by Phil Masters
THE AFTERMATH
The sinking of Atlantis evidently had consequences that the gods had not anticipated, even if they were intending, in a broad and ruthless way, to wipe the slate clean. The world was much changed, and humanity was thrown far back. The history of ‘Atlantis after Atlantis’ is entangled in the story of humanity’s slow climb back to civilization, and in the attempts of later ages to comprehend the past.
IN THE WAKE OF THE CATASTROPHE
Although the gods somehow ensured that the sinking of an entire large island didn’t affect worldwide sea levels too much, or cause a large enough climatic disaster to wipe humanity out entirely, they failed to prevent all the inevitable side-effects. The disruptions to ocean currents and weather patterns were certainly sufficient to crash the civilizations of Greece and Egypt, even without the social disruption caused by the near-obliteration of their ruling and military classes. In effect, the disaster reset history to a start condition, at least around the Mediterranean, probably around the entire Atlantic, and possibly everywhere in the world that some kind of civilization existed. Greece and Egypt were so wounded that they took centuries or millennia to recover, while the Amazon cities of the African coast suffered even worse, being effectively wiped out.
The Amazons were not entirely annihilated as a people, but they were reduced to the status of horse-riding nomads. To compound the problem, weather patterns shifted especially radically across their home area, transforming the reasonably rich pasture lands which they had previously exploited so efficiently to arid semi-deserts. Within a few years, it was clear that the Amazon culture could no longer survive in that region, and so, perhaps recalling the mobile campaigns of Queen Myrina, the entire nation set out en masse to seek a new home.
The story of that great migration is lost entirely; it is not even clear whether the Amazons struck out north through Europe, looking for cooler climes, or eastwards through Egypt and Asia Minor, along the same path as Queen Myrina’s army. However, we do know where the Amazons finally came to rest: in Central Asia, the heartlands of most of the great horse-nomad peoples throughout later history. They were still to be found there, as a distinctively matriarchal nation or tribe, in the ages of later Greek civilizations, and are frequently mentioned in myths and histories. By then, they were a purely female group, only meeting and mating with men from neighbouring tribes briefly in order to produce their next generation. They and the Greeks also seem to have preserved their ancient enmity; Greek legends usually described them as more or less hostile.
Amazon Migration. In the wake of the fall of Atlantis, the entire surviving Amazon nation was obliged to migrate en masse from North Africa to Central Asia. Here we see just a small part of this great forced folk-wandering.
LATER HISTORY
The ages after the Great Catastrophe are generally poorly documented, sometimes because writing was actually forgotten in large areas, so great was the fall. The Gorgones certainly vanish from the record, probably wiped out by other local human tribes after too many of their masked sorcerous leaders died on Atlantis and their home forests were largely destroyed by climate change. The Shemsu Hor also disappeared, but there are hints that they in fact slipped into the shadows, becoming the secret masters of Egypt while preserving some of their secret lore, and perhaps ensuring the eventual resurgence of a new Egyptian civilization remarkably similar to the one they had ruled openly. Modern archaeologists say that crop-growing was introduced (or reintroduced) to the region around 5,000 BC, and date the foundation of the First Dynasty and the Old Kingdom to just after 3,000 BC, but details remain very hazy at that distance. The later Shemsu Hor seem to have been based in the city of Nekhen, in Upper Egypt; kings from there eventually reunited the country and established the doctrine that they were manifestations of Horus.
Meanwhile, the Greek lowlands had fallen back to Stone Age technology, or had simply been depopulated entirely by floods and tidal waves; only slowly did society re-establish itself, unknowingly building its towns on the barely visible foundations of ancient cities such as Proto-Athens. (The Egyptian priests hinted to Solon that other civilizations actually arose in the same area in the intervening period, only to be wiped out in other disasters.) Bronze-working returned to the area around 3,000 BC, but urban civilization only began to be restored nearly a thousand years after that. Without the secret guidance of the Shemsu Hor and the reliable Nile floods, Greece lost its ancient traditions almost entirely, remembering nothing but the names of a few towns and islands.
VERNE’S ACCOUNT
French writer Jules Verne, one of the founding fathers of science fiction, mentions a visit to the ruins of Atlantis in his Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 1870. That’s a work of fiction, of course, but maybe his account has some fragments of truth; it’s certainly evocative.
The novel is an account of the travels of a scientist, Professor Aronnax, as the prisoner and guest of the mysterious Captain Nemo aboard his wonderful submarine, the Nautilus. One night, as the Nautilus is resting on the seabed, Nemo comes to Aronnax and proposes an excursion in diving suits. They walk for two miles by the light of an undersea volcano, passing through a copse of drowned trees and ascending an undersea mountain before coming in sight of a mass of ruins. Aronnax is excited, but fails to guess what he is seeing:
There, indeed, under my eyes, ruined, destroyed, lay a town – its roofs open to the sky, its temples fallen, its arches dislocated, its columns lying on the ground, from which one could still recognize the massive character of Tuscan architecture. Farther on, some remains of a gigantic aqueduct; here the high base of an Acropolis, with the floating outline of a Parthenon; there traces of a quay, as if an ancient port had formerly abutted on the borders of the ocean, and disappeared with its merchant vessels and its war galleys. Farther on again, long lines of sunken walls and broad deserted streets – a perfect Pompeii escaped beneath the waters. Such was the sight that Captain Nemo brought before my eyes!
Where was I? Where was I? I must know, at any cost. I tried to speak, but Captain Nemo stopped me by a gesture, and picking up a piece of chalk stone, advanced to a rock of black basalt, and traced the one word:
ATLANTIS.
THE REDISCOVERY OF ATLANTIS
The Greeks certainly lost the knowledge of Atlantis; as Plato said, that had to be recovered from Egypt. Later writers sought to confirm and expand on the information provided by Plato, but it seems that the Egyptian priest-lords could tell them little more – or perhaps, chose to keep what they knew secret, presumably for fear of exposing the existence of their own secret and inhuman overlords. (Maybe they punished the elderly priest who told Solon the story for giving away this ancient secret.) Hence, later writing about Atlantis is terribly distorted; Diodorus Siculus acquired the most information on the topic, but his account is highly confused. The Roman Pliny the Elder claimed that there was in his time an island named Atlantis out in the ocean, but that looks like a reference to the Canary Islands, with the ancient name attached, along perhaps with a hint of a memory of Hespera.
As to the gods of Olympus, who had brought about the great fall – they too withdrew into the shadows and the heavens, in parallel to the Shemsu Hor and maybe for similar reasons. Perhaps they had simply learned better than to meddle too much in human affairs, albeit at hideous cost. They continued to be worshipped in Greece, of course, and the Greeks retained the best information as to their names and nature. The portals through which they had once passed at will to the mortal world were closed and eventually sealed. It does seem, though, that at some point, they arranged for the Atlantic beyond the Pillars of Hercules once more to become navigable; the Egyptians, having turned almost entirely inwards, paid no attention to this fact, but told Solon that the ocean was still closed to shipping. This explains the confusion in Plato’s account, given that he should have known how things stood in his own time, but hated to contradict the account given by the honoured Solon.
Atlantis According to Verne. In t
his scene from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the narrator and the enigmatic Captain Nemo leave Nemo’s amazing submarine, the Nautilus, in diving suits one night to visit the ruins of Atlantis. The two men have just climbed an underwater mountain; their view of the ancient scene is illuminated by a volcano. Most of the remains are some way below them, but here they survey some outlying remains.
MODERN AGES
So perhaps Atlantis is lost entirely, any remains obliterated by time in the depths of the Atlantic, the best accounts of its nature scrambled by time, confusion with other ideas and other lost lands, and the inevitable distortions that come with psychic and mystical perceptions. The likes of Ignatius Donnelly and Helena Blavatsky too often had their own axes to grind (and bills to pay), and even Edgar Cayce sometimes came up with predictions that are hard to fit with later history. The abandoned gods and hidden Shemsu Hor overlords may prefer things that way; if they have any power in the modern world, it must be based on secrecy – and if they lack power, they would fear exposure above all. (It is, incidentally, no great problem at all to think that Atlantis may remain undiscovered on the seabed. Despite advances in submersible technology, the vastly greater part of the world’s ocean depths remain simply unexplored by humanity. There is a lot of sea, and only a few explorers.)
On the other hand, and thanks to Plato, Atlantis may be lost, but it has never been forgotten. Modern movies and TV series still depict it from time to time, even if they confuse the original account horrendously. Maybe, one day, the truth will arise once more from the depths. That said, with modern visions of Atlantis being tentatively linked to other worrying enigmas such as UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle, that day of revelation might be more than a little terrifying.
Atlantean UFOs. There are many theories and wild stories in circulation about Atlantis today, including some which tie the lost land into reports of sinister Unidentified Flying Objects. If Atlantis remains an active but hidden power beneath the waves, it might one day choose to assert its control of the world’s oceans – by force.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Information on less conventional theories regarding Atlantis, and on other related fringe theorizing, is widely available on the Web. In addition, out-of-copyright translations of the works of Plato and Diodorus Siculus are easy to find online; the versions mostly referenced in the creation of this book were translated by R.G. Bury and C.H. Oldfather respectively. Umberto Eco’s book, listed below, includes useful translations of relevant passages from several sources.
The following books were also referenced, in paper or digital forms:
The Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (ed. John Clute and John Grant), Orbit, London, 1997
The New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, Hamlyn, London, 1968
Eco, Umberto (trans. Alastair McEwen), The Book of Legendary Lands, MacLehose Press, London, 2013
Hite, Kenneth, Suppressed Transmission and Suppressed Transmission 2, Steve Jackson Games, Austin, 2000
Masters, Phil, GURPS Atlantis, Steve Jackson Games, Austin, 2001
Verne, Jules, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, out-of-copyright translation by the Reverend Lewis Page Mercier, available online
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