Atlantis as we shall see is said to have been inhabited by red, yellow, white and black races. It is now proved by the researches of Le Plongeon, De Quatrefages, Bancroft and others that black populations of negroid type existed even up to recent times in America. Many of the monuments of Central America are decorated with negro faces, and some of the idols found there are clearly intended to represent negroes, with small skulls, short woolly hair and thick lips. The Popul Vuh, speaking of the first home of the Guatemalan race, says that "black and white men together" lived in this happy land "in great peace," speaking "one language."[1] The Popul Vuh goes on to relate how the people migrated from their ancestral home, how their language became altered, and how some went to the east, while others travelled west (to Central America).
[1. See Bancroft's Native Races, p. 547.]
Professor Retzius, in his Smithsonian Report, considers that the primitive dolichocephalae of America are nearly related to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and to the population on the Atlantic seaboard of Africa, which Latham comprises under the name of Egyptian Atlantidae. The same form of skull is found In the Canary Islands off the African coast and the Carib Islands off the American coast, while the colour of the skin in both is that of a reddish-brown.
The ancient Egyptians depicted themselves as red men of much the same complexion as exists to-day among some tribes of American Indians.
"The ancient Peruvians," says Short, "appear from numerous examples of hair found in their tombs to have been an auburn-haired race."
A remarkable fact about the American Indians, and one which is a standing puzzle to ethnologists, is the wide range of colour and complexion to be found among them. From the white tint of the Menominee, Dakota, Mandan, and Zuni tribes, many of whom have auburn hair and blue eyes, to the almost negro blackness of the Karos of Kansas and the now extinct tribes of California, the Indian races run through every shade of red-brown, copper, olive, cinnamon, and bronze.[1]
We shall see by and by how the diversity of complexion
[1. See Short's North Americans of Antiquity, Winchell's Pre-Adamites, and Catlin's Indians of North America; see also Atlantis, by Ignatius Donnelly, who has collected a great mass of evidence under this and other heads.]
on the American Continent is accounted for by the original race-tints on the parent continent of Atlantis.