American Genesis: The American Indian and the Origins of Modern Man

LOST TRIBES AND SUNKEN CONTINENTS 35
blue-eyed vegetarians. But Zschaetzsch said Atlantis was destroyed
because the Atlanteans became alcoholics. (This theory
was a favorite with Hitler because of its racist slant and its puritanical
theme.) Novelist W. Scott-Elliot said he could prove that
the Atlanteans had battleships, telepathy, subhuman manlike creations
to do their bidding, and priestesses in transparent silk
gowns. Perhaps this last circumstance explains why of all the
theories of Indian origins, only the Lost Continents have attracted
so much attention from artists, poets, fiction writers, and
moviemakers. For example, H. P. Lovecraft freely borrowed
many of Scott-Elliot's ideas to make his horror stories more convincing,
best selling novelist Taylor Caldwell wrote an Atlantean
saga called The Romance of Atlantis, and Hollywood made three
adventure movies on the subject in the 19605, taking great pains
to recreate convincingly the sinking. And where these groups
have left off, cranks have pushed things to the extreme. Mystical
organizations such as the Rosicrucians, Theosophists, and Anthroposophists
have shrouded the issue of Atlantis in an esoteric
world view.
Rudolf Steiner and Madame Blavatsky, two revered Theosophists,
talked about the cosmologic scheme of human evolution,
with its seven root races and seven epochs of history where within
each epoch there are seven subracial periOds. They talked of how
the Atlantean epoch, or the fourth, preceded the present Aryan
epoch and how each epoch goes through definite set cycles before
giving birth to the next. To these mystics' organizations the Atlantean
origin of the American culture is gospel.
Even more enigmatic and mystical than Atlantis is the Lost
Continent of Lemuria, more commonly known as Mu; it has, of
conrse, been argued that the Indians are descendants of this lost
land. Mu was supposed to have been a continent, even larger
than Atlantis, that sank in the Pacific. It was supposed to have
covered an area from Easter Island to the Carolinas, from Hawaii
in the north to the Cook Islands in the south, with the existing
mountainous Polynesian islands the tallest peaks of this nowsunken
land mass. According to adventurer Colonel James