"W. Scott-Elliot - Atlantis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elliot W Scott)

age, having long before developed out of wild forms akin to the buffalo of
America. Remains of the cave-lion of Europe are also found in North America.
Turning now from the animal to the vegetable kingdom it appears that the greater
part of the flora of the Miocene age in Europe--found chiefly in the fossil beds
of Switzerland--exist at the present day in America, some of them in Africa. But
the noteworthy fact about America is that while the greater proportion are to be
found in the Eastern States, very many are wanting on the Pacific coast. This
seems to show that it was from the Atlantic side that they entered the
continent. Professor Asa Gray says that out of 66 genera and 155 species found
in the forest east of the Rocky Mountains, only 31 genera and 78 species are
found west of these heights.
But the greatest problem of all is the plantain or banana. Professor Kuntze, an
eminent German botanist, asks, "In what way was this plant" (a native of
tropical Asia and Africa) "which cannot stand a voyage through the temperate
zone, carried to America?" As he points out, the plant is seedless, it cannot be
propagated by cuttings, neither has it a tuber which could be easily
transported. Its root is treelike. To transport it special care would be
required, nor could it stand a long transit. The only way in which he can
account for its appearance in America is to suppose that it must have been
transported by civilized man at a time when the polar regions had a tropical
climate! He adds, "a cultivated plant which does not possess seeds must have
been under culture for a very long period ... it is perhaps fair to infer that
these plants were cultivated as early as the beginning of the Diluvial period."
Why, it may be asked, should not this inference take us back to still earlier
times, and where did the civilization necessary for the plant's cultivation
exist, or the climate and circumstances requisite for its transportation, unless
there were at some time a link between the old world and the new?
Professor Wallace in his delightful Island Life, as well as other writers in
many important works, has put forward ingenious hypotheses to account for the
identity of flora and fauna on widely separated lands, and for their transit
across the ocean, but all are unconvincing, and all break down at different
points.
It is well known that wheat as we know it has never existed in a truly wild
state, nor is there any evidence tracing its descent from fossil species. Five
varieties of wheat were already cultivated in Europe in the stone age--one
variety found in the "Lake Dwellings" being known as Egyptian wheat, from which
Darwin argues that the Lake dwellers "either still kept up commercial
intercourse with some southern people, or had originally proceeded as colonists
from the South." He concludes that wheat, barley, oats, etc., are descended from
various species now extinct, or so widely different as to escape identification,
in which case he says: "Man must have cultivated cereals from an enormously
remote period." The regions where these extinct species flourished, and the
civilization under which they were cultivated by intelligent selection, are both
supplied by the lost continent whose colonists carried them east and west.
From the fauna and flora we now turn to man.
Similarity of Language
The Basque language stands alone amongst European tongues, having affinity with
none of them. According to Farrar, "there never has been any doubt that this
isolated language, preserving its identity in a western corner of Europe,
between two mighty kingdoms, resembles in its structure the aboriginal languages