediluvian World

Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901), lawyer, land promoter, politician and virtuoso author, is today best known for his pioneering work on the subject of Atlantis, “Atlantis the Antediluvian World”, published in 1882. Atlantis the Antediluvian World is one of the best constructed Atlantis theories, as it makes no recourse to occult or ‘channeled’ information.

Ignatius Donnelly

The God Odi, Woden, or Wotan

In the Scandinavian mythology the chief god was Odin, the Woden, Wotan, or Wuotan of the Germans. He is represented with many of the attributes of the Greek god Zeus.

Not alone were the gods of the Greeks the deified kings of Atlantis, but we find that the mythology of the Phœnicians was drawn from the same source.

Peru, worshipping the sun and moon and planets, probably represents very closely the simple and primitive religion of Atlantis

Ignatius Donnelly

Traditions of Atlantis

Among the Arabians the first inhabitants of that country are known as the Adites, from their progenitor, who is called Ad, the grandson of Ham.

An examination of the American monuments shows that the people represented were in the habit of flattening the skull by artificial means.

Ignatius Donnelly

The Bronze Age in Europe

The Phœnicians, so far as we know them, were well acquainted with the use of iron.

Ignatius Donnelly

The Origin of Our Alphabet

According to the Phœnicians, the art of writing was invented by Taautus, or Taut, ‘whom the Egyptians call Thouth,’ and the Egyptians said it was invented by Thouth.

They built it to reach the sun–that is to say, as a sun-temple; while in the Bible record Babel was built to perpetuate the glory of its architects.

Ignatius Donnelly

The Question of Complexion

We have already seen that the Mandans preserved an image of the ark, and possessed legends of a clearly Atlantean character

Ignatius Donnelly

Corroborating Circumstances

Whence comes the word Atlantic? The dictionaries tell us that the ocean is named after the mountains of Atlas; but whence did the Atlas mountains get their name?

ON the monuments of Central America there are representations of bearded men. How could the beardless American Indians have imagined a bearded race?

Architecture.–Plato tells us that the Atlanteans possessed architecture; that they built walls, temples, and palaces.

Ignatius Donnelly

Civilization an Inheritance

I shall undertake to show hereafter that nearly all the arts essential to civilization which we possess date back to the time of Atlantis.

Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea, and then that sea became inaccessible, so that navigation on it ceased, on account of the quantity of mud which the ingulfed island left in its place.

Ignatius Donnelly

The Deluge Legends of America

America traditions of the Deluge coming infinitely nearer to that of the Bible than among any people of the Old World.

A collection of the Deluge legends of other nations will throw light upon the Biblical and Chaldean records of that great event.

Ignatius Donnelly

The Deluge of the Bible

It will be more and more evident as we proceed in the consideration of the Flood legends of other nations, that the Antediluvian World was none other than Atlantis

An event amid horrible convulsions, with all its vast population–that population the ancestors of the great races of both continents.

Ignatius Donnelly

The Deluge of the Chaldeans

Cronos (Ea) appeared to him in his sleep, and announced that on the fifteenth of the month of Daisios all men should perish by a flood.

The pervasive reverence for the Cross, the myth of the Garden of Eden, and the construction of pyramids across ancient civilizations point to a shared cultural memory and religious symbolism