Atlantis Beneath the Ice Read online

  Praise for the previous edition:

  “Rose and Rand Flem-Ath were the first authors to develop the idea that the earth’s surface area may at times shift on its mantle, causing radical changes in the geography of the planet that result in the almost total destruction of civilization.”

  WHITLEY STRIEBER, AUTHOR OF COMMUNION

  AND RADIO HOST OF THE SHOW DREAMLAND

  “Rand and Rose Flem-Ath have assembled a daring and extremely convincing argument that the location of the lost civilization of Atlantis is the Antarctic continent. . . . Combining mythology with a wealth of scientific and historical information, the Flem-Aths’ research will shake a few foundations.”

  NEXUS

  In memory of Charles Hapgood,

  a generous mentor who urged us to carry the work further.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As we wrote this Acknowledgments page we marvelled at how lucky we have been in the people we have met as a result of the original publication of this book. Those listed below have been either generous with their wise advice, encouragement, mentorship, patient art of listening or professional help; or helped with access to original research material or media exposure for our work. Sometimes all of the above! And so without further ado (listed here in alphabetical order since we could think of no other way to fairly distribute our heartfelt gratitude) are those who balanced the harsh lessons we learned with their fine professionalism or their friendship and generosity of spirit.

  Mindy Branstetter for her patience, Barbara Hand Clow for her early enthusiasm, Steve Detwiler, Adrian Gilbert for wise counsel about a difficult subject, Jon Graham for opening the door, Ray Grasse for always ‘getting it’, Gwaai who shared his deep knowledge of his people’s past, Bill Hamilton who gave support when it mattered the most, Beth Hapgood, Fred Hapgood, Doug Kenyon, Laura Lee, Jeffery Lindholm for his excellent eye on the manuscript, John Michell, Caroline North for seeing the big picture but never missing the nuances, Stel Pavlou for giving credit where it was due and for his sense of humor, Paul Roberts, Alan Samson who captained a listing ship through very dangerous waters and understood the source of the damage, Martin Schnell, Whitley Strieber, Greg Taylor, Jay Weidner, John Anthony West for an early invitation to join the quest, Tony and Carol Wharrie who have patiently heard it all.

  Also, the staff at the Yale/Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library were very helpful in facilitating our access to Charles Hapgood’s archives. Likewise, the staff at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem allowed us the privilege of viewing the Einstein-Hapgood correspondence. G. Thomas Tanselle of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation generously sent us copies of Albert Einstein’s writings about Charles Hapgood. Our thanks also go to the staff at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library who provided copies of Charles Hapgood’s correspondence with the President.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction to the New Edition

  ONE Memorandum for the President

  TWO Adapt, Migrate, or Die

  THREE The Wayward Sun

  FOUR Atlantis in Antarctica

  FIVE The Lost Island Paradise

  SIX Aztlan and the Polar Paradise

  SEVEN Atlantean Maps

  EIGHT Embers of Humankind

  NINE The Ring of Death

  TEN Broken Paradigm

  ELEVEN Finding Atlantis

  TWELVE City of Atlantis

  THIRTEEN Why the Sky Fell

  Postscript to the New Edition

  Afterword by John Anthony West

  APPENDIX A Global Climatic Model for the

  Origins of Agriculture and

  the Sequence of Pristine Civilizations

  Footnotes

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  About the Author

  About Inner Traditions

  Books of Related Interest

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION

  It is good to see the word Atlantis prominently strutting its stuff in the title of this new and expanded edition of When the Sky Fell. This tarnished word has been maligned, misinterpreted, and tossed back and forth between timid suitors unsure whether to embrace or disdain it.

  That is understandable, if a tad fainthearted. Bias is never easy to fight. But bias against a word that denigrates no one? Seems absurd. Nevertheless, after the first edition of When the Sky Fell was published in January 1995, we soon learned that there are those who lose their senses so completely when the “A-word” (as author John Anthony West so succinctly labeled it) is mentioned that they stumble about blind and deaf to anything else, devoid of the resources to grasp any other concept that happens to be in the same room—or more precisely, in the same book.

  For example, the theory of earth crust displacement, which proposes that the earth’s outer shell catastrophically shifts over the planet’s subterranean layers, forms the scaffolding of our quest for the lost civilization. It receives what can only be described as a hysterical reception in some quarters, even though it has hung out with some rather respectable types in the past. Was Albert Einstein silly? Most of us can probably put our hand up to a resounding no on that one. Nevertheless, his support and his active guidance of Professor Charles Hapgood, who developed the theory and who, in turn, wrote that ours was “the first truly scientific exploration of my work that has ever been done,” makes our critics break out in hives. Their answer to this conundrum? Ignore this uncomfortable fact. Or actually lie to their students about what the great physicist said about the theory. (Yes, it happened.) Or better yet, let’s just claim that poor old Albert was growing senile or was out-of-date. Any or all of the above choices will do to whitewash this inconvenient truth.

  Never did we imagine in 1977, when we started exchanging letters with Hapgood, that decades later we would find ourselves writing an introduction to a new edition of the controversial book that had gradually evolved as a result of that encouraging relationship.

  In this new, expanded edition we detail our fresh research gleaned from three weeks of study at Hapgood’s long-neglected Yale archives. We delve into his correspondence with President Dwight D. Eisenhower and visit the president’s archives in Abilene, Kansas. These forgotten documents reveal how Christopher Columbus may have possessed a world map drawn by the survivors of Atlantis. Fragments of the map incorporate astronomical clues pointing to the date it was originally drafted, a date—3800 BCE—that coincides with the dawn of Egyptian civilization.

  We learn how Einstein urged that Hapgood be awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Grant because his earth crust displacement theory was “fascinating and important.”

  You’ll discover that a rare, debilitating genetic disease common to the Haida of British Columbia, on Canada’s west coast, was also suffered by the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, suggesting that the two vastly separated peoples may have had a common ancestor.

  We follow the career of the seventeenth-century Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher as he skates across the fragile ice of a frozen river and watch as he survives that danger to rise to become the Einstein of his century. And we marvel at the lost Egyptian map of Atlantis that Kircher rediscovered.

  You will be introduced to a new generation of international scientists who are challenging the fixations of their predecessors and independently studying the past with a fresh perspective.

  Evidence is uncovered that demonstrates that intricate, advanced water-management systems were developed in the highlands of New Guinea immediately after the fall of Atlantis.

  We reveal the existence of a shadowy cave where DNA samples taken from a young man’s remains point to the astonishing fact that he ha
d traveled thousands of miles from the southern tip of South America to his death in Alaska. Nobody knows how or why.

  And we celebrate a new generation of Latin American archaeologists who have come to the radical conclusion that South America was populated before North America.

  Science is exploding, and the blast is providing more and more energy to drive the theory of earth crust displacement and the search for the lost continent.

  A lot has changed since 1981, when we quit our jobs in Canada and packed up a trunk with all our worldly belongings, enough money to survive for three months, and enough naïveté to believe we could manage on love and luck and presented ourselves at that mecca for librarians everywhere, the Reading Room of London’s British Museum. Under its robin-egg-blue dome, shutting out the great city’s roar, we devoured book after book. Some of them, like Charles Lyell’s 1830 Principles of Geology or James Hutton’s 1795 Theory of the Earth with Proofs and Illustrations, could only be accessed from the Rare Book Room. Books that took months to receive back home were presented to us in the Reading Room within hours. We’re lucky enough to be able to say that even though, longing for the wilderness you can only find in this part of the world, we returned home five years later, our London adventure resulted in more rich experiences than we could have imagined and plenty of raw material for our own contributions to the library.

  It’s no longer necessary for any writer to go to such lengths to find the intellectual spring of his or her subject matter. The Internet delivers any text we want to our eager eyes within seconds. Has to be a good thing, right? You’d think so. And for most of us it probably is. But don’t hold your breath thinking it will result in any paradigm-busting breakthroughs in the places where ideas are supposed to rule. Yes, in the years since When the Sky Fell was published a lot has changed. But a lot hasn’t.

  The Internet offers a potential gold mine of knowledge, bringing together more material than any individual could possibly explore in a lifetime. But it’s not well known that the search engines used to access this wealth of information direct researchers primarily to articles that espouse the conventional streams of current thought. Good enough, perhaps, to access the latest trend in scientific pronouncements but far less effective for challenging hallowed assumptions and developing alternative theories. In fact, contrary to expectations, between 1945 and 2005, as millions of scholarly articles went online, researchers increasingly began to cite fewer and fewer articles. Rather than expanding the parameters within their fields of research, online access has unexpectedly resulted in a troubling narrowing of science and scholarship.1

  In contrast with how the Internet has narrowed the world of some researchers, it has also opened the door for Atlantis to shine again. Brushed up and polished to be presented to a new audience—whether skeptical or keen, inspired artist or naysayer, geographer or psychologist—Atlantis can step out and be judged in the light of a new age of information.

  The remnants of the lost continent surface in intriguing places. In these pages we delve into the records of people from around the globe who fled the rising ocean and scrambled to safety in the mountains where, in a bid to survive, they began the sophisticated task of domesticating native plants. This sudden, global rise of the finely tuned art and science of agriculture in the highlands starts mysteriously at the precise time that Atlantis fell, suggesting a forgotten past unexplored by traditional archaeology.

  The chronicle of Atlantis is properly called a legend, not a myth. A legend tells of events that took place in the real world at a specific time involving human beings. A myth, in contrast, is enacted on a supernatural stage where events are controlled by all-powerful gods and goddesses. Plato, the source of the Atlantis legend, tells us that the island continent perished at a specific time, some 11,600 years ago. He says that the vast island was located in a “real ocean” and was destroyed by earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence. Gods don’t determine the unfolding events in this legend. Instead, it is the palpable forces of nature that prevail against Atlantis and end its rule. Atlantis is a legendary, but real, place that can be found.

  For decades we have enthusiastically perused world mythology (which is implicitly denigrated by conventional scholars), examining its invaluable details about the lost continent’s tragedy and its possible location that have been passed down from generation to generation by oral tradition. Every corner of the globe has generated a lost island paradise myth. Again and again similar events transpire: An island home is destroyed by a geological catastrophe. Often, a dramatic deviation in the sun’s course immediately precedes a Great Flood. Each myth adds new particulars. In the Vedic literature the great destructive Flood is followed by a “dire winter” that encapsulates the island homeland in snow and ice. And the Cherokee story of a lost land talks of a place that experiences a climate opposite to that of North America, suggesting that their vanished paradise thrived in the Southern Hemisphere. But as much as mythology might enrich the legend of Atlantis, it is still Plato’s account that provides the fullest and most complete record.

  What is often forgotten is that Plato’s account of Atlantis—passed to him from Solon, the lawmaker of Athens, who in turn had received it from one of the most learned of Egyptian priests—includes facts unknown to the ancient Greeks. It details the exact size, location, and fate of an actual island continent that lay in a vast body of water known as the real ocean, located beyond their known world. This description, as we show, is an accurate depiction of the world as a citizen of Atlantis would have seen it from the shores of Antarctica.

  The word Atlantis has come to have many meanings. Some choose to interpret Plato’s depiction as an allegory used to elucidate moral lessons about human history. Others see it as the key to a spiritual quest that might unlock mysteries of the human soul. We’ve often been asked about the spiritual aspects of the Atlantis legend. It is our deep belief that such explorations are private affairs for each individual to address in his or her own lifetime. In an age of uncertainty and manic change, we’ve seen that many of those who blithely offer spiritual advice to strangers are enticing vulnerable people to enter the superficial company of a pseudoguru.

  The only message we see in the legend of Atlantis is one that is obvious to many of us living in the twenty-first century. Its fate provides an abject lesson in the reality that our planet is fragile and its existence can be finite. It can be destroyed by natural forces and, increasingly, human greed. The suffocation of overpopulation, the source of virtually every environmental problem we face, and our profound disrespect for the land will bring an end long before the next earth crust displacement. The good news being that we don’t need to rely on gods or any other supernatural force to heal the earth. It’s up to us.

  Over the years we have consistently maintained that the word Atlantis signifies nothing less, and nothing more, than the name of earth’s first advanced civilization. A civilization whose accomplishments even outshone those that followed thousands of years later, including those of Egypt, China, Mexico, or the ancient cultures of the Middle East. Plato’s account describes engineering feats that far exceed the spectacular pyramids of Egypt or Mexico. The Atlanteans amassed considerable astronomical data and through their imperial navy accurately mapped the entire globe before they were felled by a worldwide geological disaster. Yet it is a disaster not due to devastate us again anytime soon but one that swept human history back to square one and tore page after page from the record, leaving gaping holes in the archive that remain as tantalizing, unsolved mysteries that many of us continue to try and solve, convinced that the answers are just within our reach.

  Our own quest for Atlantis has always focused on the hunt for a technologically advanced civilization hidden from view by the ravages of time. On the way we’ve learned invaluable lessons about prejudice, duplicity, and the dangers of “group think”—from whatever direction it comes. But we’ve also been privileged to meet readers who bring fresh eyes and the gift of curi
osity to the adventure. Hand in hand with them are artists from around the world, working in all mediums, who have favored our work with their imaginations. It’s been a bumpy but fascinating ride. We invite you to jump in, fasten your seatbelts, and join us for the next leg of the journey.

  ONE

  MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT

  KEENE TEACHERS COLLEGE

  KEENE, NEW HAMPSHIRE

  To: President Dwight D. Eisenhower

  From: Charles H. Hapgood, August 3, 1960

  Professor of History

  Re: THE PIRI REIS WORLD MAP OF 1513 AND THE LOST MAP OF

  COLUMBUS

  Memorandum

  For several centuries scholars have been searching for the lost map of Christopher Columbus. The map is referred to by Columbus’ contemporaries and by the historian Las Cada, as one he used to navigate to the New World.

  In 1929, a map was discovered in the former Imperial Palace (The Seraglio) in Constantinople, authored by a Turkish admiral of the sixteenth century, Piri Reis. In the inscriptions written on this map the author states that the western part, showing the American coasts, was copied from a map that had been in the possession of Christopher Columbus, but which had fallen into the hands of Piri Reis with the booty seized from eight Spanish ships captured by him in a battle off the coast of Valencia in 1501 or 1508.

  The Piri Reis map (a copy of which accompanies this memorandum) attracted the attention of President Kemal Ataturk, and of the American Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, who, in 1932, asked the Turkish Government for a color facsimile of the map, and for a search of Turkish archives and collections to see if the lost map of Columbus might not be found. The facsimile of the map now hangs in the Map Division of the Library of Congress, but the original Piri Reis worked from—Columbus own map (or a copy of it)—was never found.

  We now have excellent reason to believe that the original map still exists, and in the Spanish archives! The reason that this map has remained so long undiscovered appears to be, simply, that it is very different from the other contemporary maps and is not at all what scholars would expect to find in a map of Columbus’. It is not a map Columbus himself made, but one he found in the Old World. It should resemble the western side of the Piri Reis map, if it can be found.