Atlantis the Lost Continent Finally Found

by Arysio Santos

  The negative results the scientists had obtained for the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea – where no sunken continents or even islands of any substantial size could ever be found – do not prove that different conditions might not prevail in either the Indian or the Pacific Oceans, not to mention the Arctic and the Antarctic Oceans.

  The fact that the specialists all gave up then, instead of looking further away, is highly revealing of the myopic views of Western scholars, who firmly believe that Civilization originated in their part of the world, and nowhere else. The reality is that deep under the waters of the IndoPacific Ocean – and more exactly, at their very divide – there lie the remains of a sunken continent of huge size, just as reported by Plato in his two dialogues on Atlantis, the Timaeus and the Critias.

  We had the privilege of discovering this sunken continent in Indonesia and of charting it out for the first time ever some twenty years ago. This was far before other would-be researchers started claiming the same discovery, which they very obviously only did after my own detailed writings on the subject had appeared.

  The sunken island-continent – for such is literally the meaning of the world nêsos used by Plato – I discovered in the region of Indonesia is truly of enormous size, as can be seen in the maps of the region which I present in my Atlantis site and in the present book.

  We might in fact call it a “New World” (Mundus Novus), much as did Amerigo Vespucci when he finally realized that the “islands” discovered by Christopher Columbus were in fact a formerly unsuspected continent, the world’s Quarta Pars (“Fourth Part”).

  We also might, along the same lines, call this new Indonesian continent the world’s Quinta Pars (“Fifth Part”), the fifth continent, the one which completes the quincunx so often embodied in the quaint symbolism of Mt. Meru, so extremely important throughout antiquity.

  Actually, the new world I discovered is the same as the Taprobane (Tamraparna) of the ancient traditions, also known by traditional names such as Terra Australis Incognita, Antichthon, Antilia, Antipodes, Antiporthmos, Atala and so forth. These names all convey the idea of “Counter-Earth”, or “Earth Antipodal”, just as does the name of Atlantis itself. And the knowledge of their existence dates from times immemorial.

  We will be discussing these matters in greater detail in the main text. But the fact is that these fabled lands were deemed to be far more than mere myth by the ancients. Such was particularly the case with Taprobane, known as the site of Hades and the “Otherworld” (Mundus Alterius) ever since the times of Alexander the Great, and even before.

  However, the glory of discovering Atlantis-Eden and its true location and reality is not really mine, after all. All I did was to study the sacred traditions of many peoples, until I was really able to finally understand what they were all about: Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Phoenician, Amerindian, Hindu, Buddhist, Judeo-Christian, and so on. In time they all started to make sense.

  And it was from them that I eventually came to the true location of Paradise as well as the reality of the Universal Flood and the correct nature of the geological phenomena which triggered the event. The rest of the task was comparatively easy. All I had to do was a sort of “reverse engineering”, looking for the scientific data which supported and explained the ancient traditions.

  Returning to Indonesia’s sunken continent which we have identified with Atlantis-Eden: in contrast to this region of the world, which is rather shallow, the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans are strewn with volcanic islands such as the Azores and the Canaries, which rise directly from the seafloor.

  These islands generally belong to the Mid-Oceanic Ridge. As such, these volcanic islands rose rather than sank, and were never part of any sunken continent or even large islands. This is in contrast to the naïve conviction of earlier Atlantologists like Ignatius Donnelly, Lewis Spence, Pierre Termier, Mme. Blavatsky, W. Scott Elliott and several others.

  The origin of these ridges and these islands is today fully accounted for by Plate Tectonics Theory. And this shows that they are rising from the seafloor, rather than sinking into it in any possible way. The islands there are mere volcanic peaks formed from basaltic magma characteristic of the seafloor material and are in no way associated with continental material, generally silicic in nature.

  It was this realization that led to the widespread skepticism of scientists concerning the possibility of Atlantis ever having been located in these regions of the world. The same thing holds in relation to the Pacific Ocean, where similar conditions prevail.

  So, one may also say goodbye to Pacific continents, sunken or not, such as Lemuria and Mu, at least in the terms proposed by the above researchers, among several other now outdated proponents.

  The only exception to this geological rule seems to be the region of Indonesia itself. It lies at the intersection of three Continental Plates, which are all three converging into the region, creating enormous stresses on the earth’s crust. The result is that the crust is locally pushed up, forming extensive shelves (the Sunda Shelf, etc.) and several mountain ranges of impressive altitude.

  These shelves are rather shallow, and become exposed (subaerial) during the Ice Ages, when the sea level drops by well over a hundred meters. This happened during the last Ice Age, the period when Atlantis flourished, according to Plato’s detailed report.

  This entire region is very prone to huge earthquakes and explosive volcanic activity, often resulting in major disasters, which are well attested in geological records. The recent lethal Indonesian tsunami and earthquake are only the latest of a whole series extending throughout history and prehistory, as witnessed in the geological record of the region.

  The recent Indonesian tsunami was only 10 meters or so in height. Despite this fact, it was able to kill 400,000 people, or perhaps even more, according to some estimates. Imagine the destruction caused by a mile high wave of the type described in a great many legends of the Flood the world over. ↑001

  The island arc of Indonesia actually forms the boundary or divide of the two great oceans, the Pacific and the Indian. During the Ice Age, the whole region was exposed, forming a vast continent attached to Southeast Asia and the Malay Peninsula (formerly called Lanka or Taprobane).

  When the sea level rose by 130 meters or so, the very extensive lowlands of the Indonesian shelf became submerged and permanently disappeared under the sea. Only the highlands and the volcanic peaks remained as some sort of mute witnesses of the cataclysm.

  And these highlands and volcanic peaks became the myriad islands of Indonesia, a name which means something like “insular India”. The few people who survived were forced out, and moved to India proper and other places such as Southeast Asia, China, Polynesia, the Americas, the Near East, and so forth.

  Eventually, they reached Europe and other Far Western locations, where they founded the ancient civilizations we presently know about. Of course, the clearest records of this pristine sunken land are preserved in India’s sacred traditions on places such as Lanka, Kumari Kandam, Tripura, and so forth. After all, they are the direct inheritors of that great antediluvian culture.

  The Word “Island” in Plato

  We believe that the Greek word “island” (nêsos) used by Plato actually refers to the islands and the region of Indonesia itself. This word also embodies a sense of “submerged land” and apparently corresponds to what the Hindus call dvipa. This Sanskrit noun specifically refers to paradisial lands now sunken, very much as was also the case with Atlantis.

  And this word is generally translated as “island-continent”, given that the Hindu dvipas are also said to be of continental size, just as was the case with Atlantis itself. But, as Strabo and other Classical geographers and mythographers expound, the word “island” (nêsos) often designated what we nowadays call “continent”. In a rather improper manner, by the way, since these continents in fact “contain” nothing.

  Actually, both the Latin word insula and its Greek counterpart nê
sos ultimately derive from the Dravidian inču meaning “watery land, marsh”. According to Diodorus Siculus, Atlantis sank away in the Tritonides Marshes. This is a remarkable disclosure which tends to confirm our conclusion that Atlantis was a continent now sunken.

  Moreover, this mythical region was often identified to the former location of the Garden of the Hesperides (or Atlantides), another wellknown metaphor for Atlantis-Eden itself.

  The Greek word nêsos underwent metathesis (inču >*niču > *nêsu > nêsos). But this Greek word is visibly the same as the Latin and the Dravidian forms. The Dravidian origin of both the word and the myth cogently suggest a Hindu origin of the whole myth of Atlantis – especially when we also note that the Sanskrit word dvipa literally means “two waters” (dvi-ap), a strange coincidence at best.

  We believe that, rather than meaning “having water on two sides” as is so often inferred, the real allusion here is to “two levels of water”, one exposed and prevailing during the Ice Ages, and the other one submerged and prevalent in the Interglacials such as the present one.

  But this is just a further hypothesis, offered here as food for thought for our dear readers. No matter what, in Plato, the word “island” (nêsos) actually meant what we now improperly dub “continent”.

  Moreover, it is now becoming quite clear that a great civilization indeed developed in this vast equatorial continent during the Ice Age, at least enough to compel belief in Plato’s detailed disclosures or those made by several other ancient authorities, both classical and otherwise.

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  Among these other Classical authors referring to the story of Atlantis we mention Diodorus Siculus, Theopompos, Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Apollodorus, Virgil and several other Greek and Roman mythographers and rhapsodes. Then, we also have the similar sacred traditions of practically all peoples on earth, which use other names but clearly refer to the same location, the sunken continent of Atlantis-Eden.

  To believe these ancient traditions, this great civilization spread to several distant regions of the world, eventually becoming an empire of worldwide extension.

  It is only through diffusion that we are really able to understand the sudden appearance of remarkably advanced technologies such as agriculture, stone-dressing, metallurgy, religion and, above all, of language and the alphabet all over the world during the so-called Neolithic Revolution.

  And it is only through the agency of a worldwide empire that we may account for the worldwide diffusion which occurred soon after the end of the Ice Age, the great cataclysm which destroyed Atlantis-Eden, and sent the scant survivors away, in a great diaspora.

  As we have managed to show in great detail, most of these advances contain unmistakable clues of having originated from India and, even more exactly, from the now sunken vast region presently called Indonesia (“Indian islands”), formerly an integral part of India itself.

  For instance, most human languages embody unequivocal traces of having had a common origin in the sacred tongues of India, such as Sanskrit and Dravida. Such is perhaps the reason why all human languages – including those of the most primitive nations in the world – are so remarkably advanced in both grammar and semantics.

  Again, take the instance of the alphabet, one of the most seminal human inventions ever. The alphabet also includes many unmistakable “Indian fingerprints”. For instance, the first letter of the alphabet is called aleph (or alpha, etc.). And this word closely evokes the name of the elephant (elephas, in Greek) and, above all, of Ganesha, the elephant-god whose name is by the Hindus placed at the start of any undertakings whatsoever.

  We also note that the shape of the Greek alpha: α – the Greek counterpart of the Semitic aleph – closely evokes not a bull, but the head of a bull elephant with its tusk sawn off (like Ganesha, the Hindu elephantgod). If you want to see that fact, draw the “eye” inside the glyph where it would be located on an elephant’s head. The Hebrew word aleph does not mean “bull” as often stated, but “cattle, oxen”, that is “castrated bulls”.

  Such is also the reason why it is represented by an inverted bull’s head (A), a telltale symbolism. ↑002

  So do, by the way, the earliest forms of the Semitic aleph. This fact evokes the story of the Golden Calf and its ousting from Israel, as reported in Exodus. Note also that the word aleph is not originally Semitic. Now why would a Semitic letter be baptized with a foreign word? And why would the Semitic alphabet start with an ousted deity, a demonized one?

  Besides, the Semitic alphabet also ends with a bull (taw), showing its initiatic Hindu character. Why? These examples could be multiplied at will. And they all show that the standard academic views on the development of civilization in the Near East are utterly in error. For instance, they have dozens of theories on the alphabet’s origin, but no clear idea of when, where and how this development occurred: Egypt, Israel, Phoenicia, India, Crete, Mycenae, Turkey, and so on. ↑003

  We well realize that these uncanny claims may seem far-fetched and even impossible to most people, both expert and lay. But we are prepared to prove these assertions. And we have in fact done so in several detailed documents produced during the many years of detailed research we have dedicated to the problem of Atlantis, and which we plan to publish soon.

  It was from the “seeds” planted by the survivors of the cataclysm – the civilizing heroes, gods and angels of which all traditions speak – that the great civilizations of the historic and the prehistoric past ultimately arose: the Indus Valley Culture, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hatti, Greece, Minoan Crete, Rome, the Incas, Mayas, Aztecs, and so forth.

  It is certainly more than a coincidence that all these great civilizations speak of these pristine civilizers, instead of claiming for themselves a glory that would be well deserved, had they in fact invented agriculture and the other arts and techniques that characterize civilization.

  For instance, it took several million years for Man to pass from simple flint-knapping to the polished stone characteristic of the Neolithic. And both these techniques and their advancements only spread by diffusion, rather than by independent reinvention. ↑004

  In one form or another, all these ancient peoples just named – along with several others – also spoke of Paradise as the cradle of Mankind and of Civilization. How could they all independently reinvent exactly the same myth, as unanimously affirmed by today’s academic scholars?

  The ancients often used names which closely assonate with the ones for Atlantis, another uncanny coincidence: Atlantis, Tala, Attala, Atala, Patala, Talatala, Thule, Tollán, Aztlán, Aztatlán, Tlaloc, etc.. Moreover, these names mostly mean “the Land Antipodal”, an etymology preserved in names of mythical lands and continents such as Antilia, Antichthon, Antiporthmos, Antoeci, etc..

  What this means is that the ancients well knew that the Paradise Lost was located in the opposite hemisphere, on the other side of the earth. As such, they often referred to Paradise as being located on either the Farthest West or the Farthest East.

  Given the fact that the earth is round, one extreme is actually coterminous with the other, and hence vicinal and actually common. This region of the world to which the ancients allude really corresponds to Indonesia, the actual divide both of the Ocean and of the two hemispheres of the earth: East and West. It was there that, in antiquity, the day started by convention and, hence, the place where the sun was born every day (International Dateline).

  It is at the very least curious that the ancients should develop such a sophisticated concept, unless they somehow had a need for it. And this need speaks of the reality of an empire of worldwide extension, spanning the world’s countries and oceans. What other reason could there be for coordinating time between distant regions of the world?

  The “White Island” of the Universal Traditions

  Indonesia was also identified with the so-called “White Island”, the actual name of Paradise in several ancient traditions. This name corresponds to the one of Sveta-dvipa (or Saka-dvipa), the paradisial “
White Island” of Hindu traditions. It was there – in this “island of the whites” – that the white races (Sakas) originated, in the dawn of time.

  These Sakas were also called Yavanas (“Whites”). And the Yavanas are the same as the Ionians (or IaFones, as in Homer). And this name – which is alternatively spelled Javanas – actually derives from the island of Java, one of the main Indonesian islands.

  Another of their names was “Ethiopians”. The name of the “Ethiopians” was facetiously interpreted as meaning “burnt-faces” by the ancient Greeks. But it really meant “purified by fire”, as interpreted in the ancient Hindu sacred texts on the agnishvatthas (“purified by fire”). This ethnonym normally designated both the Berbers and the LibyoPhoenicians of North Africa.

  But it also applied to other white or red races of the Far East (Indonesia), the Tocharians in particular. Homer already referred to “the Pious Ethiopians, located one half in the Far East, where the sun rises, the other half in the Far West, where it sets.” These Eastern peoples were the “blond Chinese” of Pliny and Solinus, the “Long-Lived Ethiopians” of Herodotus, and so forth.

  In actual terms these Ethiopians correspond to the Tocharians, the Avars, the Sakas, the Hephthalites and other such “White Huns”. Rather than “whites” (or Aryans) these White Ethiopians were in fact Chamites. And this means they were “reds” rather than really “whites”. In Hindu terms they correspond to the Dravidas rather than to the Aryans proper. As we shall be arguing later on, these peoples from the Far East were part of the Sea Peoples who in fact invaded and settled in the European region as the Greeks, the Etruscans, the Libyans, and so forth.

  The Dravidas have, even today, red as their heraldic color (Skt. varna = “caste, color”), whereas the Aryans have white for their own. The present dark color of most Dravidas is due to racial mixing with the local melanoid races (Mundas, Negritos, Melanesians, Australoids).