66 THE OCEAN RIVER 



To this true fish story we can add the observation that certain 

 birds migrating from northern Europe southward over the 

 Atlantic have been observed to pause and circle aimlessly over 

 portions of the ocean west of Gibraltar before resuming their 

 migration, as if they had some kind of instinct for halting 

 where only ocean now exists. 



And so also, certain elements of early civilizations and 

 peoples in their legends and customs seem to show an unex- 

 plained mid-Atlantic bias. Let us box the compass of this 

 uncharted Atlantis in both time and place. This is here a 

 matter of hints and suggestions, for there is no accurate meas- 

 ure for various cultures that can be universally applied. For 

 instance, the use of bronze occurred at different times in 

 Britain, Greece, and Malay. The advent of written records 

 was likewise varied, in England and France about the time of 

 Christ, in Italy 500 B.C., in Greece a couple of centuries earlier, 

 and in Egypt and Mesopotamia 3,000 b.c. But this is not the 

 end of the story. Earlier records may someday be discovered. 

 But we have very early and excellent examples of art that date 

 back perhaps to 40,000 b.c. in the cave dwellings of France 

 and Spain. The people who dwelt there came from somewhere 

 unknown. The Atlantean enthusiasts think they know. Their 

 argument runs something like this: 



There is no trace that the earliest western Europeans came 

 from the East, as has been the general habit of thought about 

 the so-called Aryan migrations. The stone age cultures in the 

 past fifty thousand years have been called Aurignacian, Solu- 

 trian, and Magdalenian, in the order of their antiquity, the 

 Aurignacians living at least as long ago as 40,000 b.c. There 

 are other types named by archeologists in the Neanderthal and 

 earlier times, but the people of the lost Atlantean continent 

 were supposed to have been the Cro-Magnons of the Aurigna- 

 cian period. They brought with them spear-throwers, flint 

 weapons, and a talent for delicate and subtle drawing and 



