Band 2 Anthropogenesis - H.P. Blavatsky

As to the matter of giants, though the tallest man hitherto found in Europe among fossils is the "Mentone man" (6 ft. 8 in.),
others may yet be excavated. Nilsson, quoted by Lubbock, states that "in a tomb of the neolithic age . . . . a skeleton of
extraordinary size was found in 1807," and that it was attributed to a king of Scotland, Albus McGaldus.
And if in our own day we occasionally find men and women from 7 ft. to even 9 ft. and 11 ft. high, this only proves -- on
the law of atavism, or the reappearance of ancestral features of character -- that there was a time when 9 ft. and 10 ft.
was the average height of humanity, even in our latest Indo-European race.
But as the subject was sufficiently treated elsewhere, we may pass on to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, and see
what the old Greeks knew of these early races and what the moderns know now.
The great nation mentioned by the Egyptian priests, from which descended the forefathers of the Greeks of the age of
Troy, and which, as averred, had been destroyed by the Atlantic race, was then, as we see, assuredly no race of
Palaeolithic savages. Nevertheless, already in the days of Plato, with the exception of priests and Initiates, no one seems
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Speaking of the reindeer hunters of Perigord, Joly says of them that "they were of great height, athletic, with a strongly
built skeleton . . ." etc. ("Man before Metals," p. 353).
** "On the shores of the lake of Beauce," says the Abbe Bourgeois, "man lived in the midst of a fauna which completely
disappeared (Aceratherium, Tapir, Mastodon). With the fluviatile sands of Orleanais came the anthropomorphous monkey
(pliopithecus antiquus); therefore, later than man." (See Comptes Rendus of the "Prehistoric Congress" of 1867 at Paris.)
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 750 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
to have preserved any distinct recollection of the preceding races. The earliest Egyptians had been separated from the
latest Atlanteans for ages upon ages; they were themselves descended from an alien race, and had settled in Egypt
some 400,000 years before,* but their Initiates had preserved all the records. Even so late as the time of Herodotus, they
had still in their possession the statues of 341 kings who had reigned over their little Atlanto-Aryan Sub-race (Vide about
the latter "Esoteric Buddhism," p. 66, Fifth Edition.) If one allows only twenty years as an average figure for the reign of
each King, the duration of the Egyptian Empire has to be pushed back, from the day of Herodotus, about 17,000 years.
Bunsen allowed the great Pyramid an antiquity of 20,000 years. More modern archaeologists will not give it more than
5,000, or at the utmost 6,000 years; and generously concede to Thebes with its hundred gates, 7,000 years from the date
of its foundation. And yet there are records which show Egyptian priests -- Initiates -- journeying in a North-Westerly
direction, by land, via what became later the Straits of Gibraltar; turning North and travelling through the future Phoenician
settlements of Southern Gaul; then still further North, until reaching Carnac (Morbihan) they turned to the West again and
arrived, still travelling by land, on the North-Western promontory of the New Continent.**
What was the object of their long journey? And how far back must we place the date of such visits? The archaic records
show the Initiates of the Second Sub-race of the Aryan family moving from one land to the other for the purpose of
supervising the building of menhirs and dolmens, of colossal Zodiacs in stone, and places of sepulchre to serve as
receptables for the ashes of generations to come. When was it? The fact of their crossing from France to Great Britain by
land may give an idea of the date when such a journey could have been performed on terra firma.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "In making soundings in the stony soil of the Nile Valley two baked bricks were discovered, one at the depth of 20, the
other at 25 yards. If we estimate the thickness of the annual deposit formed by the river at 8 inches per century (more
careful calculations have shown no more than from three to five per century), we must assign to the first of these bricks
12,000 years, and to the second 14,000 years. By means of analogous calculations, Burmeister supposes 72,000 years
to have elapsed since the first appearance of man on the soil of Egypt, and Draper attributes to the European man, who
witnessed the last glacial epoch, an antiquity of more than 250,000 years." ("Man before Metals," p. 183.) Egyptian
Zodiacs show more than 75,000 years of observation! (See further.) Note well also that Burmeister speaks only of the
Delta population.
** Or on what are now the British Islands, which were not yet detached from the main continent in those days. "The
ancient inhabitant of Picardy could pass into Great Britain without crossing the Channel. The British Isles were united to
Gaul by an isthmus which has since been submerged." ("Man before Metals," p. 184.)
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[[Vol. 2, Page]] 751 DARWINIANS REJECT THE TRUTH.
It was --
"When the level of the Baltic and of the North Sea was 400 feet higher than it is now; when the valley of the Somme was
not hollowed to the depth it has now attained; when Sicily was joined to Africa, Barbary to Spain," when "Carthage, the
Pyramids of Egypt, the palaces of Uxmal and Palenque were not in existence, and the bold navigators of Tyre and Sidon,
who at a later date were to undertake their perilous voyages along the coasts of Africa, were yet unborn. What we know
with certainty is that European man was contemporaneous with the extinct species of the quaternary epoch . . . . that he
witnessed the upheaval of the Alps* and the extension of the glaciers, in a word that he lived for thousands of years
before the dawn of the remotest historical traditions . . . . It is even possible that man was the contemporary of extinct
mammalia of species yet more ancient . . . . of the Elephas meridionalis of the sands of St. Prest . . . and the Elephas
antiquus, assumed to be prior to the elephas primigenius, since their bones are found in company with carved flints in
several English caves, associated with those of the Rhinoceros hemitaechus and even of the Machairodus latidens,