Lost Lands, Forgotten Realms

by Bob Curran

  Uncovering Discoveries of Atlantis

  The name Atlantis came to the fore again in the work of the English thinker, essayist, and statesman Francis Bacon (first Viscount St. Alban). In a work titled A New Atlantis, written in 1626, he described a near-perfect island society, based off the coast of America. This was an allegory of a wonderful social order, but the idea would appear again in the works of anthropologists Brasseur de Barbour and Edward H. Thompson, who suggested that the Mayan and Incan civilizations of Central and South America had derived from Atlantis survivors. Allegedly, part of the Atlanta fleet had been at sea at the time of the catastrophe, and supposedly had made landfall in America to found colonies there. Some currency was attached to the idea, and it has remained in vogue in one way or another in certain quarters. Indeed, it received something of a boost around 1940 with the discovery of a bandaged mummy in a remote cave in Nevada. The mummy was originally named Spirit Cave Man, and was attributed to early Indian peoples of the region—possibly mound builders. However, close scientific examination, which included radio-carbon dating, revealed the bandage cloth to date from approximately 9000 B.C., and to have been possibly made on a loom. Tradition stating that many of the Atlantean colonies in Egypt states used mummification to preserve their dead—indeed, it was believed by some that the Atlanteans had taught the Egyptians the art of mummification—and this gave fresh impetus to the idea of a connection between Atlantis and America.

  In 1882, there was another burst of interest in the lost realm. This was sparked by the publication of Ignatius Donnelly’s book Atlantis—The Antediluvian World, which was to become a best-seller in certain circles. Donnelly took Plato’s assertions regarding the sunken land very seriously and claimed that Atlantis had been the source of many (if not all) ancient civilizations. Such theories were keeping with the mood of the times, where people had a growing interest in the ancient world and with “forgotten secrets” that might even pre-date humanity itself. Such ideas lay behind the next major reference to Atlantis, which seemed, at face value, to build upon Donnelly’s thinking.

  The Grandmother of Occultism

  In 1888, the “grandmother of modern occultism” Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (H.P. Blavatsky) published her book The Secret Doctrine, a massive work of esoteric lore and teachings complied in two volumes, which she claimed had been revealed to her by Secret Masters, or Mahatmas, who were now living in Tibet. They communicated with her by telepathy and disclosed certain facts about the history and nature of the world, which had been kept secret from common men. One of these was that Atlantis had actually existed, and that the Atlanteans were one of the “Root Races” that had formed modern Mankind (the next would be the Ayrian race, which would shape its future). Madam Blavatsky portrayed the Atlanteans as a race of great thinkers and compassionate beings. This was in fact contrary to Plato, who had portrayed them as an aggressive military naval power who operated a society based on slavery. It was Madam Blavatsky’s idea that took hold, however, and the idea of an advanced and philanthropic civilization based in Atlantis was born.

  Edgar Cayce

  Such a notion gained much credence during the 1920s, particularly due to the intervention of the noted American psychic and occultist Edgar Cayce. In 1923, Cayce made a number of utterances and predictions concerning Atlantis. The Atlanteans, he declared, had been a highly advanced and sophisticated people, who had many technological attributes that have been lost to the world. They had, for example, lightweight building materials, which enabled them to build high and graceful dwellings; they had a road system that incorporated flyovers; and they powered their vehicles by a mysterious energy that they obtained from natural crystals by an obscure means. Some of Cayce’s followers (although not Cayce himself) even claimed that the Atlanteans had space travel and an underground colony on the planet Mars, creating the “canals” that can be seen on the Red Planet. The myth of Atlantis was steadily growing. Cayce also predicted that parts of the submerged continent would reemerge around 1967 or 1968, as evidence of its former existence. This seemed to come true (and was rapidly seized on by his followers) with the discovery in 1968 of the Bimini Road, near Bimini Island in the Bahamas, by archaeologist Dr. J. Manson Valentine. This was an underwater stone structure that resembled part of a collapsed road or wall, suggesting some sort of ancient civilization. It was immediately portrayed as evidence of Atlantis, though this may not be the case. The “road” is still under investigation, and no firm conclusions have been drawn about it.

  Minoan Civilizations

  Some archaeologists believe that the myth of Atlantis has become confused with the historic Minoan civilization of the late Bronze Age, which flourished in the Aegean Sea roughly between 2700 and 1450 B.C. This civilization was centered on the island of Crete, and takes its name from Minos, the legendary king of Crete (associated in fable with the mythical Minotaur). Little is known about this society except that it was a trading nation, which had colonies in Egypt—traces of Minoan pottery has been found in parts of the Egyptian desert, and it is said that the Minoans maintained an administrative center in the Egyptian city of Knossos until around 1200 B.C. It is also probable that they traded with other cultures for tin, a valuable commodity in the ancient world. Nothing much is known of the Minoan culture—their writings seem to be in a form known as Cretan hieroglyphic, which has so far remained indecipherable.

  From about 1400 B.C. the Minoan civilization seems to have collapsed with fragments of it being amalgamated into the emerging Greek culture. During its later period, there seems little doubt that its sphere of influence suffered a series of catastrophes, both natural and man-made. Wars raged through the Aegean, and the area seems to have experienced earthquakes and volcanic eruptions on a large scale. Its last vestiges vanished as a period known as the Greek Dark Ages (1100–750 B.C.) descended, and many of the civilizations around the rim of the Mediterranean collapsed.

  Santorini

  The main contender for Atlantis is a part of this civilization that lies on what is now the Greek island of Santorini. Between 1645 and 1500 B.C., the island experienced a huge eruption coupled with a massive earthquake, and part of it was submerged. At the time, it is known that the site was inhabited by a culturally advanced people who had built a number of cities there, all of which were lost. Of all the stories of the ancient world, the explosion on Santorini seems to fit closely with the legend of Atlantis.

  In his account, derived from Solon, Plato gave the account of the loss of the island civilization as 9,000 years before his (Plato’s) time. It has been suggested that Solon mistranslated the story, which was recorded in Egyptian numerals, and that it was only 900 years before the time that Plato wrote about it. This would make it roughly correspond with the explosion on Santorini. Furthermore, evidences of colonization from Santorini, which have been unearthed on other islands, show a highly developed mercantile culture; what records remain tell of a culture that traded all through the Mediterranean based on the island. Plato’s description of the end of Atlantis—columns of fire and smoke and ash—are indicative of a volcanic explosion of epic proportions (probably bigger than the one that destroyed Pompeii in A.D. 73). The “mudbanks” and “small islands,” which are alleged to have appeared after the submersion of the island, might, in fact, be pumice stone, thrown out by a volcano. Nevertheless, not enough is known about the culture of Santorini, or indeed of the end of the Minoan civilization, to positively identify the island as the site of vanished Atlantis. The sunken island continent still remains an intriguing mystery.

  Nazi Philosophy

  In the period leading up to and during World War II, Madame Blavatsky’s 19th century theories about the coming Ayrian race as the successors to the Atlanteans attracted the attention of the Nazi movement. The idea of the Atlanteans being a super-race, who had mastered much of their known world, and of the Aryan people becoming the dominating race fit in well with Nazi philosophy, and many of the Nazi leaders fervently believed in the truth
of Atlantis. If there were survivors from the sunken continent, it was suggested, they might have wisdom and even technical knowledge, which would be of use to the Nazi movement. In 1938, therefore, following some of the suggestions contained in Madame Blavatsky’s books, Heinrich Himmler organized a scientific trip to Tibet in order to find the mysterious Mahatmas (whom Himmler imagined to be the forerunners of the Ayrian race) or any white survivors from the lost civilization. The expedition apparently found nothing of any consequence.

  During the 1950s and early-to-mid-1960s, the idea of Atlantis blossomed together with interest in many other “lost lands” and other mysteries. Perhaps the idea of a lost technologically advanced culture appealed to the austere post-War period. Various attempts were made to link the lost realm with many parts of the world. “Atlantis hunters” placed its location in areas such as the Azores in the Atlantic, Antarctica, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cyprus, Turkey, and Ireland, with some even asserting that Atlantis runs all the way beneath the ocean from Spain to Central America. Two of the most favored sites tend to be Cuba and the island of Bermuda, suggesting that still-operating sunken high-level technological equipment, far beyond our comprehension, is creating the celebrated “Bermuda Triangle,” which is a mysterious phenomenon in its own right.

  The concept of drowned Atlantis, destroyed at the dawn of time, gave fantasy and science-fiction writers a field day, allowing them to combine futuristic civilizations with prehistoric monsters, reptiles, and dinosaurs. But across the years, interest in Atlantis began to wane slightly in the popular imagination and only resurfaced from time to time. It has reemerged of late with the cult television series Stargate: Atlantis derived from the hit Stargate SG-1. This postulates the lost city of Atlantis somewhere in Antarctica, built by space-travelers called the Ancients and linked to the Pegasus Galaxy—a dwarf galaxy located far out in space.

  So, did Atlantis truly exist? And, if so, what was it like? Was it a futuristic, compassionate culture from which many other civilizations sprang? Or was it a militarily aggressive, slave-holding society that preyed on its neighbors and sought to colonize them? We will perhaps never actually know, for we only have Plato’s admittedly rather dubious account of it, and little actual evidence to support it. If Atlantis did exist, there is precious little trace of it. And yet, it is reasonable to assume that many ancient civilizations about which we know either very little or nothing at all, did exist across the world, and Atlantis might well be one of them. Certainly few of these have gripped the popular imagination as the sunken continent has done. Who knows what may be lying out there beneath the ocean?

  7

  Lemuria and Mu

  While the idea of the sunken island-continent of Atlantis derived from a Platonic account of a supposed vanished civilization, the origins of the lost continent of Lemuria, supposedly lying somewhere beneath the Indian and Pacific Oceans, are slightly more complex. In many ways, too, its story is much more imaginative and fantastic. The myth of Lemuria does not take its origins from the writings of the ancient Greeks, rather its main thrust stems from around the mid-19th century.

  This is not to say that no ancient accounts of a vanished land exist in the area. Legends among the Tamil people of Southern India speak of a submerged landmass lying between the most southerly part of India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Furthermore, a Tamil text, known as the Cilappatikaram, which is probably based on earlier Sangam works (the term Sangam refers to a corpus of Tamil literature and poetry probably compiled between 200 B.C. and A.D. 300, detailing many of the ancient legends and stories), which speaks of a country lying off the coast of Southern India that was overwhelmed by at least two inundations of the sea. The name it gives to this lost realm is Kumari Kandam, stating that it was once the home of a powerful trading civilization. It also speaks of the partial destruction of the ancient city of Puhar (now the town of Poompuhar in Tamil Nadu, India), capital of the Chola Empire between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago (the Chola dynasty reigned in Southern India until the 13th century). Historians now think that this event may have been the result of an ancient tsunami, which destroyed part of the South India coast, and may have laid the foundations for a belief in a lost land in the area.

  Further, some old Southern Indian legends speak of a group of strange people who lived on the southern tip of the country, and who spoke a strange language. They were darker skinned than the rest of the country, and have been classified as a race known as Davidian. They were supposed to be survivors from a sunken land, perhaps from Kumari Kandam. Interestingly enough, linguists have noticed certain distinctive traits among groups in the southwest sectors of India that are slightly different from the rest of the country. However, there is nothing to suggest that these are descended from the survivors of an ancient cataclysm.

  Lemuria’s Beginnings

  But it was in the mid-1800s that the notion of lost Lemuria really came to prominence. The continent takes its name from a lemur, which was supposedly native to the land. Lemurs are largely nocturnal animals, today only found on the island of Madagascar and several surrounding islands, taking their name from the Latin lemures, meaning “spirits of the night.” This may have referred to their night-time appearances and large reflective eyes. They are a species of primate known as protosimians, and are generally considered to have been the forerunners of simians, giving them an extremely long genetic pedigree. Fossils dating back to long ago have been found from Madagascar to India.

  In 1864, the English lawyer and zoologist Philip Sclater became puzzled by the fact that although such fossils were found in Madagascar and certain parts of India, none were found in Africa or in the Middle East. He formed the theory that a continent had existed stretching from India to Madagascar, but not connecting with Africa. This continent he named Lemuria after the lemur fossils and, he argued, in some former time, lemurs had been very prolific there. The continent had probably, he continued, been overwhelmed by the sea in very early volcanic upheavals. The theory was greeted with some skepticism in the zoological world, but some naturalists chose to accept it because it seemed to explain the dispersal of some creatures across certain Eastern parts of the world. This was an age when the theories of Charles Darwin (concerning evolution) were increasingly coming to the fore, and an interest in both the survival and spread of species was focusing the academic interest. Sclater and others pointed to the old Tamil legend of an undersea continent as evidence for their assertions; for a long time it was often cited as a fact of prehistoric geography. However, the geologists could not agree on the actual size of the continent, or on the direction in which it lay—some arguing that it lay between India and Madagascar, others suggesting that it might link Asia with the Americas. Today, the theory has been disproved by our understanding of Earth’s crust, and our knowledge of tectonic plates and continental drift. Although the theory had been increasingly accepted by a growing number of scientists, it was hastily abandoned in the mid-20th century. Notions of land bridges and sunken continents were discarded as new geological interpretations took hold. However, in 1999, a ship drilling in the Indian Ocean turned up evidence of a sunken land. Core drill samples revealed ancient pollen and traces of wood suggesting that a land, roughly about the third of the size of Australia, had once existed there, but was now beneath the ocean. More research on this ancient landmass needs to be carried out, but many authorities are doubtful that it was a land bridge over which animals crossed.

  Key Players

  It was during the 1880s that the name of Lemuria became prominent once more, this time in a non-scientific context. It was brought to prominence by alleged communications from an extremely remote part of the world—Tibet. And once more, Madame Blavatsky played a central role; just as she had done with the idea of Atlantis. Thanks to her, Lemuria would become celebrated in occult circles and would assume an air of arcane mystery, which would characterize it even today.

  Madame Blavatsky was allegedly in touch with a number of Mahatmas, or “Great Souls”—men of
incredible knowledge, who also had an awareness of the supernatural—dwelling in a remote region of Tibet, who communicated with her by telepathy. One of these, Master Koot Hoomi, revealed the true history of the world and the races (or “Root Races”) that had dwelt on Earth before the coming of Mankind. Lemuria was home to a third of these races—an 8-foot-tall, hermaphroditic species that had been born from eggs. According to Madame Blavatsky, they had a low mental intellect, and were morally weak. When animals began to evolve on the Lemurian continent, a number of the species tried to mate with them. Outraged by this, the gods destroyed Lemuria by a massive deluge that completely submerged it and obliterated its inhabitants, replacing it with the fourth race of much more knowledgeable and morally upright beings, the Atlanteans. This knowledge, Blavatsky claimed, was to be found in the Book of Dyzan, an ancient collection of verse that had been passed down from prehistoric times, fragments that had somehow been shown to her by the Mahatmas. The knowledge from the book would form the basis of her work The Secret Doctrine. Although Madame Blavatsky’s work has been dismissed as a fraud by many scholars, it is worth noting that certain similarities have been found in some of the verses of the Book of Dyzan and the Tibetan Kalachakra.

  Madame Blavatsky’s work opened the floodgates for all sorts of occult and “otherworldly” connections to Lemuria. In 1894, for example, an American writer, Frederick Spencer, published a book titled A Dweller on Two Worlds, in which he also made reference to the destruction of the continent. There had been, he claimed, survivors of the catastrophe who had made their way to Mount Shasta, a peak in the Cascade Mountain Range in northern California. These survivors, it claimed, were also in contact with beings from another world and were technologically and spiritually advanced—more so than humans. The Lemurians, Spencer went on to assert, lived in a series of underground complexes, connected by a network of tunnels, deep in the heart of the mountain, venturing out onto the surface only occasionally. They could be recognized as tall, graceful people, usually clad in flowing, white robes. There are many people today who claim to have met Lemurians on the slopes of Mount Shasta.