O'Reilly — 0)i the Waste of the Coant of Ireland, 8fc. Ill 



" "WTiat time tliose periods cover nothing yet proves. The date of 

 4000 B.C. for man's appearance, with which belief our century started, 

 has been pushed back by one discovery after another. Estimates of 

 from 10,000 to 200,000 years have been given from various possible 

 clues. In. Egypt an exposure of 7000 or more years only gives a 

 faint brown tint to flints, lying side by side with Palaeolithic flints that 

 are black with age. I incline to think that 100,000 b.c. for the rise 

 of the (2nd) class and 10,000 b.c. for the rise of the (6th) class will be 

 a moderate estimate." 



Thus the period of time stated to have elapsed since the submersion 

 of the Atlantis Island, as mentioned by the Egyptian Priest to Solon, 

 according to Plato's narrative, was 8000 years before his time ; this 

 up to the present, has been treated as fabulous and as throwing discredit 

 on the statement, but it now becomes not merely credible, but hanno- 

 uises with the date which Flinders Petrie assigns for the (6th) period 

 above-mentioned of Human History, that is about 10,300 years ago. 

 It is of importance to point this out, since the submersion of the 

 Atlantis Island may, as already stated, be but one of a series of volcanic 

 and seismic movements in the Great Lava plateau of North Western 

 Europe, having been marked by immersions of parts of the plateau, 

 the formation of islands, the further immersion and destruction of 

 these with accompaniment of great tidal waves comparable in their 

 destructiveness to deluges as already stated. 



In connexion with this question there is room for citing the work 

 of Sir Jos. Prestwich, "On certain phenomena belonging to the close 

 of the last geological period, and their bearing upon the tradition 

 of the Flood" (1895). He says (p. 72) : " In any case these tentative 

 estimates, are in accordance with the conclusion I have arrived at on 

 other grounds, that the Glacial (including the post-Glacial) Period, 

 together with Palseolithic man came within 10,000 to 12,000 years of 

 our time." 



Assuming, as argued by Boyd Dawkins, and as indicated by his 

 map (fig. 32), that at the close of the Pleistocene Age, Great Britain and 

 Ireland were still in connexion by land one with tbe other, and with 

 the continent of Europe, and that subsequently a series of depressions 

 intervened which resulted in the isolation of these countries, it is 

 reasonable to accept that these changes took place relatively slowly 

 and successively, and that they were contemporaneous with changes 

 in the Atlantic coast line, probably in connexion with the volcanic 

 phenomena of the Icelandic, Greenlandic, and Franz-Josef group, all 



K.I. A. PKOL'., VOL. XXTV., SHC. B.] i 



