Atlantis existed,
yes, but is not hidden underwater as so many seem to believe. Atlantis is in fact
occulted by a much more powerful force: a SEP field.
Yes, “SEP field”:
acronym for Somebody Else’s Problem field, a fictious technology (but a
very common natural occurrence) devised by the genial science fiction author Douglas Adams.
According to the
British writer, the SEP field is much more efficient than mere invisibility
when you want to hide something. If you make that object just invisible people can
always find it using other senses, such as tact, but if you cover it with a SEP
field, people will just ignore it. They will look directly at it and consider
it automatically not their incumbence, they will go around it and not even
notice they did.
SEP fields require
very low energy to function because of the natural tendency of people to see
things as somebody else’s problems most of the time.
Of course, SEP fields
as technology only exist in fiction but the same process happens naturally (or
sometimes maybe induced by skilful psychology) all the time. Illusionists are
actually masters in provoking this effect among their audiences but it happens
all the time spontaneously.
It’s actually called Inattentional
Blindness.
The most well known
study demonstrating inattentional blindness was conducted by Daniel Simons of
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of
Harvard University. Their study, a contemporized version of earlier studies
conducted by Ulric Neisser , asked subjects to watch a short video in which two
groups of people (wearing black and white t-shirts) pass a basketball back
among themselves. The subjects are told to either count the number of passes
made by one of the teams, or to keep count of bounce passes vs. aerial passes.
In different versions of the video a woman walks through the scene carrying an
umbrella, or wearing a full gorilla suit. In one version the woman in the
gorilla suit even stops in the middle, faces the camera, and pounds her chest
before walking out of the scene. After watching the video the subjects are
asked if they saw anything out of the ordinary take place. In most groups 50%
of the subjects did not report seeing the gorilla.
[source: Wikipedia]
The real Atlantis may
not be dressed in a gorilla suit pounding its chest in the middle of the screen
everyone is looking at… but still most Atlantists are actually looking for
something else somewhere else (mostly underwater) and they would disregard the
real thing as trivial and even nonsensical even if somebody called their
attention upon it, what actually nobody (except myself sometimes) does.
The only ones studying
it (and not too much) are serious archaeologists who, obviously do not believe
in the myth of Atlantis nor would easily make any sort of connection between
what they are digging and mapping and a much distorted legend normally
disregarded as the most disreputable of fields a scholar could pay attention
to: pseudo-science.
Hence the real thing
remains hidden in the middle of the screen. It may not be pounding its chest
but has been known for many decades now and yet never connected to Atlantis.
Until I happened to
look at it with the corner of the eye (which is the only way to uncover a SEP,
it seems).
I wasn’t looking for
Atlantis at all. I was just trying to figure out the origins of my ancestors
(I’m Basque) and for that I had to take a very deep look at pan-European
prehistory, specially late prehistory, since Neolithic.
It’s a very
interesting subject in fact, specially if you happen to like history, though
it’s largely hidden by the obscurity of scholarly objective terminology and
fragmentation of studies. So it really took me some time to get the whole
picture and even today I’m not totally certain of everything.
But I have a pretty
good idea anyhow.
And among all the
stones and bones, slowly but steadily, each day more clearly defined arose, not
from under the water but rather from under the academic oceans of papers and
books (and ultimately from under the soil) the ruins of Atlantis almost
perfectly contextualized and, while not exact, approximate enough to what Plato
described some 2400 years ago as to start claiming (quite surprised): you
found Atlantis, man.
While some other
Greek myths mention almost accidentally Atlantis, the main source is Plato. He was a conservative
Athenian philosopher whose ideas were recycled by Greco-Roman Christianity
(Neo-Platonism). He’s counted among the most important thinkers of Ancient
Europe and, while we can or not agree with his theories, he was a serious scholarly
man, not any extravagant fool, even if Diogenes accused him of vanity and his
idealist thought has been largely transcended by modern science.
In fact it is his
authority what has weighted the most to consider Atlantis existence at least as
plausible.
Plato talks of
Atlantis mostly in his unfinished dialogue Critias, additionally he also
mentions it in the Timaeus.
He makes his uncle (or maybe his great-grand-uncle) Critias to narrate the epic
story of how Athens defeated Atlantis “9000 years before”. The story is said to
have been told to him by most famous Athenian statesman Solon, who in turn had learned it
from Egyptian priests. This most respectable genealogy of sources seems to make
the story credible, even if some of its details may have been obscured or
distorted by the oral transmission.
According to Plato
(and allegedly Critias, Solon and the Egyptian priests of Sais), in the
beginning the god of the seas Poseidon obtained the “island of Atlantis”:
Towards the sea and
in the centre of the island there was a very fair and fertile plain, and near
the centre, about fifty stadia
from the plain, there was a low mountain in which dwelt a man named Evenor and
his wife Leucippe, and their daughter Cleito, of whom Poseidon became
enamoured.
Poseidon married
Cleito and together they had five pairs of twin sons who became the chiefs of
the ten Atlantean realms. But, first of all, Poseidon protected the low
mountain with a series of rings of variable size.
Atlas, the eldest
son, was made chief of the center of the island while the other brothers
received other portions. Their kingdom extended, according to Plato, as far as
Egypt and Thyrrenia (Etruria, modern Tuscany and nearby parts of Italy).
Now Atlas had a fair posterity, and great
treasures derived from mines--among them that precious metal orichalcum; and
there was abundance of wood, and herds of elephants, and pastures for animals
of all kinds, and fragrant herbs, and grasses, and trees bearing fruit. These
they used, and employed themselves in constructing their temples, and palaces,
and harbours, and docks, in the following manner:--First, they bridged over the
zones of sea, and made a way to and from the royal palace which they built in
the centre island. This ancient palace was ornamented by successive
generations; and they dug a canal which passed through the zones of land from
the island to the sea. The zones of earth were surrounded by walls made of
stone of divers colours, black and white and red, which they sometimes
intermingled for the sake of ornament; and as they quarried they hollowed out
beneath the edges of the zones double docks having roofs of rock. The outermost
of the walls was coated with brass, the second with tin, and the third, which
was the wall of the citadel, flashed with the red light of orichalcum. In the
interior of the citadel was a holy temple, dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon,
and surrounded by an enclosure of gold, and there was Poseidon's own temple,
which was covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold.
Nobody knows yet for
sure what orichalcum
might be, tough the name seems to mean in Greek “mountain copper”. It’s Latin
transliteration aurichalcum (gold+copper) has led some to believe it
could be a gold-copper alloy, while others speculate that it might be amber
because of its reddish color.
The impressive
kingdom was ruled in the following manner:
Each of the ten kings was absolute in his own
city and kingdom. The relations of the different governments to one another
were determined by the injunctions of Poseidon, which had been inscribed by the
first kings on a column of orichalcum in the temple of Poseidon, at which the
kings and princes gathered together and held a festival every fifth and every
sixth year alternately. Around the temple ranged the bulls of Poseidon, one of
which the ten kings caught and sacrificed, shedding the blood of the victim
over the inscription, and vowing not to transgress the laws of their father
Poseidon. When night came, they put on azure robes and gave judgment against
offenders. The most important of their laws related to their dealings with one
another. They were not to take up arms against one another, and were to come to
the rescue if any of their brethren were attacked. They were to deliberate in
common about war, and the king was not to have the power of life and death over
his kinsmen, unless he had the assent of the majority.
In brief: it was a
confederacy of ten realms, whose monarchs considered each other as basically
equal, even if one of them, the lord of the city of Atlantis, the heir of Atlas, had the
primacy an was considered as supreme king.
Allegedly the
Atlanteans gradually became less divine and more human and therefore greedy of
their riches. Zeus hence decided to punish them (and there is where the
narration ends unfinished).
The other details
about Atlantis as known to Plato appear in the Timaeus, where Critias (again)
describes it as being beyond the Pillars of Herakles (Strait of Gibraltar) and
again ruling as far east as Tyrrhenia in Europe and Egypt in Libya (Africa). He
continues:
This mighty power was arrayed against Egypt
and Hellas and all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Then your city
(Athens) did bravely, and won renown over the whole earth. For at the peril of
her own existence, and when the other Hellenes had deserted her, she repelled
the invader, and of her own accord gave liberty to all the nations within the
Pillars. A little while afterwards there were great earthquakes and floods, and
your warrior race all sank into the earth; and the great island of Atlantis
also disappeared in the sea. This is
the explanation of the shallows which are found in that part of the Atlantic
ocean.
After this
explanation, the dialogue enters into other matters and Atlantis is not
mentioned again.
There are also a
couple of obscure Greek myths that mention Atlantis.
One is the legend of
Myrina, Queen of the Amazons, whose legend has several versions but fights
against the Atlanteans in all of them. In some she is eventually defeated and
killed while in other versions (maybe more elaborated and less genuine) she triumphs
over the Atlanteans and then allies with them, following her glorious march
through Africa and West Asia until she is killed in Anatolia.
The other mentions
Uranos (not Atlas) as first king of Atlantis and discoverer of Astronomy.
The Atlantic Ocean
was already called that way (or rather “Atlantic Sea”) in ancient times, though
it was also referred as the Ocean Sea because of the titan Oceanos.
While many ancient
Greeks did not believe the Platonian narration, others did. A disciple of a
disciple of Plato, Crantor, travelled to Egypt to find evidence of this
account. While his work is lost, Proclos claimed that he did find columns with
hieroglyphics that narrated the story more or less as Plato told it.
Nevertheless this could be inconsistent with Plato’s account that rather seems
to mention papyrus as the original source. This Proclus is also responsible of
the belief that the island of Atlantis was “a thousand stadia long” (about
200,000 km, what can only correspond to a continent such as America).
Sadly the arguably
respectable Platonian reference to this semi-mythical city and kingdom has been
atrociously obscured and distorted by modern romantics, obscurantists and
Nazis.
As mentioned above Proclus
contributed to exaggerate the size of Atlantis but the big deformations of the
account really happened in modern times. The first one to do that was Francis
Bacon, who decided that Atlantis and America had to be one and the same.
But the real reinvention
of Atlantis was a product of the romantic 19th century. Several
Mexican scholars suggested that Atlantis had to be somehow the Aztec or Mayan
civilization. Meanwhile in the United States, Ignatius Donnelly made up the
story that Atlantis was an antediluvian civilization that gave rise to all
others. His speculation, contained in the once famous book Atlantis:
the Antediluvian World became the source of all modern confusionist ideas
about the mythical civilization.
It’s worth to take a
look to Donnelly’s ideas to realize what Atlantis actually was not, rather than
what it was, according to the original source. Donnelly claims:
Ø That there was in fact a large island in the middle of the Atlantic
Ocean which was Atlantis
Ø That Plato’s account must be taken word by word (what he himself
doesn’t)
Ø That Atlantis is where humankind first developed civilization
Ø That the civilized Atlanteans colonized America, Europe, the Mediterranean
and India
Ø That the garden of Eden and similar references in other cultures was
located in Atlantis
Ø That the gods and goddesses of many peoples of the world were actually
real princes of Atlantis
Ø That the true religion of Atlanteans was Sun worship, that had persisted
among Incas and ancient Egyptians
Ø That ancient Egypt was the first and foremost colony of Atlantis and
hence preserved better its culture
Ø That European Bronze Age came from Atlantis, though Atlanteans also
manufactured iron
Ø That the Phoenician alphabet was that of Atlantis, that somehow Mayan
hieroglyphics were also the Atlantean alphabet
Ø That Atlantis was the original seat of the Aryan family of nations (i.e.
Indo-European speakers), as well as Semites and possibly Turanians (Turks)
Ø That Atlantis perished in a catastrophe in which the whole island sunk
into the Ocean with almost all its inhabitants and that only a few people
escaped on boat, what’s the origin of Noah’s and similar myths
Briefly: a total nonsense made up only by his vivid imagination but
that became very popular and was later used by other less candid people to
create totally absurd fundational myths.
Soon after
psycho-vultures like Edgar Cayce, Madam Blavatski and Rudolph Steiner were
predating Donnelly’s ideas and admixing them with other semi-mythical stuff to
create their own mythologies and make the strangests of predictions.
Politicians also
predated on the distorted version of Atlantis invented Donnelly. Some
socialists imagined Atlantis as an utopic society but the most damaging
manipulation of this recycled myth was made by the Nazis, who equated the
alleged Atlantean “super-race” with Aryan or Nordic at their best convenience.
All this caused a
major disrepute of Atlantis, as both myth and possible historical fact, and the
issue became a bête noire of our times. No wonder.
Let’s recapitulate:
1. It was a realm (apparently an island) beyond the Gibraltar Strait, aka
the Pillars of Hercules.
2. It was a confederation of 10 monarchs
3. It ruled (lead) a vast array of countries both in the Atlantic and in
the Mediterranean: Libya (North Africa) and Tyrrhenia (Italy) are specifically
mentioned
4. It was at war with a Athens in a forgotten period (Mycenaean Greece,
logically)
5. It knew of metallurgy but no bronze nor much less iron/steel is
mentioned
6. It was connected to the sea by a canal aprox. 10 km. long
7. It was destroyed by a tsunami or similar catastrophe
These are the more
important facts that the legend tells.
How many Copper Age
(Chalcolithic) civilizations were “beyond the Pillars”? Archaeology has only found one: Vila Nova de Sao
Pedro culture (VNSP) in central Portugal, whose main town was the so called
Castro do Zambujal,
a large town for its time and a very ancient civilization that span for some
1300 years in total. Was it an island? Actually not. It was two peninsulas that
nevertheless could be perceived as “islands” for any traveller sailing to them
from the south and the Mediterranean Sea.
Was it a
confederation of 10 kings? Impossible to tell for sure
but there is a fact that seems to confirm it: apart of the normal megalithic
tombs (dolmens) there are exactly ten more sophisticated designs of the artificial
cave type in that area. Artificial caves were one of the several
neo-megalithic designs that appeared in southern Iberia and SE France in the
Chalcolithic period, since c. 3000 BCE. These special designs of tombs could
well belong to the top families of the area and, why not?, to the rulers of it.
Map of VNSP culture and surroundings in the Chalcolithic (Copper Age),
c. 2600-1800 BCE
Did it rule a vast
territory as described by Plato? Technically not: the
extent of VNSP itself is quite reduced, basically including the historical
Portuguese region of Estremadura: the two peninsulas of central Portugal, where
Lisbon and Setúbal are. But when we consider the whole Megalithic phenomenon at
the time of arrival of bronze technology and Mycenaean influences in some parts
of Iberia, it did precisely extend to all the area described by Plato.
Europe and the Mediterranean c. 1500 BCE
Red: VNSP (Atlantis); Orange: Megalithic area (Atlantean influence)
Blue shades: some Indo-European
cultures, including Mycenaean Greece; Purple shades:
likely Mycenaean area of influence in Iberia
Green: Hittites and area of
Influence
Yellow: Egyptian Empire
Magenta: Babylonian Empire
Squares: major cities
X: main tin mining areas
It is hard to evaluate,
based only in archaeological data, how much influential VNSP was in the context
of Megalithic
culture, yet we must not forget that Megalithism was initially conceived in
SW Iberia, not far from where VNSP towns would stand and that it was probably a
phenomenon with a religious dimension. It is possible that the main (almost
only) civilization of this cultural area was rather influential in the rest.
This is attested at least in the period of 2100-1900 BCE, when VNSP became
without doubt the cultural center of SW Europe and maybe beyond. The commercial
connections of the urbanized area of SW Europe, including VNSP, extended then
to the Baltic (amber) and to Northern Africa (ivory, ostrich eggshells). While
its impossible to determine the exact socio-political network of this immense
cultural area, it’s clear that VNSP was no small player in it but rather the
opposite.
Was it at war with
Athens or otherwise with Mycenaean
Greeks? This is a most interesting issue, maybe the
most central of all. VNSP, whose walled towns were erected c. 2600 BCE, clearly
pre-dates Mycenaean civilization and its period of greater splendor was maybe
around 2000 BCE, when it temporarily became the main center of the Bell Beaker phenomenon.
Yet it was still standing in the Mycenaean period (c.1800-1100 BCE).
Nevertheless it is
precisely c. 1800 when the other major megalithic civilization of Iberia, Los Millares, was replaced
by El Argar, who possessed
knowledge of bronze metallurgy. El Argar was not anymore megalithic and instead
used individual burials in cists, first, and later in large jars known as pithoi.
Both new burial practices seem to come from the Aegean region, and that is with
certainty the case of the strange custom of pithoi burials. Also glass
beads have been found that relate this culture and neighbouring Bronze of
Levante with the Eastern Mediterranean.
South of VNSP, the
Chalcolithic towns are replaced by a diffuse group of uncertain origin, who
know of bronze at least to the point of having knives of this material and who
also follow the new custom of individual burial in cists. Exception must be
made of a handful of principal tombs, also individual, that have an original
design of three open circles engrained with each other (grabsystem
burials). This group gradually expanded northwards until reaching its maximum
extension in the Atalaia horizon shown in the map above.
Additionally, the
semi-desertic region of La Mancha is colonized in a very military fashion, with
fortresses built on artificial hills called motillas. Only in the south
of this area, near Sierra Morena, a few towns are found. This colonization was
not directly made by El Argar culture but by its northern neighbours of the
Levante region, that nevertheless can easily be seen in the area of influence
of El Argar. Both El Argar and the Bronze of Levante cultures are at the roots
of what would be later known as Iberians,
who seem to share a common cultural background and possibly language.
What do all these
changes mean? To me they imply a long conflict between El Argar and VNSP for
the control of the most strategical resource of the Bronze Age: tin and the
routes leading to it. In all the Euro-Mediterranean region the main tin
producer areas were NW Iberia and SW Britain. We know that, in a later period,
Phoenicians traded with tin from these areas and that for that purpose they
founded the most strategic colony of Gadir (modern Cádiz) - their very first
colony, not surprisingly. In the Bronze Age, tin was even more strategic: while
a pseudo-bronze can be made with copper and arsenium, true bronze, sturdier
than sweet iron, needs of copper and tin. Copper was rather abundant but tin
was relatively scarce and hence quite a valuable and strategic resource.
Naturally VNSP
controlled this trade from its strategical position and its cultural-political
Megalithic network. El Argar and its allies, including probably Mycenaean
Greeks, needed to open alternative routes and weaken the dominant position of
VNSP-Atlantis. Colonizing La Mancha was a necessary step to guarantee access to
the plateau herders of Cogotas culture, who could mediate in this trade at
least with NW Iberia. Unsettling SW Iberia, maybe by invasion of barbarian
mercenary tribes, was also useful to erode the power of VNSP in its most
immediate hinterland. We cannot say for sure how each actor played in the
complex semicolonial political game but I believe the basic roles are as stated
here.
Anyhow, VNSP and
Megalithism was already in decline. The very cultural phenomenon that had
elevated Atlantis to its highest point of influence, the trading subculture of
the Bell Beaker, had begun eroding Megalithic traditions in some regions,
specially France. VNSP itself never seems to have acquired bronze technology.
This was not necessarily a major handicap: in the same period Egyptians also
lacked of bronze tech and yet stalemated with Hittites at Kadesh. But it was no
doubt a sign of decreasing might and can also be seen as another sign of the
conflict between El Argar and Atlantis for hegemony in Iberia and the control
of the valuable merchandise of tin.
Did then Mycenaean
Greeks fight a decisive battle against our Atlanteans of VNSP? Maybe. Not just
the Platonian account mentions it but also some genuine Greek legends have Herakles adventuring to the
Hesperides (the far west) to defeat the ruler of Erythia (in one work) and to
steal the golden apples of the Hesperides (in another). If the legend of
Herakles (Hercules) is based in a real character this must have lived in the
Mycenaean period without doubt. In any case, the influence of Mycenaean Greece
over El Argar is clear. I think that, while we lack of any direct material
evidence that can be without doubt attributed to a Greek warrior fallen in the
battlefield, we have enough indirect evidence of a quite intense relation
between the Aegean and Iberia in this period, enough to alter the burial
customs of SE Iberians into adopting the most original Greek usage of pithoi
burials. Additionally, and somewhat ironically, tholoi tombs seem to
have been imported into Greece precisely in this period too - and the only ones
who used these structures as tombs before were southern Iberians.
Tholos tomb known as “Treasure of Atreus”, at
Mycenae.
Tholoi were first used as tombs in Iberian
Chalcolithic and only later adopted in Greece.
(image belonging to Wikimedia
commons/Wikipedia – GNU license)
I do think that with
all likehood Greeks fought in Iberia at some point of the El Argar-VNSP
conflict. When, where and how exactly it’s hard to say.
Was Zambujal, the
main town of VNSP and its logical capital, connected to the sea by a canal? Surprisingly enough the answer is yes. The German team of the Deutsches
Archaölogisches Institut that has made the latest studies found that “until
the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium B. C., Zambujal was at most 1 km away from a
former marine branch”! Not just that:
The fortification itself seems to have been
many times the size that was assumed until now. Probably, the bay mentioned
above was of fundamental importance for the existence of the settlement,
because on the one hand different materials used in Zambujal had to be brought
in from distant sites (e. g. amphibolite, ivory, exotic items such as a cowrie snail,
but probably also copper) and on the other hand, the produced copper articles
had to be bartered. Additionally, the end of the occupation (…)
seems
to have been connected to the disappearance of the bay.
So we have a large
city, much larger than it has been known until recently and whose total
extension is still unknown, which was connected to the sea via a canal or
marine branch and that vanished when the canal was silted for unknown reasons.
Doesn’t this sound to Atlantis?
Which were the
reasons of the silting? Natural sedimentation? Maybe but such a well organized
civilization should have been able to dredge their most vital artery. I rather
suspect that something more catastrophic happened: a massive marine earthquake
followed by a tsunami, that not only silted the canal but also killed many and
left the very infrastructure of this civilization suddenly in rags.
We have indeed a
relatively recent historical example: in 1775 Lisbon was in
fact destroyed by a huge tsunami. Europe and Africa are pushing against
each other and sometimes they cause such violent phenomenons. Iberia is
definitively not immune to earthquakes nor tsunamis, even if these aren’t too
frequent. I suspect that, following the Platonian account and the evidence of
silting associated to the end of this civilization, a similar earthquake to
that of 1775 happened c. 1300 BCE.
So, what do you
think? I am as certain as one can be that VNSP-Zambujal is the Atlantis of
Plato and the Erythia of the Heraklean legend. I only lament that not enough
research seems to be done and that information about this fascinating and
mysterious civilization is so scarce, while absurd fantasies seem to dominate
the imaginary regarding Atlantis, often only to fill the pockets of some smart
and unscrupulous opportunists.
If you want to
comment, you can find me at luis_aldamiz AT yahoo DOT es.
Disclaimer and notes:
This page contains numerous hyperlinks, mostly to relevant Wikipedia
articles. Some are good other less so, they are just included as reference.
I have hotlinked and duly mentioned one image (tholos) I borrowed
from Wikipedia. There are other two maps (VNSP, Bronze Age Iberia) that also
are in Wikipedia archives but that are my own creations and have anti-copyright
license therefore. Use them freely (but it would be nice if due credit is
given).
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