60 THE OCEAN RIVER 



the earth — there hved other men and women in a good world, 

 in a golden age; and they were not unlike ourselves. True, they 

 had no metals, perhaps, in the original Atlantis, perhaps only 

 tools of bone and ivory; but after all it does not require a 

 knowledge of plastics to insure a high culture or a just civi- 

 lization. 



The main point for us, with no particular theories for sale, 

 is to reopen our modern minds toward the past. We have to 

 accustom ourselves to think that mankind did not start a civi- 

 lized existence with the Egyptians or the Mayans or the early 

 Hindus. In Europe we now are aware of an artistically mature 

 race of people, the Cro-Magnon, with larger brain areas than 

 our own, who lived in the foothills of southern France twenty- 

 five to forty thousand years ago. The first Egyptian dynasty 

 was less than six thousand years ago. The pre-Inca ruins of 

 Peru, the pre-Mayan cultures of Mexico, all point back before 

 the commonly accepted textbook concepts of historical times. 

 And the farther back in time we trace our ancestry, two impor- 

 tant things are emphasized. Firstly there seems to have been a 

 widespread basic common cultural exchange almost encircling 

 the globe in the warm subtropical belt of seas that reach from 

 east of the Mediterranean to west of the Caribbean. And sec- 

 ondly, this dimly observed common cultural ancestry thrived, 

 beyond history as we know it, on the other side of vast geologi- 

 cal and climatic catastrophes known to us only as legends in 

 our racial histories from India to Mexico. 



The world of Atlantis brings into focus everything that we 

 suspect but that somehow lies just out of reach of memory or 

 easy proof. We shall try to be systematic in this never-never 

 land of conjecture. Plato is father of the story, so we will begin 

 with him. Here, in brief, is what he wrote: 



Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, visited Egypt at the great city 

 of Sais about two hundred years before Plato. He learned there 

 from the Egyptian priests the story of Atlantis. This story, as 



