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MOONS, MYTHS & MAN.

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December, 1949/January, 1950.

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By H. S. BELLAMY.

CONTENTS
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The Dating of Ancient Timbers and Bonesby Eadio-Active Carbon.
By F. Ashton

By MARGARET A. MURRAY.
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70

ATLANTIS:
The Paradox of History.
By Continenza Angelo

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By J. Cordasco.

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By D. K. Bentham

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By P. L. Collignon.

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RESEARCH CENTRE GROUP.
The Atlantis Research Centre. ^The Hoerbiger Institute,
The Avalon Society,
Founder and Chairman: EGERTON SYKES.
Vice-Chairmen: G. A. TAWSB, H. S. BELLAMY,
L. EDWARDS, J. E. G. BYRNE.
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ATLANTIS THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD.
By Ignatius Donnelly, revised and edited by Egerton Sykes.
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THE THEORY OF HOERBIGER.
By EGERTON SYKES.
The fundam ental queriea of the Atlantis problem are:
Where, When, How, and Why. Reasonably satisfactory
answers have been evolved in the course of time to cover the
first three.
The last query, however, “ W hy,” has remained
UJisolved, most investigators contenting themselves by mereJy
begging the question, or falling back on the earlier platitudeof divine wrath, but without attem pting to elucidate by what
process all the natural forces involved could have been brought
into play.
It was easy enough to say th at there was a sudden tilt of
the axis of the earth, or that the accumulated ice sheets ofthousands of years proceeded at one fell moment to melt, until
the curious began to calculate the amount of force necessary
10 shift the angle of tilt by some fifteen degrees, or the amountof heat necessary to melt some hundreds of millions of tons ofice, and to enquire how they were produced.
Ignatius Donnelly came near to the solution in Ragnarok
when he talked of a comet having caused the great d r if t; while
Comyns Beaumont in one of his earlier books, also put forward
a similar solution; but the real answer eluded them as with somany others. The fact that the bulk of all known comets isvast while their weight is practically nil, rendered some othersolution necessary.
It was left for an A ustrian Engineer, Hans Hoerbiger, who
was investigating the problem of cosmic origins, to produce
unintentionally, the only scientific explanation of the accumu­
lation of the vast masses of water necessary to submerge theAtlantic Continent. Hoerbiger was the owner and Managing
Director of a large engineering works near Vienna, and in theintervals of inventing engineering specialities, he devoted his
attention to the engineering problems involved in the Solar
System. He started his researches in 1894 and some four years
later he met Philip Fauth, a well known German astronomer.
The intellectual partnership thus formed progressed so wellthat Fauth shortly afterw ards became his son-in-law.
In 1913, after fifteen years of work, they presented theirconclusions to the world in a vast tome of some 772 pages,
filled with diagrams and pages of figures, and entitled
Glazialkosmogonie, soon to become the bible of a new science.
The partnership lasted until the death of Hoerbiger in 1931.
F auth following him exactly ten years later.
The English translation of the title is Cosmic Ice Theory,
but as this is too long winded for the Anglo Saxon mind, it is
now generally known as the Moon Capture Theory of Hoerb’ger. The brief recapitulation which follows gives details of
its relationship to the Atlantis question.
W ithin a planetary system such as ours, the space between
65the various bodies of which it is composed—in our ease fromthe Sun to beyond the orbit of Pluto—is not completely empty,
but contains small quantities of rarified gases, mostly producedby the parent sun.
Although Very diffused, these gases are
sufficient, in the course of astronomical time, to cause a slowing
down of the rate at which the planets revolve around the sun
and the moons around the planets.
This slowing down is tosome extent compensated for by an automatic reduction in thesize of the orbit tending to keep the period of rotation relatively
constant, the paths therefora resembling infinitely fine in­wardly converging spirals.
In terms of every day life the track of the planet or moonaround its sun or planet is like the spiral of a gramophone disc,where the period of revolution is constant, while the distancetraversed by the pick-up becomes progressivly shorter withevery revolution. 'The rapid flick in of the sound head whenthe end of the music track is reached resembles the headlong
rush to doom of the planet once the gravitational force of thelarger body is sufficient to draw it out of its orbit.
However, there is one im portant diiference in the planetaryworld, and th at lies in the fact th at the mass momentum oflarge bodies enables them to brush past the diffused gases withgreater ease than in the ease of the small ones, which results inthe sharpness of the angle of the inward spiral being in inverse
proportion to the mass of the body concerned.
Bearing in
mind th at the whole solar system is moving through space on
what is, presumably, an eliptical track around some body, theposition of which is still a m atter for conjecture, the tracks ofplanetary bodies, over long periods of time would resemble
funnels.
Owing to this factor, any small planet between the Earthand Mars would in due course of time spiral past the E arth on
its way towards the Sun, and, would in all probability be cap­
tured by the superior gravitation of the E arth as compared toits own. It appears almost certain th at this has happened not
once, but several times, in our past history, the rain of disinte­
grated m aterial which accompanied the final dissolution ofthese small bodies having in each case marked the end of ageological era, by crushing all that had preceded it, and adding
measurably to the E a rth ’s bulk.
The Cambrian, Silurian, Carboniferous, Mezoic andTertiary deposits appear to have come into being this way, andin the case of the destruction of the Tertiary Satellite we actu­
ally have records in the Eddas, in portions of the Old Testa­
ment, the Book of Enoch, the Book of Revelation, and others.
However none of these events had any direct connection withthe loss of Atlantis, which arose when, some 13,000 years ago,
Luna, then a small planet between the E arth and Mars, which
had for some hundreds of years been approaching uncomfort­
ably near the E arth at its conjunctions, was eventually cap­
tured. Prom the viewpoint of an extra terrestial observer theGOeffect was minimal, merely a slight increase in the water
covered areas near the Equator, with a corresponding shrink­
age near the N orth and South Poles, the vanishing of two of
the smaller continental land masses, and a slight variation in
the tilt.
To our forefathers, however, it was the second greatest
disaster in the whole history of the human race, the first being
the disintegration of the Tertiary Satellite, referred to above.
Although Luna has only one eightieth of the gravitational pullof the Earth, this was sufficient to start a succession of great
tidal waves, drawing the waters away from the Arctic andA ntarctic Seas (a process assisted by the shifting of the North
Pole from somewhere near Peterm anns Peak in Greenland toits present position), tow ards the Tropical and Equatorial belts.
This process, which involved the reduction in the depth of theseas oft' the Norwegian coast by some 800 feet, and the pilingup of an additional' 10,000 to 15,000 feet of w ater over the
A tlantic Island, was accompanied by the flooding of the land­
locked valleys of the M editerranean Sea, the flooding of the
Carribean plain and its transform ation into an Arm of theAtlantic, the submerging of the Atlantic and Pacific continents,
the separation of Ireland from England, of Madeira, theCanaries and the Cap Verde islands from the African Continen­
tal mass, and, last but not least, the creation of the Sargasso
Sea, and the Gulf Stream, by the current swirls set up in the ^waters—“ the fountains of the great deep,” as the Bible calls
them.
Among the minor by-products was the washing up of an
estimable gentleman named Noah, in a ship, with his family
and a large collection of livestock, on the flanks of Mount
Ararat, and the reduction in the length of the Congo river bysome three hundred miles, leaving only the long underw ater
canyons as traces on ocean charts. It was at this time that thestellar trinity came into being with the Moon as a male god.
Venus as a male, and the Sun as a female. It took humanity
many thousands of years to recover from the shock, by whichtime the Sun had become male, and the Moon and Venus
female. In fact, the moon was a masculine god in the Hadramut up to at least 1920, while in modern German it is Der Mondand Die Sonne contrary to the other European languages. The
rythmic influence which the passage of the Moon around the
E arth exercises on our lives may explain why Luna has always
been a wom an’s god rather than a m an’s.
In the Pacific the great island continent of Lemuria, orPan, on Polyneside, was submerged in a similar manner toAtlantis, leaving only the cyclopean remains in the Carolines,
the Marianas, Easter Island, Pitcairn Island, the Society
Islands, the Marquesas, and others, as traces of its existence,
together with a few memories in the mythologies of the races
which succeeded the original inhabitants. Unfortunately, we
have as yet no idea whether one or two island masses were in67

Radio-active isotopes are today a powerful research tool
and are used extensively in medicine, chemistry and biology.
Recently an application of the technique to archaeology has
been suggested; for it should be possible to estimate the ageof ancient tim bers and bones by assaying the radio-activityof the carbon they contain. (F. A. Paneth, Nature 4141, 1949.)
The value of such a method to Atlantologists and otherinvestigators of the era that precedes historical times requires
no emphasis, and the purpose of the present article is to explain
in non-technical terms the principles upon which the method
depends.
Isotopes. According to Bohr’s theory, the atom consistsof a relatively heavy nucleus about which circles a number of“ planetary” electrons. An electron is a particle of negligible
weight which carries an electrical negative charge of 1 unit.
In an un-ionised atom the planetary electrons are sufficientin number to neutralise exactly the positive charge on the
nucleus. Their number determines the chemical properties,
and therefore the identity, of the element.
The positive charge on the nucleus is determined by the
number of protons it contains, for each proton carries a posi­tive charge of one unit. Besides protons the nucleus con­tains neutrons, uncharged particles with precisely the same
masses a§ protons.
The chemical properties of an element

therefore depend upon the number of protons in the nucleiof its atoms, bitt its atomic weight depends upon the numberof protons and neutrons they contain. The number of protons
and neutrons in a nucleus is known as the “ Mass Number” of
its atom.
I t can now be seen that it is possible to have two atoms
with identical chemical properties, but different mass numbers,for, though the number of protons, and therefore the numberof planetary electrons, may be the same, the number of neutrons
may vary. Such atoms are called isotopes, and nearly all theelements have been found to consist of m ixtures of isotopes.
The most abundant isotope of Carbon has a mass numberof 12 and a nuclear charge of 6. Its nucleus therefore con­sists of 6 protons and 6 neutons, and its atom has 6 planetary
electrons. There is an isotype of carbon with a mass number
14, so th a t its nucleus consists of 6 protons and 8 neutrons.
Radio Activity. Some isotopes are radio-active, that is to
say their nuclei are unstable and tend to expel particles. Whensuch an expulsion happens the atom turns into one of a differ­ent element.
For example C^-, i.e., carbon with a mass number 12, isperfectly stable, C14 is not. Every so often one of its nuclei
emits an electron and thereby increases its positive charge by
1 unit to 7. The nitrogen nucleus carries a charge of 7, con­sequently a mass of C14 steadily turns into nitrogen, radiating
vast numbers of electrons in the process.
As the atoms of C^^ become nitrogen one after another,
the number available for the expulsion of electrons grows stead­
ily less, and the radio-activity of the whole mass declines; itis said to “decay.” The rate is always the same and it takes
roughly 5,000 years for the radio-activity of C14 to decay to
one half of its original value. At the end of a second 5,000
years it Avill have decayed to a quarter of this value, and soon. C^^ is said to have a “half-life” of 5,000 years. This is acomparatively long period, half lives of less than a second are
known, but on the other hand uranium 238 has a half life of
thousands of millions of years.
Artificial Transmutations. At the beginning of the present
century Rutherford showed that it was possible to disrupt someof the nuclei of an element by bombarding it with showersof particles such as alpha rays. A little of the element wasthereby transm uted into a different element. Today with thepowerful tools of the pile-reactor and the cyclotron, enormous
numbers of such transm utations have been made. Many of theisotopes thus obtained are radio-active and are entirely new
substances which have not existed on the earth before.
If nitrogen is brought under the powerful neutron bom­bardment of a pile-reactor, some of it is transm uted to C ^.
I t is believed th at when a neutron scores a hit on a nticleus
it is absorbed, but at the same time a proton is omitted. The
mass number remains unaltered at 14 but the charge is rediiced
from 7 to70nmagazine, nothing of import has appeared.
I t is of interest to note th at a French writer, Emile Belot,
appears to have evolved an independent approach to the ques­tion on similar lines, and to have published a series of papers
between 1914 and 1924 in the French scientific press. That themoon capture theory, with or without Hoerbiger, is gaining
adherents is shown by the fact th a t a well-known Swedish
astronomer, H. Alfen, of Stockholm, has adopted in some of
his writings.
For the future of the Hoerbiger Theory the prospects seem■good.
Gradually the value of the idea is penetrating to theAnglo-Saxon world, and, unhampered as it now is, by any con­siderations of a political nature, it stands an excellent chanceof success.

THE DATING OF ANCIENT TIMBERS AND BONES
BY THE ASSAY OF THE RADIO-ACTIVITY
OF CARBON.
By FRANCIS ASHTON.
Francis Ashton is perhaps best known to readers of Researth
as the author of novels based upon Hoerbiger’s theory. Writing
fiction is, howewr, at present only a hobby, and for many
years he has been a member of the staff of Jealott’s Hill
Research Station. Recently his work has been concerned withthe application of radio-active isotopes to agricultural research.

By CONTINENZA ANGELO.
“The dawn of history reveals a humanity already civilised—perhaps a civilisation already old. The curtain rises on aplay already begun, and shows the tru th of the paradox th atthere was a history before history.” This quotation, not fromthe Sybil or the Delphic Oracle, but from Aldo Valori (1)contains the keynote of our researches.
Dietz (2) considers that our present geological age started
some 25,000 years ago with the end of the fourth ice age,while Barbagallo (3) considers that it was during the ice age
th at humanity first appeared on tlie earth, at the end of thetertiary or the beginning of the quarternary, at a time whenaccording to Wendel Philips (4) the Tethys Sea spread fromthe Atlantic to the Arabian Peninsular.
From the above it would appear that those parts of Europe
which were not coated with ice were at th at time under the
Tethys Sea. But if th at was the case, how can one explain therem arkable cave paintings found in Central and Southern
France and Spain, together with statuettes and other remains.
Allowing for the fact th at art is not improvised, and requires
not only genius but also long training, in fact a school inwhich to perfect itself in line colour and impression, one isforced to admit that “ This art reached Europe in an already.perfect form, having been evolved in a land of which weknow nothing.”
Dietz considers that the skeletons found on the Canaries
were of the Cro Magnon type, the same type as those of thepi'oducers of the art referred to above, which would seem toindicate that the land of their origin was probably Atlantis,
and that they escaped there from the Deluge. Could this be
the answer to our enigma.
Plato (5) in his dialogues showed himself to be well in­formed both as an historian and as a geographer, and without
his interest nothing tangible would have survived of the storyof Atlantis, of which memories must have been extant evenin his day. When Homer (6) wrote of “ Odysseyus languish­
ing in misery on an island, in the clutches of the Nymph
Calypso” that “ remote Island of Ogygia” where “from four
separate but adjoining springs, four crystal rivulets ran ” hemust have been thinking of Atlantis, while “ Scherie the richcountry of the Phaeaceans” must have been another aspectof this civilisation, as Avas also the violence of the island of
the Cyclops.
Hesiod (7) spoke of Atlantis, as did Euripides (8), D odorus Siculus (9) and Seneca ( l^ ) ; Pliny (H) says memories
of A tlantis occur in the Labours of Hercules; Virgil (1-) com­ments on the Atlantean culture in the Georgies; Herodotus
mentions it freqiiently; Pherecydes (14) says “ The people
Avho lived near Mount Atlas said th a t they were descended
from those who had accompanied Hercules on his travels.”
Amons the modern writers, it suffices to quote
Latreille
Mentelle (16), Tournefort (l'^). Rudbeck (IS),Bory de St. Vincent (W), Carli (20), Cellarius (21). Bontempelli(22)', D ’Amato (2:?), Russo (24), Humboldt (25), Sykes (26),
Savorin (27), Bayer (28).
Stories of the Deluge are to be found in the Sagas, tlie
Eddas, the Puranas. in the memories of the Algonquins, theAztecs, the Incas. the Mayas, and the Toltecs. in the samemanner as the Babylonians, the Hebrew^!, the Egyptians, theChinese, m fact all the peoples of annuitity who have legendsof the Garden of Delisrhts. of the Hesperides, of Posedonin.
of thp Garden of Eden, the Terrestial Parndise, and of Atlantis.
U n d e r ly in g all this is the fact that language, tradition,
raonumentsi of all of the ancient civilisations have an under­

72

73

Naturally produced Cl4. The nitrogen of the air is underconstant bombardment from Cosmic rays, which have thesame effect as the neutron bombardment in the pile. A minuteproportion of it is transm itted to 0^4 in the upper regions of
the atmosphere, and is oxidised to form carbon dioxide. On
descending to lower levels, it becomes thoroughly mixed with
the normal atmospheric carbon dioxide. All the carbon dioxidein the air is therefore very slightly radio-active, and since
the intensity of cosmic radiation is constant, the activity isalways the same.
Effect on Organisms. Plants obtain their carbon from thecarbon dioxide of the air through the agency of their leaves.
Animals obtain theirs by eating plants and each other. All
organic carbon is therefore found to be radio-active to a slightthough fixed extent, and it can be distinguished from inorganiccarbon by this property.
When an organism dies, its uptake of carbon ceases andthe radio-activity begins to decay. Therefore the time thathas elapsed since the death of the organism can be estimatedby assaying the activity that remains in its carbon.
The activity is very slight, and for the decay to be measur­
able the organism needs to have been dead for a long time.
On the other hand it must not be too ancient or all the activity
will have gone. No activity at all can lie detected in coal,llie remains of plants that have been dead for hundreds ot
millions of years.
The method is open to the criticism that we do not knowwhether cosmic radiation has always had the same intensity,and we are not at liberty to assume th at the radio-activity oforganic carbon was the same, say, 5,000 years ago as it istoday. Absolute dating by the method is therefore a riskybusiness, but on the other hand it may be used confidently for
relative dating. For example, if the remains of “ N oah’s Ark”
were discovered, it should be possible to find out whether its
timbers were younger or older than those used by the ancient
Egyptians at any period of the history.

ATLANTIS THE PARADOX OF HISTORY.

lying sim ilarity wWch seems to prove conclusively their origin
from a single source, and in addition they all start their his­
tories with an account of some kind of deliige, although some,such as the Vedic and the Babylonian have pre deluge stories.
In Genesis is related the story of the Garden of Edenwith the four rivers which we have already encountered on
Calypso’s Isle and in the Hesperides. The fact th a t two ofth em : Tigris and Euphrates, are in the F erttile Crescent, may
be explained by the desire of the Noachic survivors of theDeluge to recreate their lost homeland as far as possible.
Prom the many Deluge legends of Greece, M auritania, India,
the Americas, the Middle East, it seems th at when the timeof peril preceding the loss of A tlantis set in, many warned bytheir gods, by dreams or by animals, built their ships of refuge,
and when the seas scattered their ships fa r and wide each
one would believe th at his p arty was the only one saved.
We have shown th at the legends of the various elysiums of
the past can only have referred to Atlantis, and it now only
remains to establish where it was situated. I t would appear
to have been shaped like a triangle between the Azores, theCap Verde Islands and the Bermudas. This was the site of
the land which formed the object of the writings of Solon (-9),
so many great ones of the past, leading to the dozens ofauthorities of today.
Atlantis then, was the historical reality of m an’s first
cultured existence, and this fact has—partially at least—-solved
for us the greatest paradox of history.
N ote B y E ditor .—The above constitutes a shoi^tened tramlation of Signor Angelo’s pa.per which was too long for inseHionin full. The complete Italian text may be consulted on applica­tion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
1. Aldo Valori. Antologia della Storia.
2. Dietz. Geology and the Earth,y. Barbagallo. Geology.
4. Wendel Philips. Ancient Geography.
5. Plato. Critias and Timeas.
t). Homer. Odyssey.
7. Hesiod. The Ogony.
8. Euripides. Phaeton.
9. Diodorus Siculus. Library of History.
10. Seneca. Medea.
11. Pliny, the Elder. Historia Naturalis.
12. Virgil. Aenid. Georgies,
l.y. Herodotus. History.
14. Phereeyd'es. Fragments.
15. P. A. Latreille. Geographic Ancienne. 1819.
16. E. Mentelle. Atlantis, 1787.
17. .7. P. Toui'nefort. Voyage dans le Levant. Paris, 1878.
18. O. Rudbeck. Atlantiea, 1675.
19. Bory de St. Vincent. Les Isles Fortunees. Paris, 1802.
20. G. R. Carli. Lettres Americaines. Venise, 1781.
21. Ohristophorus Cellarius. Geographia Antiqua, Cizfie, 1687,
74

22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.

Bontempelli.
Gennario D ’Amato. le Prucesso All Atlantide in Peatone.
Milano, 1930.
Dr. Nicola Russo. Atlantide, Tirrenia e Tirenni. Bari, 1930.
A. V. Humbold. Cosmos, Paris, 1847. Lettres Americaines.
Paris, 1798.
Egerton Sykes. Writings 1925-1949.
Savorin.
Bayer.
Soion. Atlantikos.

THE MASTABA EXCURSION.
By C. A. J. CORDASCO.
Excursions organised by the Research Centre generally takethe form of one-day visits by private coach to archaeologicallyimportant sites within 100 miles or so of London. These excur­
sions, which are non-profit making, serve to stimulate interest
and research, and they oifer members a social opportunity to
discuss their ideas and impressions.
Our lastest excursion followed this rule, and it took us to
Margate. In November! But the weather, though kind thatday, was of no consequence to us : our objective was the famous
Grotto.
The first stop on our way was at Coldrum, where a short andsomewhat muddy walk brought us to the burial chamber. This,
we are told by a leading authority, is “ a mastaba, pure andsimple,” and it consists of a dolmen on a mound, in a centre
of a D-shaped stone ring on three planes. Some of the remainsof the 22 people found buried there are preserved in the nearby
church at Trottiscliffe, and include a bone showing traces ofchronic rheumatism.
At Kits Coty, our next stop, we met Mr. Bodiam, who showed
us the “ Countless Stones” (which are indeed countless), and,across the Pilgrims Way, “ Kits Coty House.” Mr. Bodiam is anauthority on the district, and proved himself a veritable mine of
local legend and folklore.
A fter snatching a brief glimpse of Canterbury Cathedral,
we reached the Grotto at Margate. For an hour or more we
wandered and wondered, analysing and guessing. The detailis bewidering, the design lavish, the workmanship marvellous,and the aecoustics perfect. We then went on to the Arts Centre,
where Mr. H arper Cory gave a most interesting illustrated lec­
ture on the Grotto. He was followed by the Mayor of Margate,
who formally brought into being the Thanet Archaeological So­
ciety, to which we are now affiliated. Thanks are due to those
who contributed so generously to the affiliation subscription.
Next, a short drive to Ramsgate brought us to an excellent
tea, very kindly provided by Mrs. H arper Cory. Discussions
started here continued unflagged until our return to London.
The Grotto is definitely provoking. Mr. Cory suggests that it75

is a mastaba, and supports his theory by tracmg similarities of
construction with “ normal” mastabas and resemblances to Egyp­tian and Cretan symbols in the sea-shell studded wall patterns.
There is such a wealth of symbols in the many panels, however,that for every point made by him, a contradictory theory may
be advanced. Some of the panels sounded hoilow, and it is notknown what lies behind them. A different suggestion is that
the Grotto is a Mithraic temple. This may be questioned on the
grounds of physical shape, since most Mithraneums are long,narrow chambers with an entrance in one of the shorter sides
and an altar on the opposite wall. The Grotto, so far, has only
one false entrance. If there is another, it should be throughthe Hoor. W hat is known of the tunnels under Margate, with
one of which there ought to be a link?
Another theory is that the Grotto is of Roman construction(possibly with Mithraic influence), for not only did that type ofmosaic work flourish during early Roman times, but also mosaics
have been discovered elsewhere in which are represented numer­
ous esoteric symbols taken from many unrelated religious cults
and assembled together apparently haphazard. Measure of theradio-activity decay of carbon in the sea-shells or cement willdate the Grotto fairly accurately.
Other questions, however,are raised by the sinuous structure of the cavern, which is remini­
scent of the Snake Mound in Ohio. Is there not some special
significance in a circular cavern connected by a curving passage
to a rectangular chamber, and why is the latter assymetric?
There is a fruitful field for further investigation.

“ . . . how could this people (i.e., the Ancient Egyptians)
know there was a land to the W est?” (l).
In my reply I s a id : ‘‘ One ancient reference says tlfat be*
j'ond the Pillars of Hercules there is a Great Ocean, and beyond
it, a great land.” I added that I could not, at the moment,
trace this reference (^). It still escapes me, but I have now
remembered another reference to the same thing. Referringto Atlantis, Plato says: “ This island was larger than Libya
and Asia put together. Prom this island the navigators of
those days could reach other islands, and from those islands
it was possible to sail to the great continent on the other sideof the wide Atlantic. . . . This island. . . . was called Atlantis. . . . ” (3). He claims that the information was given to
Solon by an E gyptian priest. W hether this was so or not,the quotation is, obviously, certain proof that the Ancients
knew of the American continent.
Yours faithfully,
P. L. COLLIGNON.
Witney, Oxon, 2/12/49.
1.
2.
it.

Atlantean Research. Vol. 2, p. 60.
Atlantean Re.seareli. Vol. 2, p. 61.
Stephamis. 25a : quoted by H. S. Bellamy. “The Atlantis Myth”(Faber and Faber). 1948. p. 10.

THE ARK AND THE MOON CAPTURE THEORY
By PAUL S. ARUP.

THE OMAHA EARTH LODGE.
By D. K. BENTHAM.
Dear Editor,
I was very interested in the correspondence of Drs. Reneo\Ialaise and P. L. Collignon. One fact they are apparently un­aware of is that among the Omahas, an American Indian tribe,
there exists or existed a large wooden structure called the“ Omaha Earth Lodge.” This is similar to Stonehenge andWoodhenge, in fact if one of these were given a roof with a hole
for a chimney and earthen walls added it would be identical.
'Vagsere de Prederre suggeested a relation to the barrow, in fact
a house of the dead in an article in “ A ntiquity,” Volume XI,
3937. Most archaeologists reject any idea of correction becauseof the time scale. One of the latest would be that of Kostromskaya, 6th Century b .c .

LANDS TO THE WEST.
Dear Editor,
When Dr. Malaise wrote to me from Stockholm on the10th September, he asked me, as your readers will remember,

I saw something about a proposed expedition to Mount
A rarat, a m atter which I believe has also attracted notice inthe daily press. I was somewhat surprised at this because in
the book “In the Beginning God,” on page 155, is stated that
the A rarat of the Ark Myth “ was not the 17,000 feet high peakof our geographical atlases, but some mountainous region—
whether the Caucasas range or not, cannot of course be estab­lished.”I should agree with this view of Bellamy’s, for it is difficult
to see how the Ark landing event could be pinned down to any
definite place.
The following passage from Theos B ernard’s “ Hand of aThousand Buddhas” (Thibet) might interest you as indicating
Thibet as a possible flood report, page 28. “We came to aplace where we were shown the water level to be reached by
the next great flood; the m onastry was assured safety by being
built on the crags above. Likewise it was indicated to as how
far the flames will reach when the world is destroyed by fire.”
It seems to me th at there is something in this Easternidea of alternate destruction by flood and fire which fits inwith the moon capture theory.

76
I'THE LION AND THE UNICORN.
By ALICE MACKERN.
Dear Sir,
When I was a child in Ireland u good many years ago, weused to repeat a rhyme which went as follows:—
The Lion and the Unicorn
Playing for the crown,
The Lion beat the Unicorn
Right round the town.
We children argued that playing was not the right word,
since the Lion and Unicorn faced each other in the British Coatof Arrns. It ought to be fighting w'e said. To my amazement
some time after the 1914 war I saw in the handbook to the
Egyptian Galleries in the British Museum a picture of a lion
and a unicorn playing draughts. I t was said to be one of theoldest drawings (predynastic) found in Egypt.
Can this beconnected with the Egyptian colonisation of England?

LITERARY MONOLOGUES.
Moons, M yths <md Man bj^ H. S. Bellamy. London, Faber& Faber, 1949. Price 16/-.
At long last the new edition of this rem arkable work has
made its appearance. Ever since the author form ulated thebasis of the Hoerbiger Theory for English readers in 1937, thiswork has been the bible of the research worker and the student,
and its virtual disappearance from the book m arket for thelast six years has been the cause of great annoyance and dis­comfort to many.
This work covers the whole field of the Hoerbiger Theary,starting from the origin of the Solar system, to the break
down of the Tertiary Satellite—which was the precusor of theGolden Age—and, thousands of years later, to the capture of
Luna which put a period to the earthly paradise of mankind,and also caused the loss of Atlantis.
The chapter on the General Outline of the Hoerbiger
Theory has been re-written, while additions and corrections
have been made to the remainder of the book, and there issufficient new material to w arrant those having a copy of theearlier edition purchasing a copy of the new one.
An excellent book, w ritten with the author’s customarylucidity of style, making even the Hoerbiger Theory seemridiculously easy for the non-expert.
7S

E gypt by Margaret A. Murray. London, 1949, Sidgwiclc& Jackson, 30/-.
For many years there has been a growing need for a com­prehensive handbook on Egyptology, at a reasonable price, andin accordance with the latest ideas. Dr. Murray, who is wellknown for her writings on witches and for several standard
works on Egypt, has admirably filled the gap.
In its 350 pages, wdth over tw’o hundred illustrations, thewhole development of Egypt from pre Dynastic times to thedeath of Cleopatra, is admirably siimmed up, under the head­ings of: History, Social Conditions, Religion, A rt and Science,and Literature, with appendices on the life of Sir Flinders
Petrie, Foreign Connections, M arriages and M atrilineal
Descent, Scarabas and the New Year God.
Recently we have been seeking a suitable book on Egypt
for those working out the perm utations of diffusion and theirrelation to oiir cultural background. This can be confidently
recommended for this purpose, as with its aid, much of theworking out of Egyptian names and customs is simplified.
The Semetic Origin of British Place Namm, by F. Martin
Payne, M.B., Blackburn, about 1923. Price 1/-.
There has recently come into my hands, through the kind­ness of one of our members, a copy of a lecture under the above
title, delivered shortly after the First World War, to the Black­burn Antiquarian Society, by the late E. M artin Payne, M.B.
In spite of the title, which is misleading, there is a lot ofhitherto unrecorded information as to the possibility of placc
names in the Midlands being derived from Egyptian in addition
to other Middle Eastern Sources.
Unfortunately the Blackburn Antiquarian Society appears
to have ceased to exist, as a letter of enquiry addressed to themw'as returned marked “ Not known.” Perhaps one of our readers
could let us have some information, which would be most helpful,as all Mr. Payne’s papers and memoranda are reported to havebeen handed over to one of the members of the Society shortly after
his death. If access could be obtained to these I am sure weshould find them to be of considerable assistance in our investi­
gations.
The more one looks into this question of early British origins
the more it seems as if B ritain must have been the cross roadsof the old world for thousands of years, because there is scarcely
a race known in Europe which does not appear, at some time,to have left its cultural traces here, in place names, religious
sites, folk lore^ children’s games, etc.
79Die Welteis Lchre, R. v. Elmayer, Westenbrugg, Leipzig,
1942.
An interesting handbook on the Iloerbiger theory, as cor­rected to date by the Austrian Hoerbiger Institute. It contains
many illustrations wliich liad not i^reviously appeared, and whichshould assist in working out the more complicated points.
Iho Village Adairs. J\I. M. Green. London, 1947. 10s. 6d.
A study of social life in a village of the Igbo people of
Nigeria, which is of considerable interest, not so much becauseof the vast amount of work which has been put into it, but becauseof its description of community where the matriachy still exists,
although to a limited extent, a matter of considerable interest to
those who consider that the existence of such an element in a cul­
ture is a proof of considerable age.
One day it may be possible for a whole series of charts to beissued, enabling the cultural similarities between various peoples
and race'3 to be plotted, in the same manner as P itt Rivers charted
the use of many of the accessories of culture. When this is done
the immense value of works such as this will immediately become
evident.

AUSTRALIAN CAVE PAINTINGS.
At the Berkeley Galleries, in Davies Street, W .l, an exhibi­tion is being arranged of reproductions by Mr. James Cant, ofcave paintings recently discovered at Obiri, in Arnhem Land, N.
Australia, by Mr. C. W. Mountford.
These belong to two periods, one comparatively recent, inwhich figures are drawn in full form, and one older in which
the figures are composed of lines, rather like “ pin-men,” but of
astonishing vitality. They are more akin to the early Bushmanout of Africa than they are to the Worora paintings which
attracted such attention at Australia House, in 1947. The cul­
ture represented is entirely Australian and it is notew'orthy thatthe line^ figures carry shields of a type characteristic of Central
Australia, but no longer of the tribes of Arnhem Land.
The more modern paintings can be related to the mythologyof the local natives, the Kakadie. An astonishingly sensitive
female figure represents the First Ancestress, Imberomba, anda scene with a turtle-man, the Totemic hero, Muraian, shows thegiving of Totemic names to the ancestors.
The exact date of opening the exhibition is not yet an­
nounced, but will appear in the press.
This is an exhibition which all members are recommended tovisit.
SO

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ART AND LIFE IN ANCIENT MEXICObyOOTTIE A. BURLAND.
W ith 47 half-tone illustrations and many line drawings fromthe ancient MSS.
Crown 4to. 112 pages. P ost free 16/6d. or $2.50.
Published by Bruno Cassirer.
A N C I E N T M EXICO has always had a great fascination not
only for the historian and anthropologist but for everybody inter­
ested in the history of mankind on its way from barbarism tocivilisation. The grandiose ruins of Mexico are among th e mostimpressive monuments of this struggle. Some of their m ysteries
have been solved by long years of research, many are still eluding
us. B u t the work is progressing all the tim e and hardly a month
passes w ithout new and important discoveries being made.
TH E AUTHOR:

C. A. Burland, to-day one of our leading young Americanists,
has already made im portant contributions to the interpretation of
the documents and manuscripts in our possession. H e has the rareg ift of relating scientific results in a vivid language, with a keensense of th e drama behind the facts and the excitem ent behind
their discovery.
T H E BOOK AND T H E R E A D E R :While thus opening a new field to the reader, the book will at
the same tim e be invaluable to the student through notes andappendixes on Mexican w riting and on the complicated Calendricalsystem of which the author gives for the first tim e a comprehen­sible and lucid interpretation. The book is illustrated by manyline drawings of M exican Glyphs taken from -the ancient docu­
ments. There is also a glossary, an extensive bibliography and acomprehensive list of all well known Mexican MSS sources.
The illustrations, some of which have not been reproduced
before, reveal the astonishing richness of public and private collec­
tions in this country and will come as a surprise to many in theirclose affinity to modern art. I t is perhaps significant th at one of
the m ost im portant pieces comes from the collection of Henry
Moore.

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