ATLANTIC LEGEND 71 



finally the last migration westward from Antillia about 200 

 B.C., when Quetzalcoatl led the ancestors of the Mayans to 

 Central America. Spence has the backing of accepted opinion 

 when he states that about 200 b.c. there are considerable traces 

 of an invasion of America by a highly developed civilization 

 in some respects similar to the Aurignacian culture. The origin 

 of the early Mayas is as much a mystery today as is that of the 

 European Cro-Magnons. It is certain that the culture was well 

 developed if not decadent when it came to Central America. 

 There is no evolutionary trace of it in the West. 



The most we can say is that some things lead eastward; and 

 the lost sister state of Antillia is used by the Atlantean protago- 

 nists as the source of a migration in 200 b.c. It requires no 

 argument to establish the transocean legends of Quetzalcoatl 

 and the Toltec fathers of the Mayan state. Although the Tol- 

 tec history is in the form of legend, the fact that the descrip- 

 tion of Tollan, the capital, is like that of Atlantis in the Euro- 

 pean legend is most interesting. Its end likewise occurred in 

 cataclysmic disaster. It is worth quoting Spence here from his 

 book, The History of Atlantis: ''From the shores of western 

 Europe to those of eastern America a certain cultural complex 

 is distributed and is found on the intervening insular locali- 

 ties, while its manifestations are also to be discerned in a great 

 measure in North Africa and Egypt on the one hand, and in 

 Mexico, Central America and Peru on the other. This com- 

 plex is so constant in the region alluded to that it is clear now 

 that a lost oceanic link united its American and European 

 extremities. 



'The principal elements which distinguish the Atlantean 

 culture complex are the practice of mummification, the prac- 

 tice of witchcraft, the presence of the pyramid building, the 

 practice of head-flattening, the couvade, the use of three-' 

 pointed stones and other minor manifestations springing from 

 a common origin. These are all collectively to be found con- 



