Atlantis according to Scott-Elliot

William Scott-Elliot (1849-1919 A.D.) was an East India Merchant, amateur anthropologist and member of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society, in its early days. Theosophists were interested in the origins of humanity and the ‘root races’ and believed the Atlanteans were the fourth ‘root race’, ultimately succeeded by the Aryans.

According to Scott-Elliott there was a highly developed civilization on earth many millions of years ago. 1,000,000 years ago there were two developed civilizations on earth:

1) The land of Lemuria (or Mu) which was a continent in the S. Pacific ocean that also included many lands distributed throughout the Earth (maps 1 & 2).

2) The land of Atlantis which extended over almost the entire North Atlantic and part of the South (see map 2) and included a large part of today's America.

The first flood, according to Scott-Elliot, happened 800,000 years ago. It was very destructive and caused very large changes in the distribution of the planet's land. The great continent (Lemuria) has been sheared off in its northern regions and the remaining portion was torn even further apart. Now the American continent is developing as it is separated by a chasm from its mother continent, Atlantis. Subsidences and upheavals elsewhere in the world have also been very significant (eg the British Isles are now part of a huge island that embraces the Scandinavian peninsula, northern France, and everything in between and some of the surrounding seas, etc. a)

He claims that the events and facts he describes in his book "The History of Atlantis, 1896, London" come from the archives of the ancient occultist White Fraternity who revealed them through "insight and intuition" and we must accept them as genuine. According to him, the first cataclysm occurred 800,000 years ago.

The second geological catastrophe, which was not as destructive as the first, overtook Atlantis about 200,000 years ago and split it into two islands in the Atlantic ocean: The southernmost said to be called Daitya and the northernmost Ruta. But as it turns out, Scott-Elliot, who was a fan and connoisseur of Indian Mythology, borrowed the name of the two islands from Indian myths, which, however, mentioned that the two islands of Daitia and Ruta were in the Indian Ocean and not in the Atlantic.

Indeed, according to Indian mythology, the "dityas" were evil spirits. Consequently, Daitya may be ragarded as a "land of evil spirits". In the case of Ruta, the situation is somewhere more complex. In 1874, Luis Jacolliot wrote that according to some Hindu myths there was a huge continent to the south and east of India. It was inhabitend by a people called Rutas. This word could be translated roughly as "warriors" or "conquerors". Jacolliot regarded Indonesia and Polynesia as the remains of that mythical continent. But this is by no means Atlantis, as described by Scott-elliot

Furher, Scott-Elliot says the most devastating cataclysm occured 80.000 years ago. Atlantis continued to exist as a relatively small island, Poseidonis, which was all that remained of Ruta. This was the Atlantis meant by Plato. As for Daitya, only a tiny islet remained. From that time the continents began to acquire their present contours. The Sahara was the floor of an ocean.

Lastly, in the year 9564 B.C. there took place the last, fourth cataclysm. Atlantis sank to the bottom of the ocean and the land mass and the seas acquired almost their present boundaries.

Manzi M. gives the history of Atlantis in the same spirit in his book "Le Livre de l' Atlantide", published in 1922 in Paris.

The theosophists base their date of the destruction of Atlantis on a fantastic translation of part of the Madrid Mayan manuscript, also known as the "Troano Code", which was published by A. Le Plongeon in his book "Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphynx", in1895. Le Plongeon describes a continent known as Moo and says it was destroyed 8060 years before the code was written.
This arbitrary translation is not accepted by experts (Le blongeon treated the text as though it were a rebus). For some reason the theosophists claim the code was drawn up in 1504 B.C. and thus obtained their date: 8060+1504=9564 B.C.

I quote below, this small piece of the Mayan "Troano" manuscript that is part of Le Plongeon's famous collection and can be seen in the British Museum:

"In the year 6 kan, on 11 Mulac, in the month Zac (note: they are Mayan dates), there occurred terrific earthquakes which continued without interruption until 13 Chuen. The country of the Hills of Mud, The Land of Mu, was sacrificed. Being twice upheaved it disappeared during the night, being continually shaken by fires of the under earth. Being confined these caused the land to sink and to rise several times and in various places. At least the surface gave way, and then ten countries were torn asunder and were scattered. They sank with their 64 million of inhabitants 8060 years before this book was written."

According to Scott-Elliot, the Atlantean capital in the period of Mayan Old Empire was the "City of a Hundred Gates" situated 15^o N, 40^o W. As a matter of fact, bathymetric investigations in this region of the Atlantic heve yielded nothing that even remotely resembles the main Atlantean kingdom as described by Plato. There is no hint of the huge mountains forming arcs round it on thw north, west and south. Only the North Atlantic Ridge stretches far the west of this region. Ποιο κοντά στη πραγματικότητα θα ήταν να τοποθετούσε τη Ατλαντίδα ακριβώς πάνω στη ράχη αυτή.

There is no doubt at all that the name itself and much of the description of the City of a Hundred Gates was borrowed from a description of ancient Babylon, which, according to legend, had a hundred gates and its population was as large as that of Atlantean capital of the occultists

In figure 1 there is a modern color representation of the landmass "Lemuria", which according to Scott-Elliot (Theosophical Society) existed 1,000,000 years ago and until its first sinking in 800,000 years. Its remnants today are Indonesia and Polynesia.

Figure 2 presents part of map 1 of Scott-elliot (in the French version of his book) and "London's London of the Theosophical Society" and represents the surface of a portion of the Earth as it existed about a million years ago when the Atlantean race was at its peak and before the first major sinking took place about 800,000 years ago. The continent of Atlantis extended from a point a few degrees east of Iceland to about the location now occupied by Rio de Janeiro in South America. It embraced Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, the southern and eastern states of America, up to Labrador. And it stretched accross the ocean to Scotland-Ireland and a small portion of the north of England forming one of its promontories. While its equatorial lands embraced Brazil and the whole stretch of ocean to the African Gold Coast.