Lost Lands, Forgotten Realms

by Bob Curran

  Lost Lands, Forgotten Realms

  Sunken Continents, Vanished Cities, and the Kingdoms that History Misplaced

  By Dr. Bob Curran

  Illustrated by Ian Daniels

  Dedication

  To my wife, Mary, and my children, Jennifer and Michael, for their help and support throughout the writing of this book.

  Contents

  Introduction: Somewhere Beyond the Horizon

  Section I: Mythological Places

  Mythological Places

  Chapter 1: The Otherworld

  Chapter 2: The Garden of Eden

  Chapter 3: Avalon

  Chapter 4: Yggdrasil

  Chapter 5: Hy-Brasil

  Section II: Sunken Lands

  Sunken Lands

  Chapter 6: Atlantis

  Chapter 7: Lemuria and Mu

  Chapter 8: Lyonesse

  Chapter 9: Davy Jones’s Locker

  Section III: Vanished Realms and Cities

  Vanished Realms and Cities

  Chapter 10: Shangri-La

  Chapter 11: The Kingdom of Prester John

  Chapter 12: El Dorado

  Chapter 13: The Kingdom of Prince Madoc

  Chapter 14: Hyperborea

  Chapter 15: Irem: City of Pillars

  Chapter 16: Bimini and the Fountain of Youth

  Section IV: Subterranean Worlds

  Subterranean Worlds

  Chapter 17: Miners of the Lost Worlds

  Chapter 18: The Lair of Judaculla

  Chapter 19: The Green Children

  Chapter 20: The Lost Dutchman Mine

  Chapter 21: The Hollow Hills

  Conclusion: Whispers From Somewhere Else

  Bibliography

  Index

  About the Author

  Introduction:

  Somewhere Beyond the Horizon

  From earliest times, Man has been both intrigued and fascinated with what lies in the distance, beyond his field of vision. From where he stood, perhaps on a flat and rolling plain, he could see as far as the distant horizon; but what lay beyond that? Lost lands? Forgotten realms? Curiosity, of course, is a human trait, but then so is imagination. Although he could not actually see what lay out there, Early Man was curious about what might lie on the other side of the distant horizon, and it was here that his imagination took over. It populated unseen regions with all sorts of fabulous places, inhabited by fantastic creatures and beings—creatures and beings similar to (or maybe even very different from) himself.

  Perhaps an interesting experiment would be to stand on a beach or shore and look out to sea. Try to imagine what lies on the other side of the observed horizon. Is it land? Is it more sea? What kinds of creatures live there? Giants, ocean monsters, ghosts? People like ourselves? Are there islands, shoals of rocks, a lost continent just beyond our vision? Such ideas would not have been dispelled by the cloud formations that sometimes hung low on the horizon, suggesting land masses beyond them. Now look at the sea in front. What lies under it? Wrecks of lost ships or perhaps something that has slipped from the land and down under the waves? These were the problems that confronted early sailors as they voyaged toward the horizon. What lay before them, and what lay under them?

  Then and Now

  In a sense, such an experiment is already flawed because, here in the 21st century, and thanks to modern technology and increased information, we already know what lies there. And even if we didn’t, there are devices using GPS (Global Positioning System) that will actually tell us. Thus, we can stand on our imagined beach and look at a handheld screen that will tell us if there are sandbanks, islands, reefs, shoals, or anything else far beyond our line of vision. Indeed, such devices can often, to some extent, tell us what lies underneath the waves, whether the land slips away and the water deepens, or whether there are hidden rocks. Such technology has, in effect, taken away much of the mystery and fantasy that imagination can sometimes lend to distance or depth.

  Today, we think nothing of travel. In these modern times we can jump in our car and journey hundreds of miles without giving the distance a second thought. Or we can board a ship or a plane and be in a foreign country in no time. This was, of course, not always the case. In previous times, traveling, even relatively short distances, was often a hazardous undertaking, and not one to be taken lightly. The roads swarmed with wild animals and robbers, all of which awaited the traveler, and made his or her journey a rather hazardous one. Therefore, people tended not to travel very far, but kept close to their own communities. This was an understandable reaction in a world that was often viewed as hostile and dangerous. Even in relatively modern times, in some parts of rural Europe, people did not journey far, and those who came in from outside were considered to be strange and sinister.

  The peasant novelist Emile Guillaumin, writing in 1904 about the world that his grandparents had known (the mid-1800s), tells of a little swineherd who was confronted by a monstrous figure on some remote heathland in La Châtre, France. This was not a person who came from the three farms that the boy knew, and he spoke a strange and unfamiliar language. The child was greatly afraid and fled. The figure was no more than an itinerant tree-feller looking for a spring at which to fill his flask. He spoke to the boy in a dialect with which the child was not familiar, and to the swineherd he seemed a fantastic creature—tall and dark (weather-beaten from an outdoor life)—from some far-away land. Beyond the edge of the village lay an unknown world, populated with strange creatures, more terrifying than any 1950s science-fiction movie.

  Today, we can sit in our living rooms, turn on our televisions, and see things and events on the other side of the world. The miracles of television, DVD, and video can bring the sights of distant countries right into our homes. Moreover, documentaries and films can bring images of the deepest ocean or beneath the Earth’s crust directly to us for our entertainment and enlightenment. The global communications system has taken away part of the eerie glamour of distant lands and far-away places. The world has now been largely explored and explained, and while it can, from time to time, hold surprises, these seem to be getting fewer and fewer in number.

  Tales From the Other Worlds

  The world was not always so familiar though; even in the 19th century, traveling long distances across the ocean was similar to traveling to either the Moon or Mars today. Few journeyed very far, and they relied on those few brave souls who did to provide them with information about distant countries. And of course, those who had traveled such distances were regarded as local heroes or as something special within their various communities. In order to embellish and explain their exploits in distant places, they regaled their audiences back in their own towns with amazing stories, full of fantastic (and improbable) encounters. They gave descriptions of strange and bizarre lands that provided a backdrop for their own wonderful adventures. These stories became known as “Old Travelers’ Tales,” and were gathered together in a corpus of wild adventures to delight receptive (some would say gullible) audiences. Seafarers especially, those who had visited locations that were far beyond the imaginations of most of their land-based contemporaries, were especially skilled at such stories, which were recorded as fact. And indeed, who was there among their land-dwelling audiences to contradict them? Many of those listening had never been beyond the confines of their own village. The more fantastic the story, it seems, the more readily it was believed. Thus, there were stories concerning tribes of dog-headed men who lived in the deserts of North Africa (probably derived from representations of ancient Egyptian jackal-headed gods) and of islands of men with long ears who slept on one and used the other as a blanket (perhaps based on some of the Polynesian peoples of Easter Island who seeme
d to have distended ears, which some of their statues there would appear to suggest). In a world in which factual knowledge about other cultures was extremely limited (but not to say nonexistent) such tales passed into the stream of geographical tradition and became part of accepted local knowledge concerning foreign countries and their inhabitants. While many of these early storytellers may not have intended to deliberately mislead their listeners—in fact, some of the tales may have been an attempt to explain what they saw to themselves—they certainly built up fabulous and disturbing pictures of far-off lands and vanished civilizations.

  Modern Legends

  Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distant, inaccessible places continued to hold a fascination for the human mind and exercise the imagination. These were places where adventure was set and where strange things happened. They were a convenient backdrop for heroic figures fighting against unimaginable odds—savage tribes, monsters, and inhuman creatures that time had forgotten. The steaming jungles of Africa and South America, for instance, were a haven for dangerous, flesh-eating tribes and monstrous creatures, but they were also the location of lost valleys or plateaus, which had somehow escaped the passage of time and were teeming with giant, prehistoric reptiles, and flora and fauna. Old Travelers’ Tales, all but forgotten, suddenly gained a new lease on life as they were adapted to fit in with modern adventure stories. Thus, Africa became the location for the legendary story of King Solomon’s Mines (where the biblical King Solomon had mined his vast wealth); South America became the site of the fabled El Dorado which the Spanish conquistadores had sought in the 16th century. However, this is not to say that some of these fabulous lost places did not actually exist.

  In 1860, a French botanist, Henri Mouhot, stepped out of the Cambodian jungle to find himself in an overgrown street, amid towering buildings that were wreathed in creeper and vines. He was standing in the main complex of Angkor Wat, a great temple city of the ancient Khmer civilization, which had flourished in Asia between 802 and 1431. It had lain undisturbed and mouldering in the jungle for centuries. Mouhot and his expedition from the Royal Geographic Society had been following old tales told to local French missionaries concerning “a city built by giants” deep in the Cambodian jungle. And, as he discovered, there was a basis of truth in these old legends, fanciful though they initially seemed. Mouhot’s discovery intrigued the popular imagination; if Angkor Wat (and the later discovered temple-city of Angkor Thom) had lain undetected in the Cambodian jungle for so many years, might not other legends be true as well?

  In the late 1860s/early 1870s, this excitement became more intense as the controversial archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann unearthed foundations on the Anatolian (Turkish) coast, which were identified as the ruins of the fabled city of Troy. Prior to Schliemann’s excavations, Troy had been little more than a Greek fable. Schliemann’s discovery meant that the tale had been based on fact.

  These discoveries excited the popular imagination—if the legendary Khmer and Trojan civilizations had existed, might not others have existed, too? And indeed, might there not be a core of truth in at least some of the other old fables? Many of the old stories that had been summarily dismissed as nothing more than legend—Atlantis, Mu, Shambhala, and so on—suddenly took on a new vibrancy and freshness.

  Not only this, but if ancient cities existed on land or deep in the jungle, might they also exist under the sea or even under the Earth, where deep and unexplored caverns stretched for miles underground? Stories of lost lands, deep below the Earth’s crust, had existed since medieval times, but now they received a new lease on life. Novels such as Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth emerged in 1864, fueling speculation about subterranean kingdoms and forgotten lands deep in the Earth. There was also a reinvigorated interest in kingdoms such as Lyonesse, a sunken realm that was once said to lie between the southern tip of Cornwall, England, and the French coast. Stories of such a country, overwhelmed by the sea during a great natural catastrophe, appear both in Cornish and Breton, and may indeed have some basis in fact. Geographers have determined that the Scilly Isles, lying off the southern coast of England, are in fact the tips of high undersea mountains—mountains that were once said to dominate Lyonesse. Many prominent and well-established Cornish families claim descendency from survivors of the watery cataclysm. Perhaps, argued some, this was actually proof of some ancient realm swallowed up by the ocean in some former time.

  Interest in vanished kingdoms was even further fuelled in the 1920s as archaeologists began to unearth some of the long-lost treasures of the Egyptian pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings. Images of strange and almost forgotten gods were brought back to England and America, and fabulous treasures unearthed in remote areas hinted at opulent civilizations now vanished under the desert sands.

  The fascination with fabled realms hidden away in inaccessible areas of the world has remained with us through the years. As late as the 1930s/1940s, the distant land of Tibet exercised its spell on the modern mind. It became a place of magic and mystery where ancient ways were long forgotten, the people knew ancient secrets, and holy men displayed amazing powers of mind and body unmatched anywhere else on the planet. Although that view has gradually changed, there are still those today who cling to notions of a Shangri-La or mysterious kingdom lost somewhere in the Himalayas.

  Recently, accounts from remote and relatively inaccessible valleys in Northern India, where remarkable flora, fauna, and insect life (much of it from prehistoric periods) have been noted, suggest that there might be some small kernel of truth in such speculation.

  Why has the idea of lost civilizations gripped our ideas and imaginations so strongly? Well, perhaps in our own rather brutal and competitive world, it gives us a sense of hope and perspective. It is always tempting to look back to a former, golden, more innocent, and peaceful world than that which we often see around us. If Mankind can achieve such glories once, the argument runs, it just might be able to achieve it again. So while we battle with each other and destroy our planet, it is perhaps comforting to look back at the peace and prosperity of some former time—whether that period is real or imagined. Advanced technologies and social development may not have brought us the happiness or contentment that we had hoped they would, but perhaps there is still some knowledge or wisdom from a former, forgotten time, still waiting to be discovered, which can aid us and bring us the peace of mind that we crave. The ultimate happiness may lie in the vanished past! At least that’s what we fondly imagine. Thus, we seek well-being and mysticism among ancient peoples such as the Celts, the Chinese, and the ancient peoples of India, but maybe there are even older civilizations that can meet our deepest needs. The search, then, continues.

  The purpose of this book is to examine the stories and beliefs concerning some of these ancient worlds. Might they indeed have existed? And, if not, why would people wish to believe that they did? What was the effect of that belief on later years? And is such a belief in these places still relevant today? So come with us now as we journey back through time; to remote and almost inaccessible places; under the sea and deep into the bowels of the Earth itself; in search of vanished civilizations and disappeared cities and countries. It is a journey not only into the unknown, but also into our beliefs and perceptions. It is a glimpse into the very way in which we view the world—deep into ourselves and our relationship to the world around us. Perhaps for many of us, that might be the most frightening journey of all!

  Section I: Mythological Places

  Mythological Places

  Even in today’s society, many people share the view that there may well be some form of existence beyond the material world that we can see and touch. Indeed, this has formed the basis for a number of the world’s religions—from a simple idea of a realm of spirits, coexisting alongside our own, to a more sophisticated view of an Afterlife, existing after death. Such places are said to lie well outside our realm of consciousness, and although they are all around us and thei
r inhabitants may be “aware” of us in our day-today living, we are totally unaware of them. For example, many Christians believe that God and/or angels or saints see and hear everything we do in our own world, though we are not directly aware of them. Nor are we even dimly aware of the place in which they exist, although it is said to be “everywhere around us,” impinging on our own sphere of existence. We cannot see it, touch it, or even taste it, yet the Christians declare with certainty that it is there.

  This Life and Beyond

  Modern Christians are not the only ones to believe in such realms. Nor are they the first to do so. From very early days, men have believed in places that they could not see, or the location of which they could not exactly specify. Such places did not appear on any maps, nor were there any guide-posts to them, but it was believed that they existed somewhere just beyond the realm of the human senses. Some of them were extremely close at hand—the mystical world of fairies and goblins was all around us, but actually outside our sphere of vision (there really might be “fairies at the bottom of the garden”); the location of others was more problematical and perhaps further away. They existed in a sphere outside our human sensibilities but they were there either in foreign lands or where we could not see them.

  The Garden of Eden, for example, was supposed to lie either in the Middle East or in North Africa, but even if we were able to travel there, we would still not be able to find it. Similarly, Shangri-La, a mythical kingdom “somewhere” among the Himalayan Mountains, was frequently talked about, but the location was never specified. Others, such as the legendary village of Brigadoon was always there, lying invisible among the Scottish mists (its location is given as a number of sites across the Scottish Highlands) although it reappeared for mortal viewing every hundred years on the anniversary of its alleged initial disappearance in 1754. The “spell” that was cast over Brigadoon was put in place to protect it from advancing English Redcoats during the Jacobite Rebellion, and it is said that the village goes on about its business (invisible to the human eye and stuck in some sort of time warp that is always in the year 1754) before briefly reappearing each century. So famous has the legend become that it is the subject of both music and film. Curiously, the original tale concerning the vanishing village is not Scottish at all (although the Highland mists do add a sense of romance and mystery), but German. The dark and disturbing legend of the cursed village of Germelshausen, the bells of which can be heard ringing out across the Bavarian Mountains, is recorded in a collection of ghostly folktales by the Brothers Grimm. Those who follow the sound of the bells and enter the village are never seen again, and though they try to return to the mortal world (of which they are apparently fully aware), they never succeed. Germelshausen is allegedly inhabited by dark and evil forces that only seek to harm Mankind—a totally different scenario from the Scottish romance and jollity of Brigadoon. Yet, Germelshausen is still there, tucked away in the Bavarian hills, unseen by the human eye and ready to draw the unwary traveler into its curse.