Smyrna is the modern Izmir, in Turkey, more or less near the mouth of the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. Many legends are told of Alexander the Great, often called Dulkarnain (“two-horned”) in the region. This name perhaps arose from an undue association with the figure of Moses, another horned hero, like Alexander.
Legends are often transferred from one personage to another, and from one place to another, as seems to be the case here (parting of the Red Sea?). Curiously enough, the legend apparently works in reverse here, and it is the Mediterranean that is filled by the Black Sea, rather than viceversa, as Bob Ballard and others insistently allege.
We also note that the feat of opening Gibraltar Strait is also here attributed to Alexander, rather than to Hercules, as is usually the case. But Alexander’s date is too late to be of any avail in the case of Atlantis, as the fabled hero lived as late as the 4th century BC, far later than even the Creationists will ever accept as the actual date of the Flood cataclysm, let alone the Platonists.
As we already noted, this curious myth actually works in reverse, with the overflowing Mediterranean waters escaping into the Atlantic Ocean, rather than vice-versa, as Bob Sarmast proposes. It is not impossible that the Turkish Flood Myth actually originated from an attempt on the part of Alexander or some other real hero to enlarge the Bosporus Strait, with the catastrophic results reported here. Or maybe the event was actually transferred from some other region of the world.
It would be interesting to try to check the physical evidence of the sunken cities mentioned by the above mythographer. Do they really exist in the region? Or is it the case that Bob Ballard and Bob Sarmast and other such researchers are actually reasoning in reverse? Is this the true reason of their failure so far? Or is the myth sheer invention or contrived and specious?
One of the mainstay arguments of Robert Sarmast is that the existence of the myth of Hercules opening the Strait of Gibraltar could not possibly have arisen out of nothing, and must hence stem from actual facts, as most myths normally do. And I agree.
But if so, what of the myth just told? Should it also not be deemed real according to this type of reasoning? After all, Alexander is far more historical than is Hercules himself.
As we just said, myths are often transferred from one place to another and from one hero to some other. And so are heroes and gods. In fact, it seems that Hercules was originally a Hindu hero.
Moreover, Alexander is also credited with the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, another fact that proves his early identification with Moses. And he is said to have built a causeway across the ocean in order to invade Tyre, more or less replicating the far earlier feat performed by Rama and Hanumant when invading Lanka.
The very myth of Hercules opening the isthmus of Gibraltar after his passage with Geryon’s cattle was originally set in the Bosphorus and/or the Kertch Strait, the Black Sea’s connection with the Sea of Azov, in the north (see map here). And this myth – which is encountered in one way or the other all over the world – in turn derives from identical ones of the
East Indies, its ultimate source. ↑091
The Ramayana and the Vadavamukha
The real source of the myth of Hercules opening the Strait of Gibraltar seems to have originated in Indonesia itself. There the story is told of the Krakatoa Volcano and the opening of Sunda Strait, which seems to have been a geological event in late Pleistocenic or early Holocenic times.
This story is told in the Pustaka Raja Purwa, the far-famed Javanese chronicle, one whose geological reality can hardly be questioned anymore. We comment this Javanese tradition next, and will not detail it here any more than this.
The ultimate source of the myths in question here is invariably the Ramayana, the charming Hindu initiatic romance. The Ramayana is allegedly the first epic ever written. As we have demonstrated, the Ramayana was in fact the source of the Iliad and several others such.
The Ramayana tells in detail, in one of its most important passages, how Rama and Hanumant built a causeway of floating stones (pumice) for the purpose of invading Lanka.
Lanka was, in the Ramayana, the capital of Ravana’s worldwide empire. As such, Lanka was the true archetype of both Troy and Atlantis. This bridge is often misidentified with Palk Strait in Sri Lanka, the connection of the island to the Indian subcontinent. But this is the result of the substitution of Sri Lanka for the true Lanka, actually located in Malaya. And this strait is often called Rama’s Bridge (Ramasetu or
Setubandha) or yet, Adam’s Bridge. ↑092
This fact again shows how readily myths are transferred from one hero to another and from one place to another, much as was the case of Gibraltar and the Bosphorus, etc..
In the Ramayana, the story is also told of how Rama and Hanumant, after having destroyed Lanka, cut open the causeway that connected the island to the continent, opening the strait. The ocean, thus released, invaded the whole region causing it to founder under the sea.
In the Christianized and Muslim variants of the Hindu legend, this bridge (Ramasetu) was used by Adam when he was expelled from Paradise, theoretically located in the island of Sri Lanka. And this bridge was broken open in order to prevent him from attempting to return to Paradise.
A similar Flood story is also told of Troy and, as we well know now, of Atlantis itself. The story is also told of Tyre, where Alexander allegedly built a similar causeway to invade the fortified island in which the city was formerly located.
Curiously enough, Tyre’s causeway actually exists, even today. Of course, this causeway was never built by Alexander, but by the Phoenicians themselves. This shows in practice how myths are often transferred to the realm of pseudo-historical reality, generally by design and artfulness intended to deceive the more credulous readers.
The Ramayana is an initiatic romance, a marvelously crafted novelistic account of the myth of Atlantis, its war, and its destruction by the Flood, just as Plato affirms.
As such, it also closely parallels the Iliad of Homer in essentially every detail. And these include not only the incending and subsequent sinking underseas, but also the great war, the abduction of the fickle queen by the villain, the terrible vengeance of the cuckolded king, etc..
Now, the true site of Setubandha is really the Malay Peninsula, which in fact leads from the Indonesian islands to the Asian continent as some sort of bridge or causeway (see map of the region here). A close comparison of these texts will readily show the uncanny parallels. ↑093
But what is even more curious is the fact that this widespread myth originated from real geological events. These events are actually connected with the Flood and its probable causation by a supervolcanic explosion of the Krakatoa. And this disaster was also apparently the cause of the catastrophic end of the Ice Age as well, just as we have long been arguing.
This prehistoric supereruption of the Krakatoa was one of the largest such ever. According to experts, it was equivalent to fully 100,000 hydrogen bombs of one Megaton each, or about 10 times the whole world’s nuclear arsenal. The explosion created a giant caldera fully 50 kilometers across, which opened Sunda Strait (Selat Sunda). This strait now sunders Java and Sumatra (see above map). ↑094
This much energy is clearly enough to destroy the entire world and to trigger an enduring Ice Age, as most scientists now realize. It is moreover estimated that the eruption of this submarine supervolcano carried over 100 km3 of vaporized oceanic water into the atmosphere, a value ample enough to generate the copious rains which characterize the Flood myth the world over.
The giant earthquakes created by the colossal explosion also generated the giant tsunamis reported in several traditions of the Universal Flood found worldwide, the Americas included.
These giant tsunamis probably lofted the continental glaciers, carrying them out to sea and speeding the end of the Ice Age. And this was compounded with the albedo reduction due to the deposition of soot and cinders shed by the volcanism.
As is now clear, mythical heroes such as Ra
ma and Hercules are really mere personifications of volcanoes. So are doom-bringing gods such as Vishnu and Shiva and many others. These heroes or gods usually consist of twins like Hercules and Atlas, Rama and Hanumant, Shiva and Vishnu, Agni and Indra, and so forth.
These twins also invariably correspond to the two Pillars of Hercules, themselves really consisting of twin volcanoes. And twin volcanoes are a rarity, except in Indonesia itself, the epicenter of earth’s so-called Fire Belt.
These two heroes in fact correspond to the two pairs of such pillars. One pair of pillars was dedicated to Hercules (in Gibraltar) and the other pair was dedicated to Atlas, in Indonesia. Actually, the true action took place in Indonesia, the main site of the Pacific Fire Belt. The pillars of Gibraltar were mere “mirror images” having no reality insofar as the events in question here are concerned.
Mt. Atlas is the true Pillar of Heaven. As such, it is really dual. And it is in fact located in Sunda Strait (the Krakatoa and Toba volcanoes). Gibraltar Strait is of course a purely virtual pillar, being no volcano and, even less, the “Pillar of Heaven”.
The same is also true of the Atlas Range in Morocco, which is again not volcanic. Even the Berber natives of the region reject this identification, which is late and actually due to the Greeks and the Phoenicians, in their endeavor to fool the more gullible people.
Alternatively, one might consider that each of the two pillars in each world half was dedicated to one of the two twins, forming the observed pair. One should keep in mind that the two pillars represent the Twins, as in the astrological symbol of Gemini. ↑095
So, it is only natural that we have two pairs of pillars, one in Gades (Gibraltar) the residence of Hercules; the other one in Malacca (Indonesia), the residence of Atlas himself, the elder Hercules.
The two heroes are here visibly confused, one with the other, Hercules representing Gadeiros or Geryon, and Atlas either the older twin or the junior one, depending on the account. In other accounts – for instance the one due to Diodorus Siculus – Hercules is specifically identified to Kronos, just as he was in the Orphic traditions. And Kronos is the elder Titan, often made the father or alias of Atlas.
The Pustaka Raja Purwa and the
Opening of Sunda Strait
One of the most curious aspects of the legend of the opening of the strait by the hero – attributed to Hercules in Gibraltar and the Bosphorus in the Mediterranean, and to Rama in Sunda Strait (in Indonesia) and Palk Strait (in Sri Lanka) – is the fact that the myth is also found in the Javanese annals, exactly where the event actually took place.
The “hero” or “god” is of course the volcano, as we already mentioned. Even more exactly this volcano is the Krakatoa volcano, precisely the one which opened the giant rift which now corresponds to the Strait of Sunda sundering Java and Sumatra.
This event is told in some detail in the Pustaka Raja Purwa, a Javanese annal dating to the Middle Ages. But the story told there was actually obtained from earlier sources of an enormous antiquity. This story also figures, disguised under several different allegories, in several Hindu traditions, some of which dating from the Rig Veda itself.
David Keys, the sensationalist author, actually cites this very event as evidence of his catastrophic giant eruption of the Krakatoa of 535 AD, the one which allegedly decreed the end of the Byzantine Roman Empire with the Great Plague which it somehow allegedly caused. 11
But, as I already pointed out, the giant eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in question here is actually the one which sank Atlantis, unfortunate enough to be placed in precisely this region of the world. This, unless we actually had two similar explosions of the ferocious Krakatoa volcano, a very definite possibility that only an in situ research may definitively confirm. ↑096
As a matter of fact, this type of research has already proved that the Krakatoa volcano seems to have formed several such large calderas over the ages as the result of its many successive supereruptions, much as is the case with supervolcanoes everywhere, the Yellowstone included.
Actually, the colossal fiery cataclysm of the Krakatoa volcano in question here is by far more than ample to have triggered the likewise catastrophic end of the Ice Age some 11,600 years ago, the very date given by Plato for Atlantis’ demise.
Several reasons prevent us from believing the reality of Keys’ proposal. For one thing, the actual events of 535 AD were too small in scale to require such a huge supereruption. Second, the Roman Byzantine Empire continued to function down to far later times, in contrast to what Keys affirms in his book and his documentary.
But what really renders this association impossible is the fact that the opening of Sunda Strait is also commemorated in myths far earlier than the relatively late date of 535 AD. Such myths include the one of the Ramayana and that of Hercules just cited, and which both date from far earlier times. The Javanese chronicle in question, the Pustaka Raja Purwa, is worth quoting verbatim here:
“A great glaring fire, which reached to the sky came out of the mountain... There was a furious shaking of the earth, total darkness, thunder and lightning. Then came forth a furious gale, together with torrential rain, and a deadly storm darkened the entire world... When the waters subsided, it could be seen that the island of Java had been split in two, thus creating the island of Sumatra.”
It is interesting to note that, just as reported here, the islands of Java and Sumatra were originally both named Java. One of the islands was called Java Major and the other Java Minor. Quite often the two islands were not distinguished, and were called by the single name. This fact bespeaks their original unity, as also attested in the Javanese annal.
The name of Java is also extremely important. This toponym actually means “white” in Sanskrit. As such, Java is the fabled “White Island” which was deemed to have been the site of Paradise, as discussed further above. Moreover, the name of Java is related to that of the Javanas or Yavanas, that is, the white races.
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This name – which assonates with the one of the IaFones (or Ionians) – is also the name of the Greek people, which apparently also came from this distant region of the ancient world. This fact is of extreme practical importance, since it provides a direct connection between the Sea Peoples, ancient Greece, Taprobane (Java and Sumatra) and the former site of Atlantis.
We note that myths take place outside history, in illo tempore (“once upon a time”, in Latin). Even when the events are historicized – as is so often the case – their dates have no meaning at all, and refer back to the primeval time which the Egyptians called Zep Tepi and the Australians call “Dreamtime”. Hence, the annals just quoted actually refer to the anteDiluvian kings of Java and their times, and cannot be historicized as David Keys is attempting to do.
No matter what, this Javanese chronicle apparently refers to the Ramayana events and, hence, to the story of Atlantis itself, extremely popular in the region of Indonesia. And it is indeed quaint to see the history of Atlantis obsessively told there as both sacred myth (Ramayana Wayang) and as actual history, all in the very site it actually took place a very, very long time ago.
These fascinating, surreal events in fact closely resemble a dream or nightmare, just as the Australians so aptly put it. And so do the Javanese, with their surreal puppets, which are no more than oniric shadows of a past long gone. But this nightmare is as inescapable as the rites we celebrated every Sunday, the very day in which the Terrestrial Sun [the volcano] flared up, destroying the whole earth, just as illustrated in my book’s cover.
These nightmares refuse to go away, and constantly challenge us to solve the riddle that the Sphinx put to Oedipus, again a very long time ago: “decipher me, or I shall devour you!”. And they will too, in time, whether deciphered or not, I am sorry to say...
Such is perhaps the reason why Herodotus affirms that “the Atlanteans never dream”. Perhaps they are so afraid of nightmares as to be unable to sleep in peace without the help of sedatives. Better yet, they fear the Mare
herself, the Submarine Mare that is indeed the Krakatoa and his brothers, who simply refuse to go away despite the pink eyeglasses that Darwin and Lyell force us all to wear with their panglossian doctrines on Uniformitarian Geology and Evolution.
Well, enough of day-dreaming. Let us return to Science and to the harsh, inescapable geological facts-of-life. Central to Sarmast’s latest theory on Atlantis’ demise, as we just said, is the fact that the Mediterranean basin suffered a catastrophic flood with the destruction of the Gibraltar “dam” which once closed off the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean.
This event, even if real, was necessarily too slow and too gradual to convincingly explain the catastrophic events universally associated with the Flood. Such was also the case with the Black Sea “flood” of Bob Ballard, as a lot of recent research has unequivocally demonstrated.
For that matter, it is also wholly unable to account for the violent destruction of Atlantis by Fire and Water, in the manner described in detail by Plato in both the Timaeus and the Critias. People could very easily flee the slowly rising waters (one foot or less a day), without ever running the risk of being “swallowed by the earth” as they were en masse in Atlantis, according to Plato’s report.
All in all, it is apparent that the Mediterranean sites so far proposed for Atlantis seem to be utterly inadequate: Crete, Cyprus, Malta, Spain, and so forth. And the same is also true for the other circum-Mediterranean locations, as we will be arguing next.
Atlantis the Lost Continent Finally Found Page 25
