Atlantis the Lost Continent Finally Found

by Arysio Santos

  We well realize that our claims may seem vaunted or even frivolous to many, experts or not. But we are fully prepared to prove what we just affirmed. Given the inescapable fact of locational and toponymical confusion, we are free to look for Atlantis just about anywhere in the world, and then work backwards to prove the connection with the many geographical features of the Lost Continent listed by Plato.

  These characteristic geographical and geological features include: Pleistocenic date; being sunken; a continental extension; a tropical climate in the Ice Age; a prodigious fertility; a great abundance of miner-

  als and gemstones of all sorts; violent maritime volcanoes, tsunamis and earthquakes; a huge population and so forth.

  In the present book – addressed, above all, to the general public – we have divested our original text of the impressive scientific paraphernalia that we had to use, and often develop or improve ourselves, in the sciences both human and exact.

  We plan to publish this more extensive research of ours in the near future, in technical journals and Internet sites, so as to place it at the disposal of all the interested public, the scholars in particular. In the present publication, we have also skipped for the sake of simplicity the more obscure arguments we have produced over the years, concentrating only on those understandable to the lay reader.

  However, we quote here in this book a host of authoritative references on these specific issues not only by Plato himself but also by his Classical contemporaries such as Aristotle, Theopompos, Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, Pliny the Elder, Strabo, Pomponius Mela, and many other ancient Greco-Roman authors.

  The reader who finds these original quotes difficult is advised to simply skip them. But the interested reader will find here an extensive list of Internet links to these Classical authors both in their original tongues and in their English translation.

  These links are given as numbered notes in this book which can be accessed directly via our Atlantis site by merely clicking on these numbers there. In this novel way we are able to provide not only access to these obscure sources, but to an impressive apparatus of erudite commentaries, explanatory notes, dictionaries, glosses, and so forth.

  Our strategy was to post this material – in whole or in part – in our Internet Homepage on Atlantis, so that it is readily available to all readers desirous of verifying my quotes in more detail, and/or to check my sources, references, maps and charts, all abundantly presented there.

  Another strategy I am presently pursuing is the direct collaboration with some fellow scientists from the different specific disciplines involved, using this combined experience to further examine my find of Atlantis for the purpose of advancing the several sciences concerned, many of which will require a thorough revision.

  Again, my purpose both here and in other pursuits is to submit my results to the scrutiny of independent research and empirical confirmation, the very essence of scientific methodology.

  Some of these researches are being conducted in the open, and some secretly. This is because Atlantis is a jinxed subject for scholastic investigation and funding institutions, making researchers very reluctant to stake their reputations and careers until they have achieved very solid results which cannot be easily refuted by other scholars.

  Setting Out to Disprove Atlantis

  Our own views on the issue of Atlantis have been masterfully expressed by the two authors quoted in the above epigraphical quotations at the head of the present chapter. I believe my conclusions on the matter of Atlantis to be the truth, and nothing but the truth. But my finds are far from being the whole truth, as I have barely managed to scratch the surface of the complex problem posed by Atlantis.

  A lot of ground has yet to be covered in the near future, now that the reality of the Lost Continent has, I hope, been scientifically established. Scientific opinion on this sensitive subject has been negative up to now, for several reasons.

  But, as Plato himself affirmed, opinion – scientific opinion included – is just opinion, and is bound to change whenever new facts develop, as is the case now that we have reconstructed the secret history of Paradise Lost perhaps for the first time ever.

  Actually, I set out originally to disprove what I then believed, as a scientist, to be no more than a series of sheer fads and fallacies: Däniken’s “Astronaut Gods”; Velikovsky’s “Biblical Catastrophism”; Blavatsky’s ghostly Lemurians; the geological possibility of “sunken continents” and global cataclysms of the Flood type, etc..

  Above all, I attempted to disprove the reality of Paradise Lost and that of its two main geological corollaries, Atlantis and Lemuria. Alas, I soon found that a solid core of fact invariably remained when I cleared the piles of pseudo-scientific garbage accumulated by the above named researchers and many others over the course of centuries.

  When I dug deeper, I started to find, first of all, the many jewels and gold nuggets embedded in the mythologies of all peoples. I finally came to realize that these pearls of wisdom could not possibly be mere coincidences or sheer accidental invention.

  This is now quite clear, given the universality and the astounding internal coherence of myths everywhere. I was accordingly compelled to make an about face in my former beliefs, much as I hope that the dear readers will also do when they are confronted with the vast evidence I amassed over the two and a half decades since my conversion occurred.

  I firmly believe that what I expound next is the truth of the matter, as I just affirmed. But I am prepared to be proved wrong, just as I presumed to point out the errors of the researchers who preceded (or followed) me in the never-ending quest for Truth.

  Science, as is well known, actually progresses by the process of trialand-error. Scientific theories are freely posited only as provisional working hypotheses. In the words of Einstein, theories are only a preliminary attempt to explain known facts and empirical observations as well as is humanly possible.

  At the measure that more data are gathered, better theories are formulated, in an uninterrupted, unending succession. No scientific theory is ever final. As with human beings, one generation of theories succeeds the other, hopefully with some evolutionary improvement.

  So, my own theory on Atlantis’ location and reality is perhaps destined to be eventually superseded by better-argued and better-founded data and hypotheses. More details on Atlantis-Eden will be gathered, and my data will be refined in both time and geographical space. But I do not believe my theory will undergo any serious revision in the forthcoming years. Its essence will endure, I am sure.

  This book is the result of thirty years of dedicated research. The proofs it presents are scientifically solid and, I hope, convincing. But truth, like beauty, often resides in the eyes of the beholder.

  However, there is no place for dogma in Science, just as J. Robert Oppenheimer affirmed in the quotation with which we opened this chapter. Rigidity and dogma oppress and inevitably lead to error and injustice. We must never believe that any hypothesis, theory, dogma, notion or principle – no matter how logical and how compelling it may look at any one time – is ever final and definitive.

  Even less should we believe that scientific views and principles are ever to be considered final, or even too well established to be discarded or replaced. They seldom are. Take for instance the usual academic consensual view that “continents cannot possibly sink”.

  This is what most if not all geologists unfortunately believe even today, and in fact teach down to the present time. This belief is the result of the fact that most of them were taught to trust the uniformitarian views of Darwin and Lyell, the currently standard doctrine on the matter. And bad habits die hard, as we all know.

  This widespread belief was recently reaffirmed, for instance, by Dorothy B. Vitaliano in what is probably the best and latest book on Atlantis to be written by academic scholars (Edwin Ramage (ed.), Atlantis, Fact or Fiction, Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington, 1978):

  “In the light of what is known today about the o
cean floors we can definitely rule out the possibility of a sunken landmass of any appreciable size in the Atlantic or, for that matter in any other ocean basin.”

  Vitaliano is a professional geologist, working for the reputed US Geological Survey. She specializes on volcanology and tsunamis, and has written extensively on the matter of Atlantis and related legends and traditions. Her view on the matter is typical of the negative scientific attitude which prevailed at the time when I started my researches on the matter of Atlantis and down to a long time afterwards.

  But these canonic views were soon to be proved wrong not only by my own pioneering finds but also by the geological and climatological data we present here and in other works of ours. The truth of the matter is that continents can sink, and indeed have repeatedly done so in the course of geological time, exactly as Plato asserted.

  And this sinking was not a gradual, smooth, uniform process, as most academic experts currently believe. This process was often violent and cataclysmic. This was particularly the case in the region of Indonesia, the real location of Atlantis, and of the date given by Plato (11,600 years BP), the one marked by Meltwater Pulse 1B (MWP1B), a dramatically sudden rise in sea level. ↑068

  This perfect coincidence in both date and nature is certainly more than just fortuitous: It is a powerful indicator of some major catastrophe of global import, one probably related to the Universal Flood and the catastrophic end of the last Pleistocene Ice Age. 6

  The reality of the Flood cataclysm is the very essence of our revolutionary find of Atlantis. This sobering find – currently fast becoming standard knowledge – was actually what set me on the right track for locating the lost continent of Atlantis hiding away in the fabulous South Seas where it really lies. Several other clues – the Lemurian tradition included, and the one on Kumari Kandam, and so on – also confirmed my suspicions, which soon became certainty. 7

  Another “commonsensical” scientific belief similar to this one that “continents cannot possibly sink” is the scientific wisecrack that “stones cannot possibly fall from heaven”. But this was also proved to be wrong in practice. They not only can, but in fact often do. And they come in all sizes, some even of planetoidal size, as we now know for sure.

  This naive belief – widely held by the “no-nonsense” scientists of the Paris Academy down to the end of the nineteenth century – was hastily revised and considerably improved when a gigantic shower of sizeable meteorites literally rained down over their illustrious bald heads, formerly impervious to this rather ordinary piece of commonsense.

  It is precisely this type of dogmatic science that Erasmus denounces in his magistral In Praise of Folly. This book earned Erasmus his excommunication, since it so sorely offended both the priests and the arrogant scholars of his time. His close friend, Thomas More, fared even worse, and ended up losing his head, certainly because of his association with Erasmus and other such “Atlantean utopists”.

  Atlantis is presently universally held to be a preposterous unscientific notion not only by the media, but also by the illustrious would-be sages who now fill our academies and our research institutions and who are no less stupid and arrogant than the ones of Erasmus’ time.

  But their view on this is merely dogma, with no foundation whatsoever in facts, only on opinion. The same is also true of other similar traditional views on the reality of the Terrestrial Paradise, the Universal Flood, Catastrophic Evolution, and so on. Absence of evidence is no evidence of absence, just as several experts have remarked.

  Fortunately, these obsolete views and these misleading paradigms are fast being revised, now that Darwinian Evolution and the Uniformity Principle on which it is founded have both been proved to be no more than Victorian buncombe. They both derive from sheer unscientific bias and are actually unsupported by any kind of evidence whatsoever.

  Science has often been used to perpetuate dogmatism, so that today, to a large extent, it has replaced the traditional inquisitional role that Religion often had, in antiquity.

  This posture is, however, incompatible with the progress of Science, of Religion, and even of Humankind as a whole. Just as Oppenheimer pointed out, whenever intellectual liberty to pursue any line of reasoning is threatened, it is Freedom itself that is threatened. No subject should ever be tabooed in Science, or forbidden to anyone, as some actually were in the Middle Ages.

  Academic freedom includes – or should include – the liberty to research even “damned” subjects such as the one of Atlantis without putting one’s career and personal safety in jeopardy, as is currently the case. I am sorry for having to insist on this ugly theme as a precursor for my purely

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  scientific work on the sunken continent, one which I have several times been recommended to abandon, as it threatened the reputation solidity of my academic institution.

  But I want my readers to follow Plato’s advice; to come out of the Cave, and dare to face sunshine head on. Those who are not prepared to undertake this crucial step had better abandon ship now, when it has not yet progressed out of the port. To those who stay on board, my hearty welcome. And don’t fret. All you risk losing are your fetters, as Plato once said…

  “Like Oil, Atlantis Is Wherever It May Be Found”

  Put simply, we are hence allowed to look for Atlantis just about anywhere in the world. This is what a detailed study of Plato’s texts on the Lost Continent actually reveals. In fact, a close analysis – one which took us some twenty five years to complete and to compile the confirmatory evidence for – reveals the following facts, which we demonstrate in detail next in this and other chapters of this book:

  1) The “Atlantic Ocean” of the ancients is not the ocean we presently call by that name. Instead it is really the Outer Ocean which encircles the entire world all around, and which is composed of the Atlantic, the Indian, and, above all, the Pacific Ocean, of which the former two were deemed mere extensions, one towards the west, the other one towards the east.

  And this world-encircling ocean was anciently called not only “Atlantic Ocean” but also had names such as Atlanticus Mare, Kronius Mare, Mare Externum, Mare Magnum, Alethinos Pontos, Mare Oceanus, Occidentalis Oceanus, Eous Mare and, more simply, Oceanus. 8

  2) “Pillars of Hercules” was the name invariably applied by the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians not only to Gibraltar, the Bosphorus and the Kertch Straits in the Black Sea, but to any important strait leading from one sea to another or from one region to a neighboring one. Such was the way in which the name was used in antiquity, and such was also the idea that Plato had in mind when he wrote the Timaeus and the Critias, his two fascinating discourses on Atlantis.

  But the real identity of the “Pillars of Atlas”, the ones of Atlantis, was a closely kept secret never told anyone but the most trusted disciples. In consequence, wherever we may find Atlantis, we will also automatically find the true Pillars of Hercules and/or Atlas of which Plato spoke.

  3) By the words “Island of Atlantis” (hê Atlantis nêsos), Plato really meant the same thing expressed by the Sanskrit word dvipa, which is its exact Hindu equivalent. The Greek word nêsos, like its Sanskrit counterpart, dvipa, signifies not only “island”, but any flooded land or continent, as can be verified here. And the word dvipa in fact means the same thing, and specifically applies to what we presently call “continent”, implying the idea of “sunken”. ↑069

  Plato – or perhaps Solon, as the divine philosopher specifically declares – was apparently reporting hoary Egyptian traditions. And the Egyptian word yu means, like its counterparts just mentioned, not only an island, but any flooded land even of continental size like Atlantis.

  4) Plato’s allusion to the fact that the “island of Atlantis” lay in front of the Pillars of Hercules is in fact a double entendre intended to confuse the profanes. The Greek word he actually uses (pro) meant more or less the same as Greek anti- and Latin ante-, as in the names of Antilia, Antichthon and Antipodes. And it is also embodied in the n
ame of Atlantis itself, perhaps meaning the very idea that Atlantis was in fact the Land Antipodal of which many traditions spoke. 9

  This Greek word is often rendered as “opposite, facing”; as such, it could well mean “antipodal”, in the sense of “opposite”. And it could also express the idea that Atlantis was located in the opposite shore of the Ocean, which, for the ancients, extended all the way to the East Indies. Diodorus Siculus in fact locates Atlantis on the opposite bank of the Ocean, “at the outer fringes of the world”.

  So, while the more gullible profanes understood that Atlantis was located just outside Gibraltar Strait, the better informed epopts knew that it lay on the opposite bank of the Ocean, opposite Gibraltar. But since one side of the world was actually the “mirror image” of the other, one could also consider that Plato was actually speaking of the opposite shore of the ocean, the archetypal one, with its own Pillars of Hercules (Sunda Strait) and its own “island” (Taprobane or Atlantis).

  5) The Greek traditions on Atlantis were actually obtained from the Hindu ones on the Island (dvipa) of Taprobane. These also applied to its alias, Jambudvipa, the site of the sunken Paradise according to the ancient Hindu traditions. Taprobane, which we discuss in some detail below, was the Hindu archetype and exemplary model of all or most such traditional paradises. In practice, true Taprobane also corresponded to the site of Kumari Kandam, the sunken continent whence the Dravidas originally came, when it sank away at the end of the Ice Age, ending the first sangam. 10

  Among these we have: the Greek Elysium, the Egyptian Punt, the Mesopotamian Dilmun, the Hindu Patala or Atala, the Judeo-Christian Eden, the Aztec Aztlán, the Maya Tollán, and so on. Moreover, Taprobane (Tamraparna) was really located in Indonesia, at the Line of the Equator, rather than in Sri Lanka, its mere replica, like so many others such everywhere in the world.