Atlantis in Antarctica
The greatest mass of an iceberg is hidden unseen beneath the surface of the water.
And likewise, underlying the search for Atlantis are many deep unseen prejudices. Atlantis is a ‘where is here’ riddle. To unravel this riddle we need to be willing to challenge what we have been taught in school.
The world as we commonly see it.
Notice how the “north-is-up” perspective causes the oceans to appear as distinctive bodies of water. The Pacific and Atlantic Oceans seem to be entirely separate bodies of water. This viewpoint also highlights the separateness of the continents.
This is a map that we can easily recognise. It conforms to what we all have learned in school. Now I’d like to show you a “south-is-up” map of the world. Suddenly our schooling takes a vacation.
Antarctica worldview.
From this perspective we see that our planet really has only one ocean.
Plato’s ancestor, Solon received the legend of Atlantis from a priest in Egypt.
In Solon’s time (c.600 B.C.) the words Libya and Asia had different meanings from today.
The Greek worldview of 600 B.C.
Libya = North Africa
Asia = The Middle East
Libya + Asia = Antarctica in size
The white dot between Libya and Europe was called the Pillars of Heracles, what we know today as the Strait of Gibraltar. It had a second meaning to the ancient Greeks which is ignored in almost all theories of Atlantis. It meant ‘the limit of the known world’. Let’s now read Plato’s legend of Atlantis.
The ocean level at 9,600 B.C. – when Atlantis perished – was lower than today renduring much of today’s continental shelf as land (e.g. the UK was a part of Europe) which flooded at the close the Ice Age.
The island of Atlantis was:
“…larger than Libya and Asia combined; from it there was passage for the sea-farers of those times to reach the other islands, and from them the whole opposite continent which surrounds what can truly be called the ocean. For these regions that lie within the strait we were talking about seem to be but a bay having a narrow entrance; but the other ocean is the real ocean and the land which entirely surrounds it may with fullest truth and fitness be named a continent.”
– Plato, Timaeus
Every search for Atlantis must explain these words.
Analysing Plato
Next we render Plato’s account into words that we can understand with our “north-is-up” preconceptions.
The world in 9600 B.C.
Atlantis was an island continent larger than North Africa and the Middle East combined.
Before 9,600 B.C., Atlantean sailors leaving mainland Atlantis would encounter islands (now under ice) that lay between it and the rest of the world’s continents which surround the World Ocean.
The Mediterrean Sea is really just a bay of the World Ocean having a narrow entrance; but the ocean beyond it is the real ocean.
The land which surrounds the World Ocean is a continent in the geographic sense of the word (large continuous land mass).
Plato is not the only source that makes Antarctica the lost continent. There is an Egyptian map of Atlantis.
Athanasius Kircher
In 1665, the German Jesuit priest, Athanasius Kircher, published Mundus Subterraneus, a massive book which included a reproduction of an ancient Egyptian map of Atlantis.
The label in Latin translates: “Site of Atlantis, now beneath the sea, according to the beliefs of the Egyptians and the description of Plato.”
The compass has north pointing down. Kircher retained the Egyptian notion that south was ‘up’. To see how he interpreted this map we must turn it upside down.
We have turned Kircher’s map upside down to arrive at our familiar “north-is-up” perspective.
Kircher wrongly believed Atlantis was an island in the North Atlantic Ocean between Spain and Africa on our right and America on the left.
In 1665, when this map was first published, Antarctica had not been discovered and it wasn’t until 1818 that Europeans first landed on the frozen island continent.
Today we can compare Kircher’s map of Atlantis with a modern geophysical globe with south up.
Here’s Kircher’s Egyptian map of Atlantis compared to a modern geophysical globe showing Antarctica without its ice and with south in the “up” position.
The present shape of ice-free Antarctica as depicted in this modern view is based upon the current ocean level, not that of 9600 B.C.
Atlantis did not actually sink beneath the waves. Instead, as the old ice caps melted, the ocean level rose, covering parts of the continent.
Further distortions in our modern map, compared to Kircher’s, are a result of the weight of today’s Antarctic ice sheet. This immense blanket of snow and ice depressed parts of the continent, causing more and more land to fall below ocean level.
We believe that Kircher’s Egyptian map of Atlantis represents in size, shape, scale and position an ice-free Antarctica. So what happened? How did Atlantis become Antarctica?
The Earth’s Structure
Here is a simplified cross-section of the Earth:
The inner core is extremely heavy like a metal ball.
The outer core is fluid but still very dense.
The mantle is hard like solid rock.
The crust (lithosphere) is a thin layer. It’s where all life exists. The lithosphere includes the continents and the ocean basins. It rests upon a mobile layer know as the asthenosphere. Atlantis was destroyed when the entire lithosphere of the Earth displaced over the asthenosphere.
This is called an ‘Earth crust displacement’, a theory endorsed by Albert Einstein. It plays havoc with our planet’s climate.
Climatic change in the North
The former and current position of the Arctic Circle are shown as overlapping circles in the center of the map. The current and former Tropic of Cancer latitudes mark off the large arcs.
The Inter-Polar zone: this area contains the most ice in the northern hemisphere.
The Paleo-Polar zone: the Great Lakes are a remnant of Ice Age America.
The Neo-Polar zone: millions of temperate zone animals (including mammoths, giant deer, cave hyena, and cave lions) died out in Siberia, Alaska, Beringia.
The Inter-Temperate zone: hunting and gathering prevailed. Agriculture – when it arrived – came from outside this area.
The Neo-Temperate zone: the first five civilisations emerged (Sumer, Egypt, Crete, India and China).
The Neo-Tropical zone: Olmec civilisation. Maize was domesticated.
The Earth crust displacment theory makes sense of climatic change worldwide.
The South
The former and current Antarctic Circle and the Equator mark off different climatic events following the last Earth crust displacement.
The Inter-Polar zone: contains the most ice in the world. It is antipodal (opposite side of the globe) to the Greenland Ice Sheet.
The Paleo-Polar zone: melting ice. It is antipodal to Ice Age America.
The Neo-Polar zone: Atlantis perished. Contains shallowest ice sheet yet receives the most annual snowfall. It is antipodal to Alaska, Siberia and Beringia.
The Inter-tropical zone: where tropical agriculture emerged. Tropical agricultural origins in the Andes are antipodal to those in Thailand.
Myths of the Flood
Throughout the world there are hundreds of myths about a great flood but here we focus on those which tell of the events that happened before the flood.
In North America, the Haida in British Columbia have a myth of a sky supporter who sits in a canoe upon the ocean with a pillar extending to the heavens. If he should loose his grip the world will end as the sky falls bringing a flood.
The Utes of Utah tell of a time when the Sun’s tears brought a flood.
The Chato of California tell of a time when the sky fell bringing a flood.
The A’a'tam (Pima) of Arizona believed in a giant grey spider who spun a great web to keep the sky secure and to prevent the earth from trembling.
The Cherokee of the southern Appalachian Mountains also believed the flood was caused by the tears of the Sun.
In South America the Ipurinas of Brazil believed that the flood was caused when the Sun tipped over released hot water over the earth.
The Araucanians of Chile feared that an eclipse of the Sun was a warning of a coming flood that would end the world.
In Europe the Celts did not fear earthquakes or floods but they feared the day when the sky would fall ending the world.
In Germanic lore an inspired seeress spoke a time in the future when the Sun will turn black, the earth will sink into the sea and the stars will whirl down from the sky. That will be the end-of-the-world.
In Russia the Mari conceived of the earth as resting on the horns of a bull who in turn stood on the back of a gigantic submerged crab. They feared a time when the bull’s horn would break plunging the earth through the sky until it fell into the ocean. That would be the end-of-the-world.
Seen from the ground the sky-sun-stars seem to fall when the earth’s crust shifts. The flood is a combination of tidal waves and rising ocean levels as the old ice sheets melt.
Each myth, in its own way, retells the events of the last earth crust displacement.
And there are tales of a lost island paradise which perished in the flood.
Lost Paradise Myths
Because so many researchers have argued that Atlantis is merely a figment of Plato’s imagination, we decided to see if we could reconstruct the legend by turning next to world mythology.
The Okanagan people tell of a time before the Flood when their ancestors lived on “an island far off in the middle of the ocean.”
This island was called Samah-tumi-whoo-lah and there came a time when the people saw “that their island was about to sink” so the escaped across the ocean to their new land (British Columbia and Washington).
They believed that in the future the “…lakes will melt the foundations of the world, and the rivers will cut the world loose. Then it will float as the island did many suns and snows ago. That will be the end of the world.”
The Cherokee believed that:
“The earth is a great island floating in a sea of water, and suspended at each of the four cardinal points by a cord hanging down from the sky vault, which is of solid rock. When the world grows old and worn out, the people will die and the cords will break and let the earth sink into the ocean, and all with be water again.”
Note, again.
A clue to the location of the ‘great island’ reads:
“There is another world under this, and it like ours in everything – animals, plants, and people – save the seasons are different.”
Is this a reference to the southern hemisphere?
The Aztecs of ancient Mexico tell of a time before the Flood when their ancestors lived on the island of Aztlan.
They describe Aztlan as “located beyond the waters, or surrounded by waters; and the first stage of the migration is said to have been made by boat.”
Aztlan was “a bright land of shining light and whiteness which contained seven cities surrounding a sacred mountain.”
The Aymara of the central Andes live on the sacred waters of Lake Titicaca. They tell of strange events when builders came from the south after the flood. Arthur Posnansky studied the remains of Tiahuanaco longer than anyone else and came to the conclusion that the abandoned city with its megalithic constructions was originally populated by the people from the lost island paradise of ‘Aztlan’.
None of these native Americans live on islands today. Combining these myths we have a common ’story’:
Our ancestors came from a great white mountainous island in the middle of the ocean. This island sank at the time of the Flood destroying its cities and forcing evacuation from the island by boats/canoes.
That – in essence – is Plato’s Atlantis legend retold in America. We don’t need Plato to be seeking a lost civilisation!
The most ancient civilisation known to archaeology is in present-day Iraq and was known as Sumer. Its origins are unknown.
In 1899-1900, a team of American archaeologists unearthed 35,000 tablets from the holy Sumerian city of Nippur. These ancient records told of a time before the Flood when the sky-god conspired with the flood-god to destroy humanity. The earth-god sided with the King by warning him that a Flood was coming. Prior to the disaster, the King and his family lived a life of great ease on Dilmun, a lost island that lay across the ocean, and which had cities and fabulous mountains.
In 1897, Bal Gangadhar Tilak paid a price for his advocacy of passive resistence (something Mahatma Gandhi learned from him) by being imprisoned for opposing the British rule of India. While in prision Tilak studied ancient Vedic literature.
In the Zend-Avesta Tilak found a passage about the flood that had a new twist. He summarized a key:
“Ahura Mazda warns Yima, the first king of men, of the apporach of a dire winter, which is to destroy every living creature by covering the land with a thick sheet of ice, and advises Yima to build a Vara, or an enclosure, to preserve the seeds of every king of animal and plant.”
The conversation was supposed to have taken place on an island Paradise that is now covered with a thick sheet of ice.
In 681 A.D., the Japanese Emperor Temnu ordered a scribe to compile a written record of the most ancient myths.
Writing in 1885, the American scholar (and founder of Boston University) Dr. William Fairfield Warren summarized the ‘Genesis’ passage of The Ko-ji-ki (Record of Ancient Matters) where a god and goddess are:
“…standing on the bridge of heaven, pushed down a spear into the green plain of sea, and stirred it round and round. When they drew it up the drops which fell from its end consolidated onto an island. The sun-born pair descended onto the island, and planting a spear in the ground, point downwards, built a palace round it, taking that for the central roof-pillar. The spear became the axis of the earth, which had been caused to revolve by stirring round.”
Warren concluded that Onogorojima (’Island of the Congealed Drop’) was an island near the pole.
Combing the myths from Japan, India (and Iran) along with the Sumerian tablets about Dilmun we can say that they speak of:
Our ancestors tell of a lost island paradise containing cities and mountains which was destroyed in a flood and then covered by a thick sheet of ice. This first land was near the pole.
We do not need Plato to be searching for a lost civilisation that perished when the sky fell. But having Plato’s account just makes it that much easier to regain our lost legacy.