Atlantis the Lost Continent Finally Found Read online

  Even the Four Rivers of Paradise – running along the Four Cardinal Directions as they should – were present there, in the very location I discovered, the Sunda Shelf. This unique site also had an abundance of canal networks built in order to control these torrents; a luxuriant agriculture of most extreme antiquity; vast forests and fauna and flora; abundant mineral resources including gold, silver, tin, copper and precious gemstones of all sorts, and so on.

  Moreover, this unique location also included a huge agricultural plain of exactly the rectangular shape and enormous size given by Plato; as well as coconuts, bananas, elephants and other resources both biological and mineral described by the great philosopher in his remarkable dialogues. Above all, the actual topography of the region exactly conformed to Plato’s detailed description in every essential detail.

  Even the names and the local traditions on Paradise and its destruction invariably matched Indonesia, once properly decoded and properly understood and translated. Moreover, the whole region is attended by all sorts of submarine supervolcanoes and tsunami-engendering earthquakes fully capable of causing the terrible events described by Plato, as the recent Indonesian earthquake cogently attests.

  When I first proposed my theory and my Indonesian location, as well as the possible connection of the Flood with giant volcanisms and earthquakes, my fellow scientists merely scoffed and walked away hurriedly, under some ill-cooked excuse or the other. Nowadays, they listen with utmost seriousness when I speak of Atlantis-Eden and its demise, or whenever I mention the word “tsunami”.

  The great philosopher himself connects the Atlantean events with the Flood or Universal Deluge. The reality and date of this event I have scientifically proved in a way that no one can validly deny anymore, according to both Science and Religious and Mythical Tradition.

  And it is this fascinating story that, after fully thirty years of dedicated study, I now offer to the dear reader in the present book and in the sequels of books and documentaries already programmed to follow it.

  The recent earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia and other nations in its vicinity – one of the greatest such human tragedies ever to occur with perhaps as many as 400,000 fatalities – compels belief that such huge catastrophes of global extent are an inherent feature of Nature, contrary to what many academics even today stolidly maintain.

  Oddly enough the Indonesian disaster took place precisely at Christmas time, when the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (“the Birthday of the Invincible Sun”) has been universally feasted since remotest antiquity. As we shall see, the Dies Natalis commemorates not the Day Star itself, but its terrestrial counterpart, the ferocious volcano of Atlantis-Eden.

  After all, Indonesia lies at the very heart of the “Pacific Fire Belt”, the world’s most active tectonic region. Indonesia is located at the boundary of three converging Continental Plates whose motion causes terrible stresses in the earth’s crust, leading to the frequent disasters there. As such, Indonesia harbors hundreds of active or quiescent volcanoes, and is seismically most active.

  It is quite possible that the Indonesian tsunami was ultimately caused by atmospheric pollution due to the unbridled burning of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and petroleum. This type of pollution leads to an increased CO2 level in the atmosphere, which leads to global warming.

  This global warming in turn results in the melting of the circumpolar glaciers, so that the sea level rises and increased stresses are induced on the earth’s crust by a process the specialists call “positive feedback”. A rise in sea level of a mere meter or so results in an overload of 1 ton/m2. Over 1 km2 this overload becomes 1 million ton/km2, a huge pressure, even by geological standards.

  These stresses further trigger a great series of huge earthquakes and volcanic activities such as the several aftershocks currently witnessed in Indonesia. These events occur as the earth’s crust moves in order to accommodate and support this increased loading. And they may again lead to a supervolcanism or a giant earthquake large enough to start a chain reaction of volcanisms and earthquakes of global extent.

  These volcanisms may also be explosive and able to darken the atmosphere sufficiently to drive the earth into a new Ice Age, killing so many people as to literally render humans “as rare as the gold of Ophir”.

  And this is no sheer metaphor. This kind of thing has happened several times in the past, and certainly will again, in the course of geological time. Ask any competent geologist or climatologist and see for yourself. Or read the Internet on supervolcanoes and giant tsunamis.

  Dear reader, while reading this book please remember what Max Planck once said of scientific theories. This genial German scientist – the discoverer of the quantization of radiation – pointed out that all revolutionary theories sound a bit ridiculous when first presented. It was thus with Heliocentrism; with Columbus’ proposed western navigation to the East Indies; with Relativity and Quantum Mechanics; with the Nuclear Bomb, and so forth.

  In time, people get used to the novel ideas presented by the fresh theories, which often grow to become the new scientific paradigm for the younger generations. We are quite sure that this is what will happen to Atlantis, now that its reality and true location are pointed out in detail here and in other works of ours, and now that the Indonesian catastrophe has hopefully sobered us all considerably to the dire consequences of polluting the planet as unreasonably as we are currently doing.

  The Author

  Introduction

  A pleasant village lies at the surface of the ocean.

  May its king be merry and enjoy splendid feasts, Down to the time when the sea turns fierce and bold... A wave will suddenly cover the entire region... A pleasant village, full of people, lies over a lake, A fortress impregnable, surrounded by the sea.

  Book of Taliesin, Poem 21

  A Note of Caution on Internet Links

  This book contains hundreds of links (about 400) to Internet sites bearing figures and texts related to the theme of Atlantis or illustrating and documenting certain specific topics referred in the main text. This is a revolutionary innovation which will, we believe, become the future trend in books, since it blends the advantages of both the print media and the Internet in a serendipitous way.

  The Internet now contains about 10 billion sites readily accessible and searchable via robots such as those of Google. So, this medium offers an indispensable tool for providing independent data about topics on which the reader may desire more information. Though readily accessible, Internet sites are often difficult to sort and select, precisely because of the huge number of possible answers that come in response to any specific query.

  Most of the sites returned – often by the thousands or even millions – are of little interest either because they are commercial or amateurish or committed to odd views which seldom interest the ordinary viewer. Hence, it is next to impossible in practice to sort out the information desired in any way other than by trial-and-error, a very annoying and timeconsuming activity.

  On the other hand, it is impossible to add to books the active links to URL addresses in the Internet. Besides, these addresses are normally very long and quite intolerant to even minor typos. So, we devised the novel technique used in this book of providing reference numbers like this one, following, where the arrow indicates that the readers must go out of the book itself, the way they would normally do in order to access the Internet or, for that matter, other books and journals. ↑xxx

  In practice, the readers read the book normally. When they have the time and the inclination, they turn on their PCs in order to consult the Internet at leisure. However, instead of going to the desired sites directly, they head for our Atlantis site, to the page specifically dedicated to this end (www.atlan.org/links). There the reader will also find detailed instructions on how to proceed, should these be required.

  Actually, all that is needed is to click on the desired reference number in my site, which is actively linked to the desired site or page. When more
than one entry is embodied in the reference number, the active links are incorporated in the specific words which figure in the book as text underlined with dots, as exemplified here.

  Another advantage of the hybrid technique introduced by this book lies in the fact that the linked sites are backed up (mirrored) in mine, so that they never go dead. Moreover, only the specific pages or passages or figures are selected and reproduced, sparing the reader from a lot of idle talk.

  Besides, the site’s Webmaster is charged with constantly updating the links, and extending them, adding more material at the measure that new, interesting information becomes available in the Internet. Again, the figures in the present book are also reproduced in my site, often in color or in far more detail than is possible here, for several technical reasons.

  Introduction

  Atlantis! Few words evoke a deeper feeling of wonder, of mystery and of an utter, sense of irreparable loss than the name of the Lost Continent. And this fascinating mix of feelings has lasted since the times of Plato, the great philosopher who wrote about Atlantis some two and a half millennia ago, when Greece was still the main center of culture in the Western World.

  But is Atlantis just a myth? A moral fable? A Science Fiction creation? Or is it indeed an actual history, somehow restored to the realm of reality by the magic pen of the prince of philosophers? There is a certain something in the story of Atlantis that captures human imagination and instantly fascinates everyone who reads Plato’s masterful account of the lost prehistoric empire of global extent.

  Perhaps this something is Plato’s insistence on the fact that he is speaking truthfully, and that the story of Atlantis is an absolute reality. Or maybe it is Atlantis’ immense wealth in gold and gemstones, which Plato describes as being “never before possessed by any kings or potentates, and is not likely ever to be again”. Perhaps some adventurers dream of all this fabulous wealth lying there in wait for a lucky researcher wise enough to really believe that Eldorado was something more than just a fable.

  Many thousands of books have been written on Atlantis during the twenty five centuries that have elapsed since Plato’s time. However, the matter of Atlantis is far from exhausted. In fact, the mystery of its whereabouts has never yet been satisfactorily settled, despite the hundreds of different locations proposed for it just about everywhere in the world: the entire Mediterranean region; the North Sea; the Atlantic coasts of Europe and Africa; the mid-Atlantic region; the Americas, and so on.

  As a matter of fact, experts on the subject have been unable to agree even on whether Atlantis really existed or was no more than a figment of Plato’s imagination; a moral fable devised by the philosopher to provide an ethical background for the ideal Utopian republic he had postulated in his other dialogues, the Republic in particular.

  Some prefer the middling line, and conclude that Plato’s report on the Lost Continent is a wild exaggeration of normal, everyday events. Accordingly, they propose that Plato’s Atlantis was in fact the same as Minoan Crete, or Mycenian Greece, or Hissarlik’s Troy, or the island of Cyprus, or some other petty Bronze Age civilization turned into a veritable Paradise by the wondrous pen of the great sage.

  But the fact is that if we remove the wonderful element from Plato’s narrative we are left with essentially nothing. Few of us, if anyone, are really interested in the trivial demise of a small culture which was born and disappeared somewhere, leaving little or no imprint of its former existence. After all, such vanished cultures number in the hundreds nowadays.

  However, Atlantis is clearly much more than that. To believe Plato, Atlantis was the mother of all civilizations. Atlantis was a vast empire of continental size and worldwide extension. It had mastered navigation and naval commerce, invented metallurgy and stone-dressing, and excelled in the arts and offices of all sorts, including dance, theater, music and sports.

  Moreover, the Atlanteans amassed such vast amounts of wealth that Plato himself marvels at it, as we mentioned above. Said otherwise, Atlantis was literally the same as Eldorado and Golden Cipango; as the fabulous Ophir of King Solomon and the paradise of Havilah and Tarshish, “the land where gold is born”. The mere mention of Eldorado’s name sufficed

  to set the minds of the early adventurers such as Columbus, Pizarro and Cortez aflame with gold fever.

  Notwithstanding their wealth, the Atlanteans were a noble, virtuous people, who despised riches and only pursued wisdom and piety. In time, however, they fell from grace and grew ambitious and covetous. The gods, gathered in council, decided to punish them so that they might again improve. For this purpose they sent cataclysmic floods and earthquakes, and unreservedly destroyed the shining empire, which became a sort of moral scarecrow to all who misbehaved in a similar way.

  Truthfully, the story of Atlantis strikes me as being closely similar to a dozen others told in the mythologies of all peoples, the Judeo-Christians in particular: the story of Sodom and Gomorrah; the narrative of the Flood; the fall of Adam and Eve and that of Lucifer, and so forth. The Celts also had very similar traditions on sunken places, witness the poem of Taliesin quoted in the epigraph above or the Legend of Ys, etc..

  Homer too tells a similar story of the Phaeacians and of the dire consequences of their disobedience to Poseidon, their patron god and founder. Ghostly Phaeacia closely evokes Atlantis in Homer’s picturesque description. The Incas of South America too have similar stories on the Atumurunas, the fallen giants who were punished and exterminated by the Flood sent by God due to their habits of sodomy.

  Plato himself identifies the Atlantean cataclysm with the Universal Flood. And he also adds several interesting details which unequivocally lead to the conclusion that this cataclysm was triggered by a titanic volcanic activity attended by ground subsidence and caldera formation; pumice release; giant tsunamis and earthquakes, and so forth. We will return to this theme in more detail later, in the main text.

  Moreover, the date given it by Plato – of 11,600 BP [Before Present] – exactly coincides with the one of the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, as well as of the so-called Meltwater Pulse 1B [MWP1B]. Both of these geologic phenomena were in reality giant cataclysms of global import and of catastrophic consequences far larger than the recent tsunami and earthquakes which currently afflict disaster-prone Indonesia.

  Since such global geological events are fortunately rather infrequent, we are compelled to apply Ockham’s Razor, and try to unify them all into a single event. Put otherwise, it seems that the cataclysm of which Plato speaks is actually the same as the one to which all sacred traditions of the world also refer. There are literally hundreds of legends on the Flood and on Paradise Lost in virtually all cultures of the world, both primitive and advanced.

  The fact that such legends also abound in the New World bespeak their hoary antiquity. In fact, according to the standard doctrines currently taught in essentially all academies the world over, contact between the Old and the New World ceased soon after the end of the Ice Age, when sea levels rose, closing the Beringian Passage, the sole possible communication link between the two worlds, according to scholarly wisdom.

  Since the legend in question did in fact reach the New World from the Old, the only way in which this diffusion might have happened was, according to current academic wisdom, via Beringia. This means the contact was effected during the Ice Age or soon after, before that passage definitively closed. We are hence led to conclude that whether it is a legend or actual reality, the event in fact dates from the very epoch in which it is said to have taken place, that of the catastrophic end of the Ice Age.

  What this means is that Plato apparently knew precisely what he was talking about, and was in fact inventing nothing at all. It is only recently that the reality of geologic and climatic cataclysms of global import have become accepted by academicians specializing in these and related disciplines, for instance: Archaeology, Anthropology, Paleoanthropology, Paleontology, Evolution, Climatology, and so forth.

  Indonesia, the R
emnants of Sunken Atlantis

  Today, the evidence of Catastrophism is overwhelming, and cannot be denied anymore even by the most diehard of academics and experts of all sorts. Until recently, the possibility that continents may sink was unanimously rejected by all kinds of scholars and scientists, the geologists in particular, as we shall discuss in greater detail in the main text below.

  However, we have managed to show that this view, though still prevalent, is false. We have also demonstrated that a whole sunken continent – truly “larger than Libya (North Africa) and Asia (Minor) put together” just as Plato affirmed – actually exists in the region of Indonesia and the South China Sea, in the East Indies, the true site of Atlantis-Eden.

  The myriad islands of Indonesia are in fact the mountain tops and highlands of the sunken continent, which was immersed when sea levels rose and its lowlands foundered, at the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, some 11,600 years ago. This is the exact date given by Plato in his dialogues on Atlantis. And Ockham’s Razor requires that we scientists attempt to unify these cataclysms.

  Actually, this region of the world has been little explored down to the present date. Geologists had based their understanding on the results they had obtained for the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, the only areas really studied thus far. But all such generalizations are fraught with perils of all sorts, just as the philosopher Hume warned us. Induction is not a valid procedure, either philosophically or scientifically speaking.