The True History Of Atlantis

http://www.atlan.org/articles/true_history/

Note: The cataclysms of fire and water of worldwide extent of which we speak in this essay are strictly scientific. They are widely attested in the geological record, being generally accepted by modern Geology. So are the massive extinctions of all sorts of species, and particularly of the large mammals which took place at the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, some 11,600 years ago. Some 70% of the former species of great mammals which existed in the former era became extinct then, including, in all probability, two species of humans, the Neandertals and the Cro-Magnons, which became extinct more or less at this epoch.

Only the mechanism for the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age — which is a certain fact, but is so far unexplained by Science — is new and our own. We propose that this dramatic event was caused by a huge explosion of the Krakatoa volcano (or perhaps another one), which opened the Strait of Sunda, separating the islands of Java and Sumatra, in Indonesia.

[FOOTNOTE: This text was written some ten years ago, and is only now being revised and updated (Jan. 2002). Many of its finds and predictions have recently been empirically confirmed by Science since, then. One such is the dramatic confirmation of the existence of a now sunken giant continent to the south of Southeast Asia and China, precisely as predicted by ourselves. This confirmation was obtained by the spy satellites of NASA an NOAA, and was only recently declassified, as we comment in this site. Moreover, as we now discuss, its shape and features are precisely the ones predicted by ourselves on entirely different grounds (bathymetric soundings).

Another important fact was the discovery that the date of the cataclysm which caused the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age — very probably a Heinrich Event, as is fast becoming clear — was not only sudden and brutal, but occurred at the date stipulated by Plato, that of 11,600 years ago. So, it seems the old philosopher was right after all, despite the fact that scientists still adamantly refuse to believe in the reality of the Flood cataclysm. The nature of the cataclysm which caused the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age — the Heinrich Events just mentioned — also seem to be the result of the events preconized by ourselves some 20 years ago, that is, the result of giant maritime invasions caused by giant tsunamis, themselves caused by explosive supervolcanic eruptions, as discussed in this text.

Scientists have not yet realized the real cause of Heinrich Events, but I am sure they soon will, when they realize the utter impossibility of the mechanism now held to have been responsible for them: the breaking open of giant lakes dammed by the glaciers themselves. As some geologists of note have remarked, this damming is impossible for several good reasons, one of them the lack of mechanical resistance on their part. The reduction of glacier albedo by soot deposition has also been proposed as a possible cause, just as we predicted it would be. In other words, though no prophets, our predictions turned out to be quite accurate. In fact, they are obvious on hindsight, since they are so logical. And they are, though non-canonical, all strictly scientific, as I am a professional scientist myself, and quite used to doing science, conventional or not. In time, my theory will create a new paradigm for both Science and Religion that seems to be on the coming for this new millennium of ours. It is a bit poignant, however, to be some sort of Cassandra, fated to be disbelieved by one and all, despite the correctness of my prophecies. Domine, non sum dignus.]

This giant explosion is widely attested in all sorts of myths and traditions such as those concerning Atlantis and Paradise, indeed located in this region of the world. It is universally remembered as the explosion of the Mountain of Paradise (= Mt. Krakatoa, Atlas, Sinai, Zion, Alborj, Qaf, Golgotha, Meru, etc.) and of the deluge it caused, of which they all speak obsessively as the Universal Flood and the Universal Conflagration.

The explosion of Mt. Krakatoa caused a giant tsunami, which ravaged the lowlands of Atlantis and Lemuria. It also triggered the end of the last Ice Age by covering the continental glaciers with a layer of soot (fly ash) which precipitated their melting by increasing the absorption of sunshine. The giant tsunami it caused also resulted in a maritime invasion of the continents surrounding the Pacific region and, above all, of the Antarctic region. The result was that the glaciers were floated by these invading waters and carried back to the ocean, when these waters returned to it. This process has recently been confirmed by geological and oceanographic research, and is called Heinrich Events. These are associated with the cataclysm end of the Pleistocene Ice age, and are sudden and brutal.

The meltwaters of these glaciers — covered by soot or carried off as glaciers and banquises — flowed into the oceans, raising sea-level by about 100-150 meters. This huge rise in sea level created tremendous strains and stresses in the crust of the earth due to the extra weight on the seafloor and the isostatic rebound of the continents, alleviated of the colossal weight of the mile-thick glaciers which formerly covered them. The crust then cracked open in the weak spots, engendering further volcanic eruptions, and further earthquakes and tsunamis which fedback (positively) the process, furthering it to completion. The result was the dramatic end of the Pleistocene Ice Age and the so-called Quaternary Extinctions which we mentioned above.

introduction

All nations, of all times, believed in the existence of a Primordial Paradise where Man originated and developed the fist civilization ever. This story, real and true, is told in the Bible and in Hindu Holy Books such a the Rig Veda, the Puranas and many others. That this Paradise lay "towards the Orient" no one doubts, excepting some die-hard scientists who stolidly hold that the different civilizations developed independently from each other even in such unlikely, late places such as Europe, the Americas or the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This, despite the very considerable contrary evidence that has developed from essentially all fields of the human sciences, particularly the anthropological ones. It is mainly on those that we base our arguments in favor of the reality of a pristine source of human civilization traditionally called Atlantis or Eden, etc..

[FOOTNOTE: We emphasize, once again, that our theory, though superficially reembling those of the Theosophists, the Velikovskians, Pole-Shiftists and son, has nothing to do with them, as they are all strictly scientific and founded on actual fact, rather than on religion or Tradition alone. Theosophists derive their wisdom from Mme. Blavatsky, a Russian lady who, in the 1860's moved to India, where she founded the theosophical Society, which had a considerable following among the intellectuals of the time. Blavatsky was an extremely intelligient person, and soon amassed an immense mass of knowledge of Hindu and other esoteric tradition, which she published in books such as The Secret Doctrine and the Veil of Isis, which became extremely popular, even today. But her writings seem an undigested version of the esoteric doctrines of Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions and Occult doctrines,mingled to some pseudo-science which she obtained from the geological textbooks of the time, which would allprove wrong in the course of time.

Pole Shift is sheer unscientific bumcombe that holds no water. It is impossible on both physicaland geological grounds, as we explain elewhere in detail. These ideas were originally ppularized by Charles Hapgood, and survive in writers such as John White and Graham Hancock. Rather than scientists, these authors are journalists, whose specialty is precisely rendering palatable to the public what are usually government lies and propaganda. White has — as indeed most such proponents of the theory, Hapgood included — publicly recanted from his former views on PoleShift, which henow recognizes as an unscienific concept. We hope Graham Hancock will soon do the same, particularly because he now dropped his proposalof an Antarctic Atlantis, in favour of our own hypothesis of a Far Eastern one.

Velikovsky is another unusual character. A Russian Jew and an emigré to the US, his books became the delight of all inquisitive persons who, in the 1950's,were discontent with the obscurities of Academic Science. Among these, I should be counted, as his books opened my eyes to the inconsistencies of theories such as Darwin's Uniformitarian Geology and his theory ofEvolution, based on precisely this false premise. The problem of Velikovsky was taking the catastrophic events he proposed as the literal truth. Moreover, as an orthodox Jew, Velikovsky also believed the dates and events of the Bible — ridiculously small by geological standards — to be actual facts which should be implicitly believed by all. Of course, most of his proposals proved to be false, excpt insofar as Catastrophism seems indeed to be one important feature not only of Evolution, but also of geology, in contrast to what Drawin and Lyell so emphatically argued. But his books — like the ones of Blavatsky and even Graham Hancock are a good read even today, as long as they are considered what they indeed are: pleasant Sci Fi, based on ill-digested pseudo-Science. ]

It was in the Orient, and beyond, that agriculture (of rice and grains) and animal domestication were invented. These two crucial inventions allowed Man's fixation to the soil, and the resulting prosperity led to civilization and the founding of the first cities. It is exactly this fact that is related in the Bible, that attributes the foundation of the first city — called Henok or Chenok, ("the Abode of the Pure", in Dravida) — to Cain (Gen. 4:17). This end at the completion of its allotted time is what is meant by Henok's lifespan of "365 years".

This name ("Pure Land") of the very first of all cities is the same in Hindu traditions (Shveta-dvipa, Sukhavati,Atala, etc.). Even in the Amerindian traditions, Yvymaraney "the Land of the Pure", is the legendary birthplace of the Tupi-Guarani Indians of Brazil, just as Aztlan is the land of origin of the ancient Aztecs of Mexico, and Tollán is the one of the Mayas of Yucatan. Man — or, more exactly, the anthropoid simians that were our ancestors — in fact arose in Africa some 3 million years ago. But these anthropoids soon spread all over Eurasia and beyond, reaching the Far Orient and Australia, inclusive, by about 1 million years ago or even more.

indonesia, the site of eden

It was in Indonesia and the neighboring lands that Man, after emigrating from the semi-desertic savannas of Africa, first found the ideal climatic conditions for development, and it was there that he invented agriculture and civilization. All this took place during the Pleistocene, the last of the geological eras, which ended a scant 11,600 years ago. Though long by human standards, this is but a brief moment in geological terms.

The Pleistocene — a name which is Greek for "most recent" — is also called Anthropozoic Era or Quaternary Era or, yet, the Ice Age. During the Pleistocene and, more exactly, during the glacial episodes that happened at intervals of about 20 thousand years, sea level was about 100-150 meters (330-500 feet) below the present value. With this, a large coastal strip — the so-called Continental Platform (with a width of about 200 km = 120 miles) — became exposed, forming land bridges that interconnected many islands and regions.

The most dramatic of such exposures took place in the region of Indonesia, precisely the spot where humanity first flourished. The vast expansion of the South China Sea then formed an immense continent, indeed "larger than Asia Minor and Libya put together". This is, as we shall see below, precisely what Plato affirms in his discourse on Atlantis, the Critias.

With the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, the immense glaciers that covered the whole of the northern half of North America and Eurasia melted away. Their waters drained to the sea, whose level rose by the estimated amount of about 100-150 meters quoted above. With this rise, Atlantis sunk away and disappeared for good, along with most of its population, which we estimate, based on Plato's data, at about 20 million people, huge for the epoch in question.

eden was the same as lemurian atlantis

More exactly, this sunken continent was Lemurian Atlantis, the larger of the two Atlantises mentioned by Plato. Lemuria was the vast prairie which the Greeks called Elysian Fields and which the Egyptians named "the Field of Reeds" (Sekhet Aaru) or, yet, "the Ancestral Land" (To-wer), the overseas Paradise where they formerly lived, inZep Tepi ("Primordial Time"). The sunken continent became the Land of the Dead, the dreadful, forbidden region where no mariner ever ventured to go, for it was "the Land of No Return".

Interestingly enough the name "Ancestral Land" (or Serendip) is precisely the Dravidian name of Taprobane (Sumatra), the island where the Hindus placed their pristine Paradise, likewise sunken in a cataclysm. The gloomy, pestilential place that remained above the water was named Sheol ("Hell") by the Jews, and, in the spared spots, "Island of the Blest" (Makarion nesos) or Hades by the Greeks, Amenti or Punt by the Egyptians, Dilmun by the Mesopotamians, Hawaiki by the Polynesians, Svarga by the Hindus, and so on.

The Celts — whose legends are perhaps the best recollection of the sunken golden realm — called the place Avallon, Emain Abbalach or, yet, Ynis Wydr ("Island of Glass"). They also associated the eerie place with the Holy Grail and the resurrection of their dead heroes, as we detail in other, forthcoming articles of ours. And we already mentioned above the Yvymaraney of the Tupian Indians of Brazil, or the Aztlan or Aztatlan of the Aztecs of Mexico, or the Tollán of the Mayas of Yucatan, the submerged land from which these Indians were obliged to flee, when it sunk underseas, disappearing forever.

the seminal exodus

The greatest of all Lemurian colonies was Atlantis, founded in India, already during the heydays of Lemuria, and which, in time, reached the apex of human grandeur. Atlantis and Lemuria had prospered for a full zodiacal era (2,160 years), when the great cataclysm destroyed their common world, at the end of the Pleistocene, some 11,600 years ago.

The scant survivors of the cataclysm that sunk Lemuria away were forced to flee their destroyed Paradise, moving first to India, the site of Atlantis, which had been spared in its northern, loftier portion. But the global catastrophe had also caused the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers caused huge floods of the rivers of Asia, rendering the region unfit for human habitation. These floods ravaged this remainder of Atlantis, already greatly destroyed by the original cataclysm, the giant conflagration of the Indonesian volcanoes and the huge tsunamis they caused, as well as by the plague that ravaged their country in their wake.

Again, this doomed people was obliged to flee, emigrating, along the ensuing millennia, to remote places such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, North Africa, Europe, North Asia, the Near Orient and even Oceania and the Americas. Some came on foot, in huge hordes like those of the Israelite exodus. Others came by ship, like Noah in his Ark or Aeneas with his fleet, to found the great civilizations of the ancient world.

The great civilizations that we know of, in the Indus Valley, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, Mexico and even the Americas were all Atlantean colonies founded by the survivors of the cataclysm that destroyed the twin Paradises of Atlantis and Lemuria. These colonists, of course, attempted to recreate their Eden in their new homeland.

The newcomers named each topographical feature after the archetypes of the pristine abode just as immigrants will do the same nowadays. Such is the reason why we keep finding vestiges of Atlantis everywhere, from Brazil and North America to Spain, Crete, and even Africa and North Europe. All these ancient civilizations spoke of Civilizing Heroes such as Manu, Noah, Aeneas, the Oannés, Hotu Matua, Quetzalcoatl, Kukulkan, Bochica and, of course, Atlas and Hercules, the omnipresent Twins that founded civilizations everywhere.

the reality of the civilizing heroes

Interestingly enough, the only place so far unclaimed among the literally hundreds of sitings of Atlantis is Indonesia. Of course, no solid evidence of the existence of Atlantis and, even more so, of Lemuria, has ever been found. The reason for this absence is easy to explain: the experts have all been searching Atlantis in the wrong sides of the world.

The legends of all peoples tell of Civilizing Heroes, Angels, Gods, or even Demons and Monsters who were their civilizers and who taught them religion, law, agriculture, metallurgy and the alphabet. These are the Fallen Angels, the same all too human heroes who fell desperately in love with the beautiful native girls, the Daughters of Man (Gen. 6). These fallen gods were not Astronauts, nor Sprites, but saintly men who came as missionaries from Atlantis. How else could they mate with human females and breed children?

The mysterious "Sons of God" (ben Elohim) of Gen. 6 are precisely the same ones identified by Plato with the Atlanteans. Their sin with the Daughters of Men — and, more probably, the rejection and enslavement of their hybrid offspring — led to the Flood. This is indeed the mysterious Original Sin that resulted in the destruction of Paradise (Atlantis) and the Fall of Man. This sin is the one ritually "washed" by the Baptism, itself an allegory of the Flood, as St. Jerome and other Church Patriarchs explicitly acknowledge.

Plato quotes precisely this cause for the destruction of Atlantis by God (Zeus) in his (unfinished) dialogue on Atlantis, the Critias. And the same story, in allegorized form, is also told by Homer concerning the Phaeacian "Sons of God". It also figures in the Celtic myths concerning Mererid, the sinful daughter of King Gradlon, whose scabrous conduct led to the sinking of the land of Ys. So, in the Americas (Bochica, etc.) and elsewhere.

If we read the Bible attentively, we note that it also speaks of two creations, exactly as Plato also tells of two different Atlantises (cf. Gen. 1 and 2). Moreover, the Bible also tells of two destructions of the world by the Deluge. These two different narratives are quaintly embroidered on each other in Gen. 6, and comprise the Elohist and the Jahvist accounts of the Flood, which relate two visibly different events.

the bible is right after all

We see, then, that the tradition (or traditions) narrated by Plato exactly coincides with the Biblical lore. Moreover, as we said above, the two traditions also exactly agree with the prehistoric events observed in the geological and the archaeological records. And, when we trace the worldwide legends to their source, we always end up in India and Indonesia, the two Atlantises of legend, no matter where we start from.

In truth, continents don't sink. It is the sea that rises, flooding entire continents, as it did in Lemurian Atlantis and, to a great extent, in the Indus Valley, the site of the second Atlantis. Relativists will say that both events — sea level rise and continental sinking — are one and the same thing, at least from the point of view of the observers. But geologists will hotly debate the issue, and claim, as they have long done, that actual sunken continents are a geological impossibility. It is all a matter of perspective, of relativistic illusion. But the best ancient sources — say, for instance that magnificent Hindu saga, the Mahabharata — speak of sea level rising rather than of continents sinking.

the elusive