Atlantis the Lost Continent Finally Found

by Arysio Santos

  The definitive ruling of these scientific researches is that the Mediterranean Sea has been full for the last 5.2 million years or so, and that Antarctica has been under ice for the last million years and more, as directly attested by ice cores drilled in situ, and currently studied on a year-by-year basis. I know of no serious scientist who would ever support such scientifically preposterous proposals.

  Actually, proponents of the recently dry Mediterranean Sea or the warm Ice Age Antarctica quote no valid sources whatsoever – either scientific or traditional – on these uncanny, scientifically impossible “facts”. The only such source that proponents of the dry Mediterranean theory quote is a piece of science fiction written by H.G. Wells (Outline of History, New York, 1921).

  But Wells was neither a scientist nor a historian, but only a gifted story-teller full of inventiveness. And he has long been denounced as such by the more serious researchers of these issues. The assertion of the author in question here that “at the moment scientists do not have the technological capability to definitively date… the highly complex geological activities… of the Mediterranean [Sea]” is both false and misleading.

  Methods such as Radiocarbon Dating and others based on isotopic analysis or on radioactivity are both highly reliable and extremely accurate, in contrast to what this author claims. The same is also true of the hypotheses which attribute the Atlantean cataclysm to giant meteoritic impacts due to comets and asteroids. Such is the case, for instance of Otto Muck (The Secret of Atlantis, New York, 1976).

  Muck was a brilliant German scientist, and his book is wonderfully argued. Alas, his genial hypothesis – even today followed by many other authors – ultimately proved to be utterly wrong. Comparatively speaking, extra-terrestrial impacts are orders of magnitude less frequent than supervolcanic eruptions.

  Meteorites and comets invariably leave giant impact craters behind, particularly when they are as big as required for the wiping out of an entire continent, as postulated by Otto Muck. And they also leave behind layers of dust and soot which can be unequivocally identified and dated by researchers, much as is the case, say, of the extinction of the dinosaurs, believed to have been caused by this type of disaster.

  Even when they impact the seas, giant meteorites leave behind detectable vestiges, for instance, gravitational anomalies, which are easy to detect by outer space satellites and similar techniques. What is more important, such impacts also leave behind dust layers of an anomalous nature (rich in rare metals such as iridium and osmium, etc.) which may be discerned in the marine sediments.

  No such layers exist anywhere in the Atlantic Ocean which may date from such a recent event. This fact is attested by myriad samples collected in situ, and is hence now incontrovertibly established. These giant cataclysms are normally also attended by supervolcanic eruptions, and are widely attested in both the geological and the climatological records.

  Even though originally resisted by many experts, these global consequences are now generally accepted by modern geologists. This is in sharp contrast to what occurred some 20 or 30 years ago, when I first started my detailed scientific researches on the Lost Continent of Atlantis, which, I

  am very sure, were instrumental in leading most people to accept the reality of the Sunken Continent.

  Likewise real are also the massive extinctions of all sorts of species of organisms, particularly the large mammals, which took place at the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, some 11,600 years ago. On that terrible occasion, some 70% of the then prevalent species of great mammals, which existed in the Pleistocene, became extinct.

  And these extinct human species included, in all probability, two or three species of humans, such as the recently discovered “hobbits” of Flores island, which became extinct at about that time. In Europe and the Near East the Neandertals and the Cro Magnons also became extinct then. In all probability, the first were the dwarfs, and the second the giants of which most mythologies speak. And it is certainly more than a sheer coincidence that both these “hobbits” and these “giants” lived in Indonesia, the site of Eden. ↑011

  In the Far East – for instance in Java and in China – Homo erectus also became extinct at about this time, even though he had by then attained a remarkable development both in physical size and in cranial capacity. His body and his brain, like the ones of both Neandertals and Cro Magnons, were fully 30% larger than of today’s humans, be they either modern or primitive. 1

  As we just said, the reality of the Flood cataclysm – which we correctly identified with the catastrophic end of the last Pleistocene Ice Age, date and all – is widely attested in both the climatological and the geological records, and cannot be denied anymore.

  Only the proposed mechanism which we believe to have caused the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age – which is a certain fact, but one which remains unexplained by Science so far, despite the enormous interest it attracts – is new and is actually our own.

  It is also one which is now fast gaining acceptance by the scientific community at large as a possible cause, since scientists have now come to realize the reality of, and the climatic danger posed by, giant volcanoes such as, say, the Krakatoa, the Toba and the Yellowstone supervolcanoes.

  Some twenty years ago we publicly proposed that the dramatic end of the Ice Age was triggered by the huge supervolcanic explosion of the Krakatoa volcano (and perhaps of other vicinal volcanoes as well). This huge explosion actually opened up the Strait of Sunda, separating the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia, and let in the oceanic waters which flooded the interior lowlands of paradisial Atlantis.

  See endnote 1 and others at the end of the book.

  This giant explosion is also widely referred to in all sorts of worldwide myths and traditions concerning the Flood, Atlantis and Paradise, which was indeed located in this very region of the world. This giant cataclysm is also universally remembered as the explosion of the Holy Mountain of Paradise – alias Mt. Atlas, Sinai, Zion, Alborj, Qâf, Golgotha, Meru, Mashu, and so on.

  The supervolcanic explosion of Mt. Krakatoa also caused a giant tsunami which ravaged and permanently submerged the lowlands of Atlantis, causing their disappearance under the waters. This explosive eruption also triggered the end of the last Ice Age by covering the continental glaciers with a layer of soot (fly ash) which accelerated their melting by increasing the absorption of sunshine.

  This mechanism of Ice Age termination – which I originally proposed some twenty years or so ago – has now been dramatically confirmed by NASA’s space satellites, which found it to be responsible for upwards of 25% of the global warming and over 70% of the melting of earth’s remaining glaciers, both continental and maritime. Its importance cannot be challenged any longer, since the validation is the result of direct observation from outer space. ↑012

  The giant tsunami caused by the volcanic explosion also resulted in a maritime invasion of the continents surrounding the Pacific region and, above all, in the Antarctic region which faces it at the far south. The result was that the Antarctic glaciers were broken up and lofted by these invading waters and then carried back into the ocean when these invading waters returned to it.

  This type of geological process has recently also been confirmed by climatological and oceanographic research, and is now called “Heinrich Event”, after its discoverer, Hartmut Heinrich, the German oceanographer who first observed it in the maritime record of the North Atlantic Ocean in 1988.

  Heinrich Events – in particular the one called H0 [H Zero] – seem to be directly associated with the cataclysmic end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, and are generally sudden and brutal. This event, H0, apparently occurred at the right date of 11.6 kya (calendrical years) or 10.5 kiloyears (radiocarbon years), terminating both the Younger Dryas and the Ice Age at the exact date given by Plato. ↑013

  The meltwaters of these enormous, mile thick continental glaciers – either covered by soot and melted away or carried off back to sea as icebergs – flowed back into
the oceans, raising the sea level by as much as 130–150 meters. This huge rise in the sea level created tremendous strains and stresses on the crust of the earth due to their extra weight on the seafloor.

  On the opposite side of the world, the isostatic rebound of the continents, relieved of the colossal weight of the mile-thick glaciers which formerly covered them, also added to these huge crustal stresses. Earth’s crust then heaved and cracked open in the weak spots, engendering further volcanic eruptions and huge earthquakes and giant tsunamis.

  This activity feeds back positively into the process, furthering it to completion by means of a chain reaction no different than the seismic paroxysm recently observed in the Indonesian catastrophe, except being far larger in import. Here, the initial earthquake triggered a series of other similar events, fortunately of a smaller size than the first one. But this chain reaction was dramatic enough to suggest that, under appropriate conditions, it may grow indefinitely, much as happens in a nuclear chain reaction.

  The result then was the sudden and dramatic end of the Pleistocene Ice Age as well as the causation of the so-called Quaternary Extinctions, which caused the extinction of a great many species of large mammals, certain human ones included. And Man then became “as rare as the gold of Ophir” just as narrated in the Bible and similar sacred traditions of most peoples on earth, the distant Americas included.

  Introduction

  All nations, of all times, believed in the existence of a Primordial Paradise where Man originated and developed civilization for the first time ever. This story, real and true, is told in the Bible and in Hindu Holy Books such a the Rig Veda, the Puranas, the Ramayana and many others.

  The very universality of the myth of the Terrestrial Paradise bespeaks its hoary antiquity. Otherwise, how could the myth have diffused to the distant Americas, if the Beringian Passage became permanently closed soon after the end of the Pleistocene, some 11,600 years ago?

  That this Paradise which lay “towards the Orient” was real no one doubts anymore, excepting perhaps some diehard scientists who even today stolidly hold that the different civilizations on earth developed independently from one another.

  This, even in such unlikely places as Europe, the Americas, the deser tic Near East, or the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, foolishly ignoring the fact that these spots were generally either utterly isolated or covered by ice or dismally desertic during the Ice Ages.

  These scientists shut their eyes to the very considerable contrary evidence that has developed from essentially all fields of the different human and earth sciences, particularly the linguistic, the anthropological and the geological and the climatological.

  It is mainly on these sciences that we base our arguments in favor of the reality of a pristine Far Eastern source of human civilization traditionally called Atlantis, Eden, Paradise, Elysium, Hades, etc.. 2

  Even the traditions which speak of a Western Paradise really mean the Far Orient. This is merely the result of – the earth being round and all that – the fact that beyond the farthest east lies the farthest west, and vice-versa. Since the site of Atlantis-Eden really lay beyond the Far East, in Indonesia, it can rightfully be said to lie in the Farthest West.

  It was in the Far Orient – and beyond, towards the east – that agriculture (of rice and other grains) and animal domestication were originally invented and developed. 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 ever. It is from there that these remarkable inventions eventually diffused to the rest of the world.

  This is a logical conclusion, based on the sacred traditions of most peoples on earth, as well as on application of ordinary scientific commonsense to the probability of such remarkable inventions occurring independently a whole series of times in succession. This is a result of the so-called Bayes’ Law, one of the basic tenets of the Mathematical Theory of the Calculus of Probabilities.

  This fundamental Law of Nature seems to have been forgotten or simply dismissed by the many supporters of Nicholai Vavilov (1887–1942). Vavilov – whose theories are even today accepted by most investigators – was the great Russian naturalist who introduced the now outdated theory of independent “genecenters” distributed all over the world where agriculture was locally reinvented over and over again, soon after the start of the Neolithic Age, some 10,000 years ago.

  It is exactly the opposite sort of thing that is related in the Bible, which attributes the foundation of the first city – and hence the invention of agriculture – to Cain (cf. Gen. 4:17). This first city is there called Enoch (or Henoch or Chenoch = “the Abode of the Pure”, in Dravida, the actual language originally spoken in paradisial Atlantis).

  The name of “Pure Land” given to this very first of all cities is the same in Hindu traditions of enormous antiquity (Sveta-dvipa, Sukhavati, Atala, etc.). Its end and destruction at the completion of the allotted time of an era is what is meant by Enoch’s lifespan of 365 years, “a year of years”, an era. ↑014

  Similarly, the name of the Mesopotamian Paradise, called Dilmun, also means the same thing in Dravida, where the name ultimately originated. Even in the Amerindian traditions, Yvymaraney “the Land of the Pure”, is the legendary birthplace of the Tupi-Guarani Indians of Brazil.

  And so do the names Aztlán or Aztlatán, the land of origin of the ancient Aztecs of Mexico, and Tollán, the one of the Mayas of Yucatan, both also mean the same thing in their respective tongues. That all these Paradises be named “pure land” is certainly more than sheer coincidence. All in all, it refers to Atlantis itself and its purification by fire and water at the end of its allotted time.

  Indonesia as the True Site of Eden

  Man – or, more exactly, the anthropoid simians who were our ancestors – apparently first arose in Africa some 3 million years ago. But these primitive hominids soon spread all over Eurasia and beyond, reaching the Far Orient and Australia at least about 1 million years ago or perhaps even more. And it was there that these pristine humans originally developed Civilization.

  It was in Indonesia and in the neighboring lands that Man – after emigrating from the semi-desertic Pleistocenic savannas of Africa and from the then fully desertic Middle East – first found the ideal climatic conditions for his full development. And it was there that these pristine humans actually invented agriculture and civilization, innovations which turned us into more that just ordinary animals endlessly engaged in the search of food.

  Despite the current views on this matter, these developments actually took place during the last Ice Age, in the Pleistocene. The Pleistocene was the last of the major geological eras, the one which began some 2.7 million years ago and ended only a scant 11,600 years ago, a mere eye’s blink insofar as geological time itself is concerned.

  The Pleistocene – a name which is Greek for “most recent” – is also called Anthropozoic Era or Quaternary Era or, yet, more loosely, the Ice Age. During the Pleistocene – and, more exactly, during the glacial epi sodes which happen at intervals of about 100 thousand years each – the sea level dropped by about 130 to 150 meters (430 to 500 feet) below its present value.

  With this, a large coastal strip – the so-called Continental Platform, with a width of about 200 km (= 125 miles) – became exposed, forming land bridges that interconnected many islands and regions. What was by far the most dramatic of such exposures took place in the region of Indonesia, precisely the spot where human civilization and agriculture first flourished.

  This vast exposed expanse of the South China Sea then formed an immense continent, indeed “larger than Asia (Minor) and Libya (Africa) put together”. This is, as we shall see below, precisely what Plato affirms in his dialogues on Atlantis, despite the contrary allegations of many researchers, both academic and lay.

  These so-called researchers prefer to bend facts and words in favor of their pet theories rather than holding to truth and reality, the aims of the true s
cientific investigator. Their teachings are generally based on now sorely outdated Victorian doctrines such as Uniformitarian Geology and Evolution, which stolidly reject realities such as Catastrophism as a major factor in human evolution and cultural development.

  With the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, the immense glaciers that covered the whole of the northern half of North America and Eurasia soon melted away. Their meltwaters drained off to the sea, whose level rose by the estimated amount of about 130–150 meters just quoted above. With this enormous rise, Atlantis sank away and disappeared for good, along with most of its formerly huge population.

  Eden Was in Fact Lemurian Atlantis

  Based on Plato’s own data, we estimate the population of Atlantis at the time of its catastrophic end to be about 20 million people in the Great Plain alone. This is of course a huge number of people for the early epoch in question here.

  This great concentration of humans would only be possible with a highly advanced agriculture, with two or three crops a year, just as reported by Plato. And this great agricultural productivity is even today typical of the whole region, the islands of Java and Sumatra in particular.

  Even more precisely, this vast sunken continent was the same as Lemurian Atlantis, the older of the two Atlantises mentioned by Plato. Plato’s relation is somewhat garbled in this context, and must be closely read in order to discover this fundamental dualism. The second Atlantis succeeded the first in the same spot, that is the Indonesian region.

  Lemurian Atlantis – which we often call Lemuria for simplicity’s sake – was the vast plain which the Greeks called Elysian Fields and which the Egyptians named “the Field of Reeds” (Sekhet Aaru). And it is quite likely that the “reed” in question here are really rice growing in marshes (paddies), as it does even today in the whole region. This plain – which Plato describes in great detail in his Critias – was submerged and presently forms the Java Sea, just to the north of Java island.