Atlantis the Lost Continent Finally Found

by Arysio Santos

  So, though in doubt, let us consider this requisite satisfied, if only roughly. Now, the Arctic region is coterminous with America. Hence, in no way can it be said to lie in the “True Ocean” which, according to Plato’s description can only be the Pacific Ocean. Neither the Arctic Ocean nor the Antarctic Ocean – which not even deserves that name – can really be said to be the “True Ocean” of which Plato spoke.

  Accordingly, we filled this item with question marks in Table III.5 above, until someone shows us otherwise. Again, in no way do we have “many islands beyond”, leading to the True Continent (America). Hence, on these grounds, the Arctic, frozen or not, can be discarded as a possible location for Atlantis unless we postulate so huge a cataclysmic change that it rendered the geography of the whole world unrecognizable.

  But if such is the case, nothing can really be said of the geography of Atlantis then or now. So, we filled this item with question marks, just as we did for the previous issue.

  With this, we turn to Antarctica itself, which has staunch defenders even now, despite the scientific impossibility of this proposed site. Antarctica almost touches South America in its southernmost tip. There are no “islands on the way there”, as Plato affirms. During the Ice Age, when sea level was considerably lower than now, the tip of South America was far longer, turning to the right and extending all the way to Antarctica itself along the Malvinas Plateau. ↑113

  Hence, what Plato affirmed can hardly be said to apply to the region at all, unless one admits that Plato spoke in riddles impossible to decipher or even understand at all.

  The “many islands on the way” are, as we just said, clearly missing. Even if they existed they would hardly lead to the “true ocean” and to the “true continent”, which would lie next to the site itself. Hence, in no way may either the Arctic or Antarctica be said to fit Plato’s description of its actual location, in contrast to what many proponents of this site speciously claim.

  Taprobane and the Atlantic Islands

  The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

  Oscar Wilde

  Another all time favorite candidate for Atlantis are the islands of the Atlantic Ocean: the Azores, the Canaries, Cape Verde, the Madeira Islands, Trindad, Bermudas, etc., etc.. Already during Classical antiquity some or all of these islands were identified to the fabled “Isles of the Blest” and their alias, the “Atlantic Islands” as soon as they were discovered.

  The fabulous “Atlantic islands” were all deemed to be the remains of sunken Atlantis by all those in the know, Christopher Columbus included. No researcher ever doubted the reality of these fabled islands and, hence, the one of the Lost Continent whose remains were ardently sought by all sorts of gold-thirsty adventurers and explorers of these distant regions of the world.

  Every island discovered in this western ocean was hopefully identified with the legendary “Atlantic Islands”, or “Isles of the Blest”. And these islands were universally considered to be the fabled remains of sunken Atlantis by all geographers throughout the Middle Ages.

  Such ancient legends also abounded during the Renaissance, the Age of Navigation. For instance, we have the fabled discovery of these islands by mythical personages such as St. Brendan, or by the Archbishop of Porto, and several other such semi-legendary explorers whose myth of course survived down to the times of Columbus and even later. ↑114

  These islands were also identified with those of the East Indies (Indonesia) and with the ones of Atlantis itself. And they were named accordingly: Antilia, Cipango, Septe Cidades, Ys Brazil, Canaria, Capraria, Madeira, Cassiterides, Argyre, Thule, Sanbrandan, Satanaxio, Ilha Verde, Hiera, Kerne, and so on. Hence the host of islands so named both in the Atlantic and in the Pacific Ocean.↑115

  Had the reality of the “Atlantic Islands” and their fabulous wealth ever been put to question by any geographer, the no-nonsense Jewish capitalists who financed these naval expeditions would never have put their money into the adventure, trading good income for bad.

  As is clear, the name of “Atlantic Islands” derived not from the one of the ocean so misnamed, but from Atlantis itself, according to what Plato himself specifically affirms (Tim.114a).)↑116

  In truth, the ocean in which these islands were believed to lay was named “Atlantic Ocean” – that is, “Ocean of Atlantis” – exactly because of the fact that it was believed to harbor the site of sunken Atlantis or, rather, its mountainous remains now turned into these islands.

  This misnomer was the result of an ancient, widespread confusion, as we now comment. The ancients well knew that Atlantis was located in the Far East, in the ocean now called Pacific Ocean, but formerly called by names such as Outer Ocean, Ocean Sea, Eastern Ocean, Western Ocean or, more simply, Ocean.

  Indeed, this ocean, the Pacific, was the Mar Oceano of which Christopher Columbus so insistently spoke, and of which he so wanted to become the admiral. Columbus had read Marco Polo closely. And he concentrated in the Genovese’s ecstatic description of golden Cipango and its fabulous riches in gold and gemstones.

  Columbus also knew of its location in the Mar Oceano (Lat. Mare Oceanus), the “Ocean Sea” of the ancient traditions. Polo’s description ignited Columbus with gold fever. And this fact accounts for Columbus’ determination to become the Almirante del Mar Oceano (“Admiral of the Ocean Sea”), a title which he would eventually earn from the kings of Spain.

  Said otherwise, the ancients thought that the present Atlantic Ocean was coextensive with the Pacific Ocean, the true “Ocean of the Atlanteans”. Hence, they named it accordingly to Atlantis, expecting to find the fabled

  “Atlantic Islands”, its remnants, somewhere inside the wide expanse of that ocean which they firmly believed to extend all the way to the East Indies, exactly as did Christopher Columbus himself.

  Their belief went so deep that they labeled every island therein discovered after these fabulous islands, which they well knew to be part of the East Indies, the remains of sunken Atlantis left behind when its lowlands sank away under the sea: St. Brendan, Antilia, Satanazes, Ys Brazil, Cipango, Septe Cidades, Candyn, Anguana, and the several others just mentioned further above.

  Some of these fabulous islands – for instance the one of Satanazes – even retained in whole or in part the characteristic circular shape associated by Plato with Atlantis’ capital city. Satanazes was often portrayed as a half circle, as if its other half had actually sunk away and disappeared under the waters.

  And its curious tradition – the one of the sargassos and the huge hand which rose from the sea to carry ships and sailors under, directly to Hell itself – was likewise copied from East Indian traditions whose discussion unfortunately does not fit here.

  The great admiral also correctly reasoned that the western ocean extended all the way to India, as Pliny specifically states in the passages quoted in the footnote below. So did Aristotle and Strabo and several other ancient authors of Plato’s time and even a little later. This fact may also be seen in Toscanelli’s map, which also shows several others of these legendary “Atlantic Islands”. According to J. Siebold, a well-known spe-

  cialist: ↑117

  Long ago, Aristotle had said: “The regions round the Pillars of Hercules are in connection with the regions round India, and between them there is nothing but sea.” Strabo [too] believed that by sailing with an easterly wind in the western ocean one “could reach the Indies”. About 120 AD, the Roman philosopher Favorinus wrote that the same ocean which the Greeks knew as the Atlantic Sea was known in East Asia as “the Great Sea” [ i. e., the modern Pacific Ocean].

  Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus put forward similar views in the 13th century. In the 1470s, Paolo Toscanelli (1397–1482), the Florentine physician and cosmographer, was the earliest known medieval supporter of a westward voyage from Europe to the Far East to portray his theories cartographically. He contended that the Far East could be reached more directly by sailing west than by rounding the Cape of Good
Hope and crossing the Indian Ocean.

  Please note, in the above passage – written by a great expert on ancient geographical matters – that the Ocean we know as Atlantic was gen-

  erally deemed one with the Pacific. It was supposed to lead all the way to the East Indies, exactly as Columbus believed. Favorinus asserts this identity of the two oceans, also explicitly identifying the “Great Sea” of East Asia (the Pacific Ocean) with the Atlantic.

  And this name of “Great Sea” closely evokes the passage of Plato describing the “True Ocean” where Atlantis was located according to the prince of philosophers.

  Toscanelli’s letter and the map he sent to the king of Portugal in 1474 were highly instrumental in inspiring Christopher Columbus to attempt to reach the East Indies by sailing into the Western Ocean. This important letter is printed in full in the site just linked, and needs not to be quoted here. But the real original is missing, and this letter may have been forged, as some experts affirm.

  This forgery was perhaps perpetrated by Columbus himself or, even more likely, by his son, Fernando, always bent on defending his father’s much maligned memory. This type of thing was as common in antiquity as it is today. And the reason is always the same: money and ambition.

  In one way or another, the letter and the map of Toscanelli reached Columbus. Or it may well be that the king himself made sure of that, intending to use Columbus as his secret agent, knowingly or unknowingly on the part of the famous explorer.

  Columbus also received several other important documents, including the famous map of Martellus of 1479, on which a quaint monograph can be read here. This whole story is rather obscure. And it is so curious that several experts claim that Columbus was a Portuguese spy or secret agent bent on delaying the Spaniards, their competitors in finding the maritime route to the Indies. ↑118

  One such expert is Simon Wiesenthal, the erudite Jewish author whose curious book which we reference in the bibliography section of this book is well worth reading.

  The ancients generally ignored the existence of the interposed Americas dividing the Ocean in two halves. This with perhaps only a few exceptions. For instance, Plato well knew of the existence of this divide of the Ocean, which he specifically names “Outer Continent” (Epeira, Peirata Ges).

  This Greek name implies the idea of a land encircling the ocean all around, as we have already stated. But Plato was perhaps exaggerating a little bit, perhaps for initiatic reasons. The very name of the Ocean – a Sanskrit word meaning “which goes around” (aşayana)– implies the idea of a sea or ocean which in fact surrounded the Americas, passing underneath them in the south, as the ocean in fact does.

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  But most people ignored this reality, and the myth of a great ocean extending all the way to the East Indies generally prevailed in antiquity. However, it is known that Magellan, the alleged first sailor and discoverer of this southern passage, apparently had a map of the entire region, to believe the words of Pigafetta, his famed pilot.

  Every island discovered by the ancients in this great ocean was hopefully identified with the legendary “Atlantic Islands”. And these mythical islands were also dubbed “Isles of the Blest”, since they were believed to be the remains of sunken Atlantis, that is, of Paradise itself. In India, Paradise was deemed coterminous with Hades (Hell), and both were said to exist in a parallel dimension with the place itself. 16

  Similar legends also abounded later during the Middle Ages and the Age of Navigation, perhaps as a survival from antiquity. No matter what, they were a recurrent feature of the accounts of historians and geographers such as Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, Plutarch, and so on.

  The islands discovered in this ocean were also identified with the East Indies and with Atlantis, and named accordingly: Cipango, Kattigara, Antilia, Septe Cidades, Ys Brazil, Canaria, Capraria, Madeira, Cassiterides, Argyre, Thule, Ilha Verde, Hiera, Cerne, and so on. Most (or all) of these mythical islands were sited in the East Indies according to ancient authorities such as Pliny, Solinus, Ptolemy, and so forth.↑119

  Several ancient maps – starting with the map of Ptolemy and perhaps even earlier – explicitly show the region of Indonesia as an extensive land of continental dimensions. This former continent is far larger than India itself and is attached to the south of Southeast Asia. ↑120

  One such is the map just linked above. In it, Kattigara is the great chunk of land shown at the extreme right of the map, and shaped somewhat like a giant cow’s leg. And this continent or coast is now mostly sunken, precisely as was the case of the Atlantean continent itself.

  Coincidences? Or were Ptolemy and Marinus, as well as Martellus and Solinus, drawing from Alexandrine sources actually dating from Pleistocenic times, the ones of Atlantis when the existence of this now sunken continent was in fact a reality?

  As is clear, when the map of Ptolemy or the map of Henricus Martellus of 1479 are compared to the map of Atlantis published in our site, it is easy to see that the two sunken Indonesian continents closely correspond to each other in both shape, size and Far Eastern location. ↑121

  Now, how could Ptolemy and his contemporaries ever know this poignant reality that has only recently been rediscovered by advanced techniques such as outer space spy satellites and oceanographic ships and subs equipped with side-scanning sonar? Who drew this detailed chart of the Far Eastern regions so far before they were actually discovered by the Portuguese and other modern explorers?

  We are of the opinion that these remarkably advanced maps were actually created by the Atlanteans themselves during the Ice Age, whose realities they charted in great detail and exactitude. And their inconsistencies with modern maps actually result from the differences which resulted from the huge rise in sea level which occurred when the Pleistocene Age ended and the glaciers melted away, running off to the sea.

  What other explanations do we have for these uncanny, essentially impossible mapological and climatological coincidences? Sheer chance? But this is unlikely, as we have discovered dozens of such unique Ice Age features in other ancient maps which we discuss in detail in our work on ancient cartography.

  The most economical explanation – and hence the only one acceptable according to scientific methodology and to Ockham’s Razor Principle of Maximum Parsimony – is the hypothesis just pointed out, unless someone is capable of hitting on a better one and is kind enough to point it out to us all, countering the considerable evidence which I have just produced.

  Part IV - Paradise and the Far Eastern Atlantis

  You don’t reach Serendip by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearing serendipitously.

  John Barth, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor

  Chapter 14 - Diodorus Siculus on Atlantis

  The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

  Socrates (469 BC–399 BC)

  In the present part of this book we concentrate on the remarkable texts of Diodorus Siculus and other authorities who wrote of Atlantis independently from Plato. And we also present in some detail the tabular comparison for our site similar to the ones we made above for the sites so far proposed for Atlantis by other researchers both previous to and later than ourselves.

  This comparison concerns the physiography of Atlantis, that is, the main geographical features of its region. Our table has the advantage of being simple enough to leave no room for sophistries which often becloud the reasoning of most proponents.

  This comparison of our proposed site was left for the end for a very good reason. The idea is that the dear reader should enjoy it as some sort of dessert, which we all reserve for the time when we are already satisfied eating the main courses.

  Besides, the expectation is that the reader will by now have become familiar with our main arguments and, moreover, have realized the potency of our tabular method, even though it is extremely simple to apply in practice. We will see that, despite the fact that Plato’s physiography is only
utter nonsense when applied to the region of Gibraltar, it perfectly fits its dual in the Far East, Taprobane.

  The assertion of many experts that Plato was the only ancient authority ever to speak of Atlantis is wrong. Homer, the first of the Greek poets, already spoke of Atlas holding up the Pillar of Heaven from the bottom of the sea five or six centuries before Plato ever did so.

  Now, Atlas is the very personification of Atlantis itself as a mighty giant or Titan, as the “Pillar of Heaven” bearing up the skies on his back. Herodotus also spoke of the Atlanteans and of Mt. Atlas as the Pillar of Heaven a full century before Plato wrote his piece on the Lost Continent.

  So did, in one way or another, Hesiod, Pindar, Theopompos, Orpheus, Apollonius, Diodorus Siculus, Aelian, Krantor, Strabo, Plutarch, Ovid, Pliny the Elder and a host of other authors of Classical antiquity and hence more or less contemporaneous with Plato.

  But even other nations such as the Phoenicians also spoke of Atlantis in terms comparable to the ones of Greek traditions. Sanchuniathon, a Phoenician priest (fl. 14th century BC), gave an early account of Phoenician Cosmogony which is visibly akin to the sacred history of Atlantis narrated by Diodorus. His writings, long denounced as late forgeries by several experts, have been thoroughly vindicated by the archaeological finds made in Ugarit and other places.

  Though difficult and obscure, Sanchuniathon’s account apparently takes the traditions of Atlantis back to the second millennium BC or even earlier, since he was basing himself on far earlier Phoenician traditions.

  The earlier authors often spoke of Atlantis under alternative names such as Colchis, Phaeacia, Scheria, Aeaea, Hesperia, Elysium, Elysian Fields, Garden of the Hesperides, Tartarus, Hades, Erebus, Isles of the Blest, Hyperborea, Delos, and so forth.