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History of Atlantis by Lewis Spence
Index | Chapter: 1 | 2 |3 | 4 |5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |9 | 10 |11 | 12 |13 | 14 |15 | 16
CHAPTER XIV.
ANIMAL LIFE IN ATLANTIS
WE are on rather surer ground in dealing with the subject of the animals and plants of Atlantis than in touching upon the history of its kings, for we have certain excellent data upon which to build sound hypotheses. In the first place, certain fragments of the sunken Atlantis, the Azores and the Canary Islands, still remain above water, and their fauna and flora provide us with a certain amount of comparative material from which we can argue regarding the general conditions of plant and animal life in Atlantis. In the second place we can compare the biological conditions of western Europe with those of eastern America, and if we find similarities between them it is open to us to assume that a biological link formerly existed in the Atlantic region, and that conditions upon it must have borne a strong resemblance to those obtaining in the two areas with which it was formerly connected.
It must, however, be borne in mind that the conditions of animal and plant life on Atlantis were not the same in the various phases of its history any more than they were during the long and changing periods and phases of climatic change in Europe and America. At the same time it may be taken for granted that the recurring periods of the Ice Age, whatever their duration, can scarcely have had any great effect on the climate of Atlantis, although there is equally no doubt that they must have exercised a certain influence upon the meteorological conditions prevailing in the island-continent. But as we are dealing with the history of Atlantis subsequent to the Ice Age, it will be sufficient for our purpose if we regard conditions there from that point of view alone.
A very considerable literature has gathered round the question of animal and plant life on Atlantis. If we confine ourselves first to the fauna of the Continent we find that the question of animal life on the Azores opens up some considerations of very great interest. The very name of the Azores means the "hawk islands," and if hawks abounded in the archipelago when it was discovered it is safe to say that they did so in that part of Atlantis to which it formerly belonged. This implies that the animals on which they are wont to live, chiefly rodents, rabbits, rats and mice, must also have been present in large numbers. It would seem, too, that this group of islands was known to geographers before its official discovery in 1439, for in a book published in 1345 by a Spanish friar the Azores are certainly referred to and the names of the several islands given. On an atlas, too, which was produced some forty years later at Venice, several of the islands are indicated by name as Columbia, or the Isle of Doves, now Pico, Capraria or the Isle of Goats, now San Miguel, Li Congi or Rabbit Island, now Flores, and Corvi Marini, or Isle of Sea Crows, now Corvo. These names go to show that the islands in question, although long isolated from Europe, abounded in animals and birds of the species through which they came to be known, and that these species must have flourished there for countless centuries prior to their official discovery.
It has indeed been argued that the rabbit may have reached the Azores and Europe from America by way of the ancient land-bridge. Professor Osborn, Dr. Major, and Lyddekker have indicated the connection between the rabbit forms of Africa and America and have drawn the conclusion therefrom that the species must have migrated from one of these continents to the other. Professor Scharff, however, believes that the land-bridge which joined Africa and South America must have been situated farther to the south than the Atlantic islands, but that from North Africa there was intercourse with southern Europe with which the Atlantic islands were connected, and that by this rather round-about route South American species would have been able to reach Madeira and the Azores. But may not the rabbit and other leptorrhine species have originated upon Atlantis itself and have spread eastwards and westwards to America and Africa? If, as Professor Scharff states, the land-bridge connecting these two continents lay considerably south of the Atlantic islands, it seems a little difficult to account for the fact that the rabbit prevails in much greater numbers in the more temperate northern latitudes. We find the rodent species invading and re-invading European soil in the more severe phases of the recurring Ice Ages, in fact Macalister has laid it down that as the glaciations drew near, and the forests began to give place to steppe conditions, the small rodents invariably returned to European soil, and it is their presence, indeed, which delimits the later interglaciations. At the same time it is notorious that the rabbit flourishes exceedingly in such a mild climate as that of Australia, to which the climate of Atlantis must have borne a certain general resemblance, so that it seems a little difficult to account for the species pressing from a genial climate into an area where tundra conditions prevailed. It seems probable, however, that the rabbit may actually have originated upon Atlantean soil a habitat most suitable for its development and speedy propagation, and that later the struggle for existence through overcrowding forced it into less congenial regions.
It has frequently been pointed out, too, that the carnivorous animals of Tertiary times in Europe are closely connected with those of America. The European Atlantic islands are somewhat destitute of animals of this species, but it is quite possible that in the course of the many centuries which separated the Tertiary era from the final submergence of Atlantis that they may have been utterly rooted out by a civilised people, precisely as the wolf was rooted out in Britain.
It has occasionally been stated with some authority that Atlantis may have been the cradle of all animal life. Such a statement, in view of our lack of knowledge on the subject, should be regarded cautiously. Certain circumstances exist, however, which seem to render it not improbable that some species may have had their beginnings on the island-continent. The data connected with the migrations of the eel, for example, lend colour to this assumption. Dr. Johannes Schmidt, the Danish biologist, who has paid great attention to the migrations of the eel, is inclined to think that it may have originated in the ocean fastnesses surrounding the site of Atlantis. The parent eels annually leave our shores and deposit their eggs deep down in the Atlantic Ocean between the Bahama Isles and Europe, after which all trace of them disappears, but their young make their way back more than four thousand miles to our rivers. For nearly three years they swim on, steering a steadfast course for the shores of Britain, while the American eels, which are distinguished by a shorter back-bone, unerringly make their way back to their own country. This would seem to indicate that their instinct carries them to the primeval breeding-place from which both the eels of Europe and America originally migrated.
A similar phenomenon is to be witnessed in connection with the lemmings of Scandinavia. The lemming, a small rodent, periodically seems to feel a migratory impulse of a southerly tendency, during which countless numbers of these animals leave the Norwegian coast and swim far out into the Atlantic. When they reach the spot to which the migratory impulse has called them they swim round for some considerable time as if searching for land which instinct tells them should be there, but at last, growing exhausted, sink into the depths. Large flocks of birds, too, follow their example and tumble exhausted into the sea, and the beautiful saffron-winged catopsilia of British Guiana, which has been described by Dr. William Beebe, the American naturalist, obeys a similar oceanic call. Annually the males of this species take part in the fatal flight. In great coloured clouds they fly into the sea. If these migrations are not eloquent of an animal impulse to return to the lost Atlantis, it would indeed be difficult to say what was.
Two well-known biologists, the Messrs. Slater, in their work The Geography of Mammals, regard the mid-Atlantic area as a separate division of the biological area of the globe which they call the " Mesatlantic." To this region they assign two species of marine animals, the Monk Seal and the Siren. Neither of these animals frequents the open ocean, but is invariably to be found in the vicinity of land. One species of the Monk Seal inhabits the Mediterranean and another the West Indies, while the Siren is to be found in the estuaries of West Africa, along the South American coast and among the West Indian islands, and the inference drawn is that their ancestors must have spread along some coastline which "united the Old World and the New at no very distant period."
Plato assures us that the elephant was a denizen of Atlantis. It has always seemed to me probable that the passage relating to the elephant is one of those which serves to reveal the historical value of Plato's account. The elephant disappeared from Europe at a comparatively early era, Elephas antiquus being discernible in the Late Lower Palaeolithic Age, and Elephas primigeneus in the Middle Palaeolithic or Cro-Magnon Age. The Marques de Cerralbo discovered the bones of Elephas antiquus along with human artifacts at Torralba in the province of Soria, Spain. If then, this animal existed in Spain in the period in question, a period which witnessed human immigration from Atlantis, it is not improbable that it was still wandering to and fro between the European mainland and the island-continent over a still-existing land-bridge, and that, after this land-bridge disappeared, it became extinct in Europe, but continued to flourish in Atlantis, where it was marooned. I cannot, however, find any trace of its former existence in the Canaries or Azores, but excavation in these groups had been of so perfunctory a character that when it is undertaken on a larger scale surprising developments may be expected. In any case, there is nothing extravagant in the supposition that elephants actually existed in Atlantis. If they did not, it is most unlikely that the Egyptian tradition, as handed down by Plato, would have alluded to them at all. The elephant was an animal by no means familiar in Egypt, although known to the Egyptians to exist in Central Africa. It is, therefore, unlikely that it would have been dragged in by the priest of Sais merely to render his tale still more highly coloured.
From the humbler forms of life on the Azores and the Canaries we can glean a good idea of how similar life in Atlantis appeared. For example, we find many of the butterflies and moths of the Canaries represented in both Europe and America. Sixty per cent of them are to be found in Europe, and twenty per cent in America, sure proof of their former presence in a submerged continent once lying between these regions.
Referring to the continental origin of the Fauna of the Atlantic islands, M. Termier remarks: "Two facts remain relative to the marine animals, and both seem impossible of explanation, except by the persistence, up to very nearly the present times, of a maritime shore extending from the West Indies to Senegal, and even binding together Florida, the Bermudas, and the bottom of the Gulf of Guinea. Fifteen species of marine mollusca lived at the same time, both in the West Indies and on the coast of Senegal, and nowhere else, unless this coexistence can be explained by the transportation of the embryos. On the other hand, the Madreporaria fauna of the island of St. Thomas, studied by M. Gravier, includes six species one does not live outside of St. Thomas, except in the Florida reefs, and four others are known only from the Bermudas. As the duration of the pelagic life of the Madreporaria is only a few days, it is impossible to attribute this surprising reappearance to the action of marine currents. In taking all this into account, M. Germain is led to admit the existence of an Atlantic continent connected with the Iberian peninsula, and with Mauritania, and prolonging itself far towards the south, so as to include some regions of desert climate. During the Miocene period, again, this continent extends as far as the West Indies. It is then portioned off, at first in the direction of the West Indies, then in the south, by the establishment of a marine shore, which extends as far as Senegal and to the depths of the Gulf of Guinea, then at length in the east, probably during the Pliocene epoch, along the coast of Africa. The last great fragment, finally engulfed, and no longer having left any other vestiges than the four archipelagoes, would be the Atlantis of Plato."