Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/476

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ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD.

out that the Celtæ were the same as the Titans, the giant race who rebelled in Atlantis, and "that their princes were the same with the giants of Scripture." He adds that the word Titan "is perfect Celtic, and comes from tit, the earth, and ten or den, man, and hence the Greeks very properly also called them terriginæ, or earth-born." And it will be remembered that Plato uses the same phrase when he speaks of the race into which Poseidon intermarried as "the earth-born primeval men of that country."

The Greeks, who are Aryans, traced their descent from the people who were destroyed by the Flood, as did other races clearly Aryan.

"The nations who are comprehended under the common appellation of Indo-European," says Max Müller—"the Hindoos, the Persians, the Celts, Germans, Romans, Greeks, and Slavs—do not only share the same words and the same grammar, slightly modified in each country, but they seem to have likewise preserved a mass of popular traditions which had grown up before they left their common home."

"Bonfey, L. Geiger, and other students of the ancient Indo-European languages, have recently advanced the opinion that the original home of the Indo-European races must be sought in Europe, because their stock of words is rich in the names of plants and animals, and contains names of seasons that are not found in tropical countries or anywhere in Asia." ("American Cyclopædia," art. Ethnology.)

By the study of comparative philology, or the seeking out of the words common to the various branches of the Aryan race before they separated, we are able to reconstruct an outline of the civilization of that ancient people. Max Müller has given this subject great study, and availing ourselves of his researches we can determine the following facts as to the progenitors of the Aryan stock: They were a civilized race; they possessed the institution of marriage; they recognized the relationship of father, mother, son, daughter, grand-