Secret Destiny of America

The ancient Greeks had a far better knowledge of geography than popular opinion today indicates. We have been deceived as to the full measure of classical learning, because the Greeks did not commit the larger part of their knowledge to writing, and they bound scholarship with the vow of secrecy. In ancient days all learning was regarded as sacred; wisdom was entrusted to the keeping of priest-philosophers; and they were permitted to communicate the choicest branches of the sciences only to duly initiated pupils. To bestow knowledge upon those who had not prepared their minds by years of discipline and self-purification profaned the mysteries, desecrated the sacred sciences. Some years ago, in discussing this fine point in ethics with the late Professor James Breasted, the most distinguished of American Egyptologists, he confirmed my own findings; and further stated it to be his personal conviction that the classical civilizations concealed most of their learning under legends, myths, and allegories; and these have long been mistakenly accepted as the literal beliefs of these peoples. There can be no doubt that the existence of a great continent in the Western Hemisphere was known to the ancient Greeks. And also to the Egyptians and the Chinese. It is nothing short of foolish to assume that the ancients lacked ships sufficiently seaworthy to navigate the larger oceans. Long before the Christian era, the older civilization had constructed boats far larger and more seaworthy than any of the vessels used by Columbus. One of the Ptolemys of Egypt built a ship large enough to have an orchard of fruit trees on the deck, together with swimming pools and fountains stocked with live fish. Calculations based upon Plutarch's description of ancient voyages seem to indicate that the Greeks not only reached the coast of America, but explored the St. Lawrence river and part of the Great Lakes area. Plato, in his treatise on the destruction of Atlantis, wrote that due to the commotions in the ocean caused by the submergence of a vast continent, all navigation to the west ceased for a long period of time. This statement can only imply that such navigation had taken place in remote times. Greek mythology perpetuates the knowledge of a blessed land beyond the Western Boundaries of Ocean. In this blessed land dwelt the Hesperides, the beautiful daughters of Night, and here also at the end of each day the sun came to rest. In popular mythology the Hesperic Isles were a kind of terrestrial paradise. Thus, under a thin veil of mystic symbolism, was concealed the account of a Western continent of great size, fertile and rich and abounding in all good things. The ancients believed the earth to be surrounded by the sphere of the constellations, and they assigned to each country the star groups which were above that country's particular area of land. In the arrangement preserved in the writings of Aratus of Soli, the constellation of the eagle spreads its wings accross the North American continent; the serpent winds its coil over Mexico and Central America; and the dragon floats in the sky above Japan and China. Perhaps Sir Edward Landseer was not far wrong when he declared that the symbols of nations, and the emblems peculiar to their heraldry, originated in their ruling constellations. Just about everyone knows that the constellation of the Great Bear is in the sky over Russia, and since time immemorial the bear that walks like a man has been the accepted symbol of the Russian State. Thus in many ways we discover indications that the old races were wiser than we thought, and that what we have called discoveries are really only re-discoveries. Excerpt of 3. Westward Ocean Travel to the Earthly Paradise The Secret Destiny of America Manly Palmer Hall