Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/478

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
460
ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD.

water. They possessed boats and ships. They had progressed so far as to perfect "a decimal system of enumeration, in itself," says Max Müller, "one of the most marvellous achievements of the human mind, based on an abstract conception of

ancient egyptian plough.

quantity, regulated by a philosophical classification, and yet conceived, nurtured, and finished before the soil of Europe was trodden by Greek, Roman, Slav, or Teuton."

And herein we find another evidence of relationship between the Aryans and the people of Atlantis. Although Plato does not tell us that the Atlanteans possessed the decimal system of numeration, nevertheless there are many things in his narrative which point to that conclusion: "There were ten kings ruling over ten provinces; the whole country was divided into military districts or squares ten stadia each way; the total force of chariots was ten thousand; the great ditch or canal was one hundred feet deep and ten thousand stadia long; there were one hundred Nereids," etc. In the Peruvian colony the decimal system clearly obtained: "The army had heads of ten, fifty, a hundred, five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand.… The community at large was registered in groups, under the control of officers over tens, fifties, hundreds, and so on." (Herbert Spencer, "Development of Political Institutions," chap. x.) The same division into tens and hundreds obtained among the Anglo-Saxons.

Where, we ask, could this ancient nation, which existed be-