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"It may be, as some indeed suspect, that the science we see
as the dawn of recorded history was not science at its dawn, but
represents the remnants of the science of some great and as yet
untraced civilization." SRK. Glanville
The trail followed has led us along the haunting
tracks of a lost civilization of navigators, builders and astronomers.
To sum up, one or more cataclysms appear to have been involved in
its ultimate demise, but not its total extinction - some survivors
escaped with scattered remnants of their science and civilization
to start again elsewhere. At least one of the cataclysms involved
was of a global nature, and is now thought to have had something
to do with the end of the last Ice Age, around twelve thousand years
ago.
The survivors appear to have successfully settled, colonized and
sown the seeds of their science and civilization in some parts of
the world, and met with defeat - either from the original inhabitants,
further cataclysmic violence, or just the passage of the time -
in others. And though the ages have all but effaced the traces of
their presence in the mists of prehistory, what remains to us has
still been enough to tantalize and polarize thinkers for more
than a couple of thousand years, and continues to do so today.
Let it be summed up in the words of Charles H. Hapgood, from the
final chapter of his work, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, and chapter;
'A Civilization that Vanished.'
'The evidence presented by the ancient maps
appears to suggest the existence in remote times, before the rise
of any known cultures, of a true civilization, of an advanced kind,
which either was localised in one area but had worldwide commerce,
or was, in a real sense, a worldwide culture. This culture, at least
in some respects, was more advanced than the civilizations of Greece
and Rome. In geodesy, nautical science, and mapmaking it was more
advanced than any known culture before the 18th century of the Christian
Era. It was only in the 18th century that we developed the practical
means of finding longitude. It was in the 18th century that we first
accurately measured the circumference of the earth. Not until the
19th century did we begin to send out ships for exploration into
the Arctic or Antarctic Seas and only then did we begin exploration
of the bottom of the Atlantic. The maps indicate that some ancient
people did all these things.'[4]
Hapgood never referred to any one 'ancient
civilization' by name, such as Atlantis. It would have been more
than his reputation was worth and, in his own words, 'the book contains
enough hard evidence to stand on its own.' Nevertheless the echoes
of Atlantis ring like sunken bells beneath the surface, and can
hardly fail to occur to the reader.
Graham Hancock adds more of the details which we have seen in our
lost civilization:
'A nation of navigators, then. And a nation
of builders, too: Tiahuanaco builders, Teotihuacan builders, pyramid
builders, Sphinx builders, builders who could lift and position
200-ton blocks of limestone with apparent ease, builders who could
align vast monuments to the cardinal points with uncanny accuracy.
Whoever they were, these builders appeared to have left their characteristic
fingerprints all over the world in the form of cyclopean polygonal
masonry, site layouts involving astronomical alignments, mathematical
and geodetic puzzles, and myths about gods in human form.'
So why choose Atlantis as our focus? The legends,
discourses and myths point to a pre-eminent civilization that existed
before the flood. Call it Poseidia, Lemuria or Mu, it was known
by many names, and by many cultures. There are more myths that point
to Atlantis than any of the other sunken civilizations, and these
myths seem the most strongly branded in our collective consciousness.
Anyway, my favorite Greek philosopher has much to say about Atlantis,
and I can't just gag an eminent soul, can I? Or, said in other words,
those of Rand and Rose Flem-Ath:
'The astonishing significance of Plato's account
of Atlantis is the remarkable fact that in three short sentences
he describes with amazing accuracy the fundamental geographic features
of our planet as seen from Antarctica. Somewhere and somehow amidst
the chaos of history, perhaps as a dying legacy, the Atlanteans
entrusted their world view to the priests of ancient Egypt. One
of these priests disclosed this secret geography to Plato's ancestor,
Solon. This ancient, yet accurate depiction of our planet proves
that not only did Atlantis exist on Antarctica, but it was an advanced
civilization, capable of conceptualizing and mapping the entire
planet.'[3]
Let Plato speak:
'This power came forth out of the Atlantic
Ocean. In those far-away days that Ocean could be navigated, as
there was an island outside the channel which your countrymen tell
me you call the "Pillars of Heracles". This island was
larger than Libya and Asia together, and from it seafarers, in those
times, could make their way to the others, and thence to the whole
opposite continent, which encircles the true outer Ocean. For this
sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having
a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding
land may be most truly called a boundless continent.'
For the Greeks of Solon's time the Atlantic Ocean was a body of
water that completely surrounded the world. Click on the globe below
for the map of the world as they then knew it:
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click
here
From our own global perspective, it has been
suggested that Atlantis was lost partly because we lost the original
meaning of the term "Atlantic Ocean".
It was only later when the age of exploration
discovered (or invented) new oceans that 'Atlantic' came to mean
just the water between Europe/Africa and North/South America. Atlantic
Ocean in Solon's time was the World Ocean that oceanographers teach
us today.[3]
So the evidence points to a continental-sized
island civilization which was destroyed - or sank - in a series
of cataclysms. It appears to have been located in the 'Atlantic',
'real', and 'world ocean'. The problem is, there is no such inhabitable
place on the earth, and despite our best efforts, we haven't yet
found the remains of one. So how do you lose a continent? It is
a problem that has plagued theorists and scholars for centuries.
'For Graham Hancock, the Antarctica theory
of the Flem- Aths came as a kind of deliverance. A few months into
work on his book about the problem of a lost civilization, he received
a letter of resignation from his researcher. It explained that,
as far as he could see, the search was quite pointless, since such
a civilization would have to be enormous - at least two thousand
miles across, with rivers and mountains, and a considerable history
of long-term development. There was no known land mass in the world
that could have accommodated such a civilization. As to the notion
that it could lie at the bottom of the Atlantic, the floor of the
Atlantic Ocean, now so thoroughly mapped, showed no sign of a lost
continent. The same was true of the floor of the Pacific and Indian
Oceans. So in spite of all the evidence for some earlier civilization
- such as that contained in Hapgood's maps - it looked as if there
was nowhere its remains might be lurking.'[4]
On the trail of the cradle of human civilization
himself, Dr. William Fairfield Warren found many traces of the lost
civilization in myths. He believed it could be at the North Pole.
He wrote in 1885:
'Students of antiquity must often have marveled
that in nearly every ancient literature they should encounter the
strange expression "the Navel of the Earth". Still more
unaccountable would it have seemed to them had they noticed how
many ancient mythologies connect the cradle of the human race with
this earth-navel. The advocates of the different sites which have
been assigned to Eden have seldom, if ever, recognized the fact
that no hypothesis on this subject can be considered acceptable
which cannot account for this peculiar association of man's first
home with some sort of natural centre of the earth.'[5]
So when we are looking for a lost civilization
that acted as the cradle of the human race, Warren suggests, we
are looking for some sort of natural centre of the earth.
The main contenders for the so-called 'cradle of civilization' are
Sumeria, Egypt, China and India. Besides the fact that the myths
of the 'Navel of the Earth' originate from these ancient cultures,
none of these 'cradles' fit the physical description of a 'natural
centre', as myth suggests. We have to look elsewhere. Plato has
more clues for us:
'I have described the city and the environs
of the ancient palace nearly in the words of Solon, and now I must
endeavor to represent the nature and arrangement of the rest of
the land. The whole country was said by him to be very lofty and
precipitous on the side of the sea, but the country immediately
about and surrounding the city was a level plain, itself surrounded
by mountains which descended towards the sea.'
!['lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea'](Pix/eden.jpg)
'The surrounding mountains were celebrated
for their number and size and beauty, far beyond any which still
exist, having in them also many wealthy villages of country folk,
and rivers, and lakes, and meadows supplying food enough for every
animal, wild or tame, and much wood of various sorts, abundant for
each and every kind of work.'[2]
Plato recorded these words and left the audience
hanging by leaving his last work Critias, unfinished. Of all the
colorful myths of Ancient Greece and Rome, mankind seems to have
remembered and been the most fascinated by those of the lost continent.
Curiously, it has also shifted over the centuries from a matter
of philosophical inquiry into something little less than scientific
controversy.
"Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful
empire which had rule over the whole island and several others,
and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis
had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles
as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia."[1]
The description the Egyptian priest, Sonchis,
gave Solon, as retold by Plato, contains many clues to the site
of the country the lost civilization inhabited. Let's review the
points;
First it was an island, and a continent bigger than what the Greeks
of Solon's time termed 'Libya' and 'Asia'. The land was very lofty
and precipitous on the side of the sea - or high above sea level.
There were numerous high mountains and impressive cliffs rising
from the ocean. Other islands lay near the main island of Atlantis,
and it had rich mineral resources and could be found in a distant
point in the 'Atlantic', or the 'real' Ocean. Lastly, it lay beyond
the known world - the Pillars of Heracles, and was in its own way
surrounded by a 'true continent'. Curiously also, it appears that
the Egyptian priest gave Solon clues and a date for the final catastrophe
that destroyed Atlantis. There was a change in the course of the
sun, and the world was concussed by earthquakes of extraordinary
violence, which were followed by worldwide floods. The date was
9560 BC.
If we turn to Whitakers Almanac we get the following description
of the geology of Antarctica:
"The most conspicuous physical features
of the continent are its high inland plateau (much of it over 10,000
ft.), the Transantarctic Mountains ... and the mountainous Antarctic
Peninsula and off-lying islands. The continental shelf averages
20 miles in width (half global mean, and in places it is non-existent)
..."
At an average elevation of 6,500 feet, Antarctica
is the highest continent in the world, in fact, it averages more
than twice as high as Asia with 3,200 feet, and three times as high
as South America and Africa, who come a distant third with an average
elevation of 2,000 feet each. Antarctica fits the picture in several
other aspects as well. The extensive mineral resources found on
Antarctica make it a prize for the fossil-fuel industry, and thus
a politically important piece of property for every self-respecting
nation in the modern world.
'Antarctica is our least understood continent.
Most of us assume that this immense island has been ice-bound for
millions of years. But new discoveries prove that parts of Antarctica
were free of ice thousands of years ago, recent history by the geological
clock. The theory of 'earth-crust displacement' explains the mysterious
surge and ebb of Antarctica's vast ice sheet.'
The fact that coal has been discovered in
Antarctica further points to the fact that it was once forested.
Plants cannot grow with the meager light afforded at the earth's
poles, so if it was indeed forested it could not always have been
centered on the planet's southern pole.
As a continent comparable in size to North America, Antarctica thus
had the potential to host a rich and wealthy, and necessarily maritime
civilization. Plato describes Atlantis as an island, ringed by the
'boundless continent'. When looking at the world from the perspective
of Antarctica, it indeed looks little more than an island, bounded
by a massive continent.
Plato
is of course not the only one, but few cultures have as much detail
as he about the actual site of Atlantis, or the 'home of the gods',
itself. Most describe the local circumstances of the cataclysm.
Nevertheless, there are many scattered tales that are also quite
revealing, commonly describing heavenly disturbances, the onset
of the great flood and the story of those surviving it. Of them
all, those of the Avestic Aryans of pre-Islamic Iran are the most
striking, and again point to their original 'paradise' that was
destroyed by the cataclysm. It appears to describe the same story
of Noah, Deucalion and all the other Deluge survivors, but curiously
alludes to a part of the world where another aspect of the cataclysm
seemed to be taking place:
'The Avestic scriptures take us back to a
time of paradise on earth, when the remote ancestors of the ancient
Iranian people lived in the fabled Airyana Vaejo, the first good
and happy creation of Ahura Mazda that flourished in the first age
of the world: the mythical birthplace and original home of the Aryan
race.
'In those days Airyana Vaejo enjoyed a mild and productive climate
with seven months of summer and five of winter. Rich in wildlife
and in crops, its meadows flowing with streams, this garden of delights
was converted into an uninhabitable wasteland of ten months' winter
and only two months summer as a result of the onslaught of Angra
Mainyu, the Evil One:
"The first of the good lands and countries which I, Ahura Mazda,
created was the Airyana Vaejo ... The Angra Mainyu, who is full
of death, created an opposition to the same, a mighty serpent and
snow. Ten months of winter there are now, two months of summer,
and these are cold as the water, cold as the earth, cold as the
trees ... There all around falls deep snow; that is the direst of
plagues..."
'When Angra Mainyu sent the 'vehement destroying frost' he also
'assaulted and deranged the sky' and had mastered 'one third of
the sky and overspread it with darkness'. Ahura Mazda calls a meeting
of the gods, and tells us that 'the fair Yima, the good shepherd
of high renown in Airyana Vaejo,' attended this meeting with all
his excellent mortals. It is at this point that the strange parallels
with the traditions of the biblical flood begin to crop up, for
Ahura Mazda takes advantage of the meeting to warn Yima of what
is about to happen as a result of the powers of the Evil One:
"And Ahura Mazda spake unto Yima saying: 'Yima the fair ...
Upon the material world a fatal winter is about to descend, that
shall bring a vehement, destroying frost. Upon the corporeal world
will the evil of the winter come, wherefore snow will fall in great
abundance...
"And all three sorts of beasts shall perish, those that live
in the wilderness, and those that live on the tops of mountains,
and those that live in the depths of the valleys under the shelter
of stables.
"Therefore make thee a var [a hypogoeum or underground enclosure]
the length of a riding ground to all four corners. Thither bring
thou the representatives of every kind of beast, great and small,
of the cattle, of the beasts of burden, and of men, of dogs, of
birds, and of the red burning fires.
"There shalt thou make water flow. Thou shalt put birds in
the trees along the water's edge, in verdure which is everlasting.
There put specimens of all plants, the loveliest and most fragrant,
and of all fruits the most succulent. All these kinds of things
and creatures shall not perish as long as they are in the var. But
put there no deformed creature, nor impotent, nor mad, neither wicked,
nor deceitful, nor rancorous, nor jealous; nor a man with irregular
teeth, nor a leper ..."
'Apart from the scale of the enterprise there is only one real difference
between Yima's divinely inspired var and Noah's divinely inspired
ark: the ark is a means of surviving a terrible and devastating
flood which will destroy every living creature by drowning the world
in water; the var is a means of surviving a terrible and devastating
'winter' which will destroy every living creature by covering the
earth with a freezing blanket of ice and snow.'[1]
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The Avestic Aryans also maintained that in later years Airyana Vaejo
was a place in which:
"The stars, the moon and the sun are
only once a year seen to rise and set, and a years seems only a
day."
Hindu tradition maintains that the literary
monuments of the Indus Valley, the Vedas, are revealed texts, meaning
that they were passed down from the time of the gods. Like the myths
of the 'First Time' in Egypt, the Vedas originate from the period
of the 'gods' - not in the Indus Valley however - but at a place
called Mount Meru, the land of the gods. These again seem to describe
the sun in polar conditions. The Mahabarata describes:
'At Meru the sun and the moon go round from left to right every
day, and so do all the stars ... The mountain by its lustre, so
overcomes the darkness of night, that the night can hardly be distinguished
from day ... The day and night together are equal to a year to the
residents of the place ...'
'In the Surya Siddhanta, an ancient Indian
text, we read, "The gods behold the sun, after it has once
arisen for half a year." The seventh Mandala of the Rig Veda
contains a number of 'Dawn Hymns.' One of these (VII, 76) says that
the dawn has raised its banner on the horizon with its usual splendour
and reports in Verse 3 that a period of several days elapsed between
the first appearance of the dawn and the rising of the sun that
followed it. Another passage states, 'many were the days between
the first beams and the dawn and actual sunrise.'
That Antarctica was once ice-free and capable
of sustaining an influential civilization ties in with the unexplained
nature of Ice Ages on this planet. Hancock muses:
'If earth-crust displacements don't happen
on earth, how do we account for the otherwise awkward fact that
not a single one of the ice-caps built up around the world during
the previous Ice Ages seems to have occurred at - or even near -
either of the present poles. On the contrary, land areas bearing
the marks of former glaciation are very widely distributed. If we
cannot assume crustal shifts, we must find some other way to explain
why the ice-caps appear to have reached sea level within the tropics
on three continents: Asia, Africa and Australia.'
Without going into whether or not Antarctica
once harboured a civilization, Charles Hapgood's solution to the
problem of the Ice Ages is simple:
'The only ice age that is adequately explained
is the present ice age in Antarctica. This is excellently explained.
It exists, quite obviously because Antarctica is at the pole, and
for no other reason. No variation of the sun's heat, no galactic
dust, no volcanism, no subcrustal currents, and no arrangements
of land elevations or sea currents account for the fact. We may
conclude that the best theory to account for an ice age is that
area concerned was at the pole. We thus account for the Indian and
African ice sheets, though the areas once occupied by them are now
in the tropics. We account for all ice sheets of continental size
in the same way.'
Was Antarctica the continent that harboured
the lost maritime civilization of builders and navigators? Was the
lost civilization, to which most of the world's cultures ascribe
their paradisical origin, that which Plato calls Atlantis? Did the
entire continent slip, in one or more cataclysmic earth-crust displacements,
directly into the position of the south pole?
If the planet is indeed subject to cyclical floods and cataclysms,
and the Atlantean civilization is as old as it must be to have achieved
the advancement it did, then Antarctica, with it's elevation, seems
like the continent that would have weathered the world's global
storms the longest. It would have been the continent with the size
and the resources to support such a civilization for many thousands
of years, largely unhindered.
If extracts gleaned from the ancient works of civilizations that
associated themselves to the elder culture can be held as any kind
of evidence, then the evidence clearly points to their home at the
navel of the earth and the greatest island in the World Ocean, Antarctica.
CONTINUE
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