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The Deluge Not a Myth: Mongols

Perched on an eminence, and based on solid rock, it may escape entombment, but more swiftly and more certainly will * "The work of destruction was carried on methodically. From the Caspian Sea to the Indus, the Mongols ruined, within four years, more than four centuries of continuous labour have since restored. The most flourishing cities became a mass of ruins: Samarkand, Bokhara, Nizabour, Balkh, and Kandahar shared in the same destruction." Gutzlaff, Hist. China, vol. i. p. 358. † "An army of 700,000 Mongols met half the number of Mahommedans."--1bid. p. 357. it be destroyed by the elements, * and by the decomposition of its own material furnish the shroud for its envelopment.† It is not altogether surprising then that no older discoveries than those already quoted have yet been made, for these would probably never have resulted if tradition had not both stimulated and guided the fortunate explorer.

It is, therefore, no unfair inference that the remains of equally important, but very much more ancient cities and memorials of civilization may have hitherto entirely escaped our observation, presuming that we can show some reasonable grounds for belief that, subsequent to their completion, a catastrophe has occurred of sufficiently universal a character to have obliterated entirely the annals of the past, and to have left in the possession of its few survivors but meagre and fragmentary recollections of all that had preceded them. Now this is precisely what the history and traditions of all nations affirm to have occurred. However, as a variance of opinion exists as to the credence which should be attached to these traditions, I shall, before expressing my own views upon the subject, briefly epitomize those entertained by two authors of sufficient eminence to warrant their being selected as representatives of two widely opposite schools.

These gentlemen, to whom we are indebted for exhaustive papers, embracing the pith of all the information extant * Those interested in the subject may read with great advantage the section on dynamical geology in Dana's valuable manual. He points out the large amount of wear accomplished by wind carrying sand in arid regions, by seeds falling in some crevice, and bursting rocks open through the action of the roots developed from their sprouting, to say nothing of the more ordinarily recognized destructive agencies of frost and rain, carbonic acid resulting from vegetable decomposition, &c. + Darwin, in Vegetable Mould and Earth-worms, has shown that earthworms play a considerable part in burying old buildings, even to a depth of several feet. ‡ Rev. T. K. Cheyne, Article "Deluge," Encyclopædia Britannica, 1877. François Lenormant, "The Deluge, its Traditions in Ancient Histories," Contemporary Review, Nov., 1879. upon the subject, have tapped the same sources of information, consulted the same authorities, ranged their information in almost identical order, argued from the same data, and arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions.

Mr. Cheyne, following the lead of Continental mythologists, deduces that the Deluge stories were on the whole propagated from several independent centres, and adopts the theory of Schirrer and Gerland that they are ether myths, without any historical foundation, which have been transferred from the sky to the earth.